My friend Cedar sent me a link to a page of writing advice, and I was going to fisk it point by point today. The wretched thing is called 10 Things To Do To Become A Better Writer In 10 days and my first reaction to it was somewhere between anger and laughter. Laughter because all the suggestions are ridiculous, starting with the first which is that you become an internet troll to learn humility or something and ending with her suggestion for how you should make yourself cry by imagining the happiness of the troops reunited with their families as The One This Author Has Been Waiting For “ended” the war in Iraq. That last one, particularly, stuck in my craw like a red hot poker. I know enough military men to be aware of the fact that they don’t sign up so they can sit at home with their families. They sign up to keep their country safe. And I know enough history to know that wars aren’t ended unilaterally. We went in because Saddam was encouraging and rewarding Jihadists – and yes, killing his own people, but frankly that was a sop used to sell the war to liberals – and making it seem that America had lost face in a region of the world where losing face means you’re weak and ripe for the plucking.
And now we’re leaving, because American liberals who know no history and no war, and who think that they “ended” the Vietnam war, think that the way to end a war is for America to leave.
Mark my words, we’ll be back again. We’ll be back again when we lose an American city. We’ll be back again when the region is in flames. Unless G-d really has made the United States his particular pet, and protects us beyond what we have any right to expect, we’ll be back again.
Mark my words, your grandchildren and mine too will pay for the folly of these protected precious flowers who think that the world is kindergarten, and if a kid just says he won’t hit anyone, he won’t be hurt. (And a peculiar kindergarten at that. One of those for really rich kids where they have an aid for every two kids.)
So, yes, when I think of the troops being pulled back from a war they’re not allowed to win, I do want to cry. But not in the way the writer meant it.
So I was going to write a fisking – point by point – called “How to be a precious darling.” It was going to be fun and glorious and…
Only I slept on it. I slept on it, and I woke this morning with the whole thing making me feel vaguely nauseated.
The problem with that article – and this is not a writing thing, we’re doing this all around, including in admission to colleges – is that it has absolutely zero to do with writing. Instead, it has an awful lot to do with morality and moral preening.
Worse, this has to do with a vision of what morality is that would shock almost all of the great religions (though not the small tribal religions of the most primitive people.) It is “morality by general liberal consensus.”
Thus we get this advice on being a troll and then apologizing to “learn humility” – which makes one wonder what “humility” means to this author. I’d like her to study a dictionary or historical definitions of humility. Look, kings have dressed as beggars and gone among the people to learn humility. They didn’t go among the people flinging poo and calling the people names, then apologize and somehow this teaches them humility. (By the way the entire idea that writing is going to humiliate you and you’re going to have to be pre-humiliated to do this is mind boggling. Yes, some parts of writing resemble and emotional strip tease, but the only parts that I think would require a taste for humiliation is if you’re writing your auto-biography and it’s close kin to fifty shades of gray.)
In fact, pretty much all the suggestions, while supposedly teaching you things like how to be humble, and how to become self-aware, are actually, in practical fact, an exercise in almost painful self-centeredness. Being a troll disrupts the lives of people who have done her no harm, but she will “erase it” with an apology and take the humiliation onto herself… in a world where other people aren’t real.
And unless you spend the time alone/in restricted company, your keeping silent for a day will impose a burden on the people around you, some of them total strangers. I can just see disrupting a cashier’s life by refusing to answer the question “is this cabbage?” when she’s trying to figure out the code to punch in. (I often suffer from bad allergies that do leave me aphonic. TRUST me it’s trouble for everyone around me.)
But the thing is, this isn’t for writing only. The list in fact, has bloody nothing to do with writing, except for the suggestion that you spend a day writing a passage from various perspectives (which is a standard writing exercise) and the suggestion that you go to the places your characters would be at that hour, which falls under standard research. And speaking of research the suggestion that you spend the day doing research “so you learn what real work is” gave me a window into this person’s life and work. Dear Lady, I’m a working writer. I know what hard work is every day of the week, and twice on Sunday. If I don’t work, I don’t eat. Oh, and some of us do massive research for anything that is possible to research.
What this list seems to be is “things that will make you morally worthy to join my exalted company.”
Sometime during the night I realized this applied to everything that is controlled by “the right people” (who are almost invariably left).
Oh, it is poisoning writing, right enough. Look, I was always aware while working for traditional-houses-other-than-Baen (Ton Weisskopf “I don’t buy personalities, I buy stories.” — thank you, ma’am) that I was being judged. Not my work. Not my word slinging. Not my plotting or story telling. No. Me. I had to fit their definition of “worthy” which included holding the “right” opinions, or they would not publish me. Even if my books did not touch on politics. Every-woman-must-be-victim/hero, for instance.
Yes, sure, I can totally see why you’d not want to work with someone who is immoral in a way that affects your business. Look, if I ever make enough to hire an assistant, I’m not going to hire one who has a known history of kleptomania, say. Or one who likes standing at the window flinging rocks at people.
But most of the “morality” that traditional publishing – and a lot of corporations, and certainly all colleges – enforce has bloody nothing to do with how you conduct yourself towards others. Instead, it’s enshrined in the sort of moral preening that at best does nothing for others and at worst makes you an ass towards others. “I’m not a consumerist” or “I drive a Prius” or “I’m ashamed to be male.”
This is particularly ridiculous when applied to writing, because some of the best writers in the world were complete asses. Anyone in doubt should read Dumas’ biography. Being cantankerous and dying with a pile of unpaid bills, let alone private debauchery and an inability to comprehend the real word all seem to be characteristics of the best among my fellow craftsmen. (not me, but I don’t aspire to such heights.)
But it is equally ridiculous in university admissions, where the essays have become the way of selecting for this kind of thing. I think they started so as to give the student a chance to talk about his status as oppressed, but since not everybody can aspire to being a victim, you can instead try to assimilate victimhood by doing the “approved” sort of contrition. I was struck to laughing, when reading about colleges asking people NOT to tell them about their “service summer” in Africa because “practically everyone has that.” And the fact that it costs a ton, (more than I could afford for my kids) and probably puts the recipients to a lot of trouble is the only thing that kept me from laughing.
But going back even further, that’s what high schools do with their volunteer hours too. There is zero proof that volunteer hours teach students anything except that a higher authority can force them to be slaves. And there’s even less proof that the organizations receiving the “benefit” of these student “volunteers” are – or should be – grateful. BUT to the high school bureaucrats, this is enforcing their morality – these are approved organizations, natch. No? Try putting in that you manned the phones for a Republican candidate. I knew someone who tried – and therefore makes the students “better people.”
It is said that once men stop believing in G-d they’ll believe in anything. What is not said is that when men stop believing in real morals they start believing in a sort of shamanistic morality, in which you appease the right “gods” and speak the right shibboleths and that makes you “good.”
The problem is not that we’ve lost the religious morality. Look, I was raised in a very strict religious society, where even if you didn’t believe you had to behave as though you did, and at least 90% of those rules were as futile as this woman’s nonsense. You had to wear “modest” clothes strictly defined as covering just THAT. You had to guard yourself in certain ways (I think this was leftover from Islam, like unless there was a public spectacle or something, no unmarried woman was allowed to be seen at the window.) Those rules were religious, but they weren’t necessarily moral.
In a plural society with many beliefs (and I do like the ability to believe what I want to, which is why this type of pseudo moral preening as a condition of advancement annoys me) you’re not going to agree on the “religious moral” rules. However if you don’t agree on the “moral” — don’t hurt others, don’t treat others like things — rules, you must be a post modernist. Which, of course, most of these people are.
Moral rules? I can’t imagine anything better than the golden rule. I don’t know if G-d wants me to cover up my hair once I’m married (something my grandmother’s generation still believed) though at least one version of a religion I respect, believes that. BUT I do believe that G-d wants me to treat others as I’d wish to be treated. (And for that matter if you don’t believe in G-d, I believe it is still the best way to create a decent society.) Do onto others as you’d have them do by you keeps you from murdering, stealing and for that matter from trolling for moral masturbation. (Think of the trouble you’re giving everyone else!)
Being a GOOD person (let alone being good according to my religion – yes, I have one – which is a whole other weight to lift), one who lives in the world aware others are people and who tries to do by them as he/she would be done by is a worthy endeavor. It’s also incredibly difficult, and most of us fall short.
Which is why it’s easier to default to shamanistic religion, where you can be a “good” person by “learning” humility or centeredness or anything in a way that would make you feel warm fuzzy but not translate to anything external.
And being “good” according to left-liberal shibboleths is not known to make you a better writer – though it does perfect your ability to mouth platitudes – or a better engineer, or even a better linguistics professor.
It’s just a tribal observance that tells those in power that you’re “in” with them. Which is why it is now accepted procedure for any profession that might have any power. It is the way of the world to perpetuate power.
And if that’s what you want to do, then that’s fine by me. Live and let live. Not my way, but I often fail at what I’m trying to do, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.
But don’t go deluding yourself that you’re some sort of advanced moral human being or a great crafts-person. You’re just following the mores and observances of your tribe. Don’t preach them to others.
Oh –And on that first suggestion – there are parts of the internet I would not advise you to troll.
According To Hoyt 
I love the way that rich liberals love to trumpet to the heavens and break their arms patting themselves on the back for spending one day doing things that most working folk do every day, rain or shine, simply as a matter of course.
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What do you expect them to do? Donate to charity like some peon conservative?
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_Tartuffe_.
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OK, so I can remember these before I finish reading the whole thing:
1) Obviously, this person does not understand the difference between humiliation and humility. Yes, you CAN learn humility by going out and pretending to be the type of person you, personally, would tear down in public, to see how it feels, but acting like an ass and then apologizing for it is not going to teach squat.
2) Spending a day doing research, to learn “what real work is”? While I realize that research can be tiring, how about trying to do some REAL work? She can contact Mike Rowe for details. Sheesh. I’d LOVE to be researching all the time, as my work.
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I actually have tendency to avoid work by researching, but then I love heavy manual labor, too. To me “work” is trying to write a chapter that just won’t come out. Or trying to help someone who needs more than I can give.
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I really didn’t mind sort-of heavy manual labor (I say sort-of, because I know too many people who work harder than I was ever able to), when I was fit enough for it, but the mindless production sorts of jobs really killed me, because I always wound up with the ones that were JUST difficult enough that I couldn’t really let my mind roam and do the job on automatic (the foundry jobs, in particular, were not merely ones where that could make you screw up the job, it could also result in severe injury).
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I used to have a dumb manual labor job, assembling office furniture, and my mind was free to roam and I had a lot of creative energy. Now my heavy labor is a lot more mentally taxing (and dangerous, and toxic) and my creative output is way down. But on the other hand, I think assembling airliners is a better use of my talents than desks.
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*chuckle* Heavy manual labor is good fun when your daily work is a lot of mental stress. I know when I was in IT, I tended to work out every chance I got. When daily work is backbreaking labor, mental games and suchlike are play. At least that’s how it turned out for me.
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Yeah, the ‘real work’ comment raised my blood pressure and had me explaining stuff to the computer screen also. ‘Real work’ to me is physical labor, although it can be stretched to include not physical jobs that one must do in order to eat. Most authors except those precious snowflakes in academia have plenty of experience at ‘real work’, it is what the do in order to survive while they write, or at least what they did until they became big if they are one of the few that are able to support themselves and/or their family by writing.
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I know Manual Labor so well I could probably add him as a dependent without the IRS making a fuss. I’ve heard, from a number of different writers, that one should “write what you know”. Obviously the people this person deals with don’t know very much, especially if they take this advice. What senseless blather!
If this is the kind of idiot you’ve had to put up with for the last 30 years,
Sarah, I truly believe you’re a saint for not murdering them in some brutal, nasty way. NOTHING in what she said in that diatribe could be used to actually succeed as a writer. I much prefer some of the advice some actual, SUCCESSFUL writers have put out, like our hostess. 8^)
Speaking of which, is there anywhere one could find all that information in one place? I missed several “lessons”.
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Oy. They’re on PJM lifestyle. I hear they’re intending to publish it as an ebook. But you can always ask me anything.
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“acting like an ass and then apologizing for it is not going to teach squat.”
Especially since what it teaches is arrogance. What are the victims of this troll in this procedure? Nothing but thing to exploit. That’s not humility that’s arrogance.
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Too bad this list is two years old, or I would seriously think about going and REALLY applying item #1. Not those feeble attempts that some of her admirers made.
Then finally “apologize” after about 6 hours. Probably never get the chance, though, because I’m sure I’d be banned by then.
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From the article:
If you have trouble making yourself cry, try celebrating the end of the War in Iraq with the return of our soldiers to the families who love them—guaranteed to push you over the edge. It is the end of a seemingly endless nightmare. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, President Obama.
I did a quick search.
No word yet from the precious little flower on Obama keeping troops in Afganistan until 2024.
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Pfagh. I have no trouble with the crying. Eyes are old and fluid balances frequently get out of kilter. Sometimes the tears just pour out for no discernible cause — it makes reading almost impossible and is almost as irritating as the dry eye itching when the imbalance flips the other way.
Of course, for the kinds of tears Precious Snowflake is thinking of, nothing works quite so well as thinking of those Americans hung out to dry in Benghazi, or the people whose insurance and/or decades-long medical relationships have been disrupted.
We carried you in our arms
On Independence Day
And now you’ll throw us all aside
And put us all away
Oh, what dear daughter ‘neath the sun
Could treat a father so?
To wait upon him hand and foot
Yet always answer, “No”
Tears of rage, tears of grief
Why must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know we’re so low
And life is brief
It was all so very painless
When you ran out to receive
All that false instruction
Which we never could believe
And now the heart is filled with gold
As if it was a purse
But, oh, what kind of love is this
Which goes from bad to worse?
Tears of rage, tears of grief
Why must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know we’re so low
And life is brief
We pointed you the way to go
And scratched your name in sand
Though you thought it was nothing more
Than a place for you to stand
I want you to know that while we watched
You discovered that no one would be true
That I myself was among the ones who thought
It was just a childish thing to do
Tears of rage, tears of grief
Why must I always be the thief?
Come to me now, you know we’re so low
And life is brief
Read more: Band – Tears Of Rage Lyrics | MetroLyrics
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You aren’t the only one to have had that impulse, Sanford confirmed that her comments are closed. Likely for this reason…
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The faux trolling in the comments was so lame. I’ve interacted with professional trolls, as in, they were pretending to opinions they did not personally have in order to infuriate people. The one fellow actually admitted it… not because he was sorry because we treated him so badly, but because we were too nice, refusing to return abuse. In any case, my point is that the pros… you can’t tell they’re lying, if they’re lying… and most trolls aren’t lying at all but giving their true opinions.
If you can tell it’s a satire, it’s not a troll. People are not going to be genuinely angry with you or hurt by what you say.
Bottom line, though… might as well tell someone they’d be a better writer if they went and slapped one of their kids, or their wife, really hard, so now they’d know what that felt like.
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These are all so self-indulgent–I wouldn’t even call them part of a shamanistic religion, which at least requires you to put effort out the effort of trudging to the temple or river or volcano.
I would love to spend the day silent, following wherever research leads me, to the accompaniment of my favorite music. But I have a job and responsibilities and a knowledge of what courtesy I owe my fellow man. Not that I always measure up to my own standards, I’m not preening here ;)
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errgg “which at least requires you to put out the effort of trudging “
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There are days when I’m on my own that I do spend silent because it’s kind of silly talking when there’s no one else to listen…
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Are you kidding? That’s the only way I get a intelligent conversation most days.
Well, this place counts as well, but it’s not auditory.
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These folks need a whack upside the head.
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If, in the lab, you give people a chance to buy “green” products and then set to them to a game where they will receive money for success, they are more likely to lie and cheat in the game. Apparently having your moral charge for the day liberates you in other ways.
Now imagine what being an activist, or having done that list, does for moral charge.
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Number Seven on that list just might get you an invitation to talk to Officer Friendly about why you are hanging out at the playground all day taking notes. Especially if you don’t have a kid with you as cover or you don’t belong in the neighborhood.
Ugh. The woman appears to believe that her readers have never set foot in the real world. Or she’s writing for androids who want to become fiction writers (NTTAWWT). And the last bit about “how to make yourself cry” was just . . . sleazy. Even before the paean to the POTUS. In fact, the entire list fells a touch slimy to me. Although, anyone who would assume that people need to go be asses and then apologize (or who has to go, apologize, and ask to be chewed out) because they’ve never f’d up and had to eat crow in real life strikes me as not being a great source of information on how to write good fiction. She may be a great copy editor or continuity editor, but I wouldn’t put much faith in other advice.
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Well, she’s an editor, but also a writer, and both ways I think what she REALLY needs is to be dropped in a country where she doesn’t speak the language and not rescued for three years World of good.
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Yes. That’s the real problem. The precious darling hasn’t apparently left her (New York) middle class cocoon ever.
Dumping her in rural Kentucky or even better one of the Amish communities in Ohio or Pennsylvania without a cell phone or a way to leave would probably be equally effective. It might be a bit hard on the place she’s dumped in though.
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Why I suggested foreign parts. I was going to say “not Portugal” but think how much my mom would enjoy yelling at her — and mom is almost eighty and rarely gets to have fun anymore.
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That could be fun. OTOH, from what I recall of it, your mom lives too close to civilization, she’d be able to escape.
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Or with the coal miners in West Virginia. Talk about not speaking the language… *chuckle*
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I think that she’s still living with mommy and daddy.
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Wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Even if not, Daddy O has her back in the White House, don’t he?
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In principle her exercises are not wholly fatuous, just misdirected. For example, instead of being an internet troll to learn humility she should visit a nearby zoo and lecture the bears (in their den) on the Principia Mathematica, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations or Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. The consequences ought be informative and enriching for all parties.
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Preferably a cannibalistic one.
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Drop it into the ghetto. See if it survives. And yes, I am a mean bugger.
Stupid should hurt.
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She’s not a good anything!
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Number Seven on that list just might get you an invitation to talk to Officer Friendly about why you are hanging out at the playground all day taking notes.
Where I’m from (DFW metroplex), Officer Friendly is busy and takes too long to get there. Perv is MUCH more likely to have said discussion with Concerned[Angry] Dad With Concealed Handgun License And Cellphone With Buddies Who Can Make Pervy McProblem “Disappear”. Followed by a trip to Brahms with buds and kiddos afterwards.
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And that’s what I love about living in the ‘plex.
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:hoists beverage in agreeable salute, continues to browse innerwebtronz for best (in-stock) ammo prices:
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Have you considered Cheaper than Dirt? My husband has bought ammo from them.
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I work just around the corner from there, off of Riverside and Western Center. I quit shopping there after they jumped on the anti-gun bandwagon following Sandy Hook, jumped up their ammo prices, and took all of the AR15’s out of inventory because “they didn’t support a rifle that can do that sort of thing” or some other BS PC statement. Cuz…you know…those types of rifles don’t need an actual finger on the trigger to go off. We usually drive up to Cabelas, or just down the street to Walmart, for our ammo needs. Cabelas is about 2x the drive (and goes right past CTD), but worth it for all the extra bonus camping gear, fish tanks for the munchkin to ooh and aaah over (she likes the turtles), and honest pricing.
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Thanks for letting me know what idjits they are.
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I wasn’t aware they were such idjits (course I wasn’t aware that they had actual physical stores either, they are just a mail order outfit in my part of the country) but I do know last I checked their ammo (or at least .22 ammo) was anything but cheap.
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Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! I found a site earlier this year that compiles near-realtime pricing from a number of sites. Search for gunbot.
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I have been using the site also, not that it helps much for 22 lr (anybody who has any at anything approaching a reasonable price is limiting orders, so the shipping makes it outrageous) but I found a good deal on small rifle primers through them a while back.
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I think my wife’s been ordering ammo from there. I do recall a couple boxes of Mosin kibble coming from them!
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I checked out a few of the links on that page. This “lady” certainly has a high opinion of herself, doesn’t she? She also thinks she knows best how to write. Maybe if someone wanted to write dystopian children’s stories, it MIGHT work — in one out of a hundred tries.
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Agreed. And in a good world, “dystopian children’s stories” would not be a book category. Unless we’re talking about such classics as “Goops and How to Be Them” or “Beastly Boys and Ghastly Girls.” (” . . . Remember Sarah Sylvia Stout/ And Always take the garbage out!”)
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No dystopian children’s stories? Whatever would happen to all the actual historic fairy tales, then?
I don’t know how else to describe the vast majority of Grimm’s collection, if we don’t use the term dystopian. There’s always something bad lurking in the background, and the tales are always just at the borderline of real nastiness.
People have been scaring the shit out of kids since time immemorial, and I think it’s actually kinda healthy–How else do you inculcate the idea that the world is a nasty, dangerous place? The dystopian tale is a bit more honest than telling the little grubs that everything is always sunshiney and light, and that bad things don’t happen to good people.
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Sorry, IMO you are confusing “dystopian tales” and “cautionary tales”. Not surprising as the publishing world has done the same. A cautionary tale warns the readers/hearers of possible dangers in certain actions. While many older dystopian tales are also cautionary tales, a heavy diet of dystopian tales convinces the readers/hearers that the stories are about “real life” not cautions about “the wrong path”. The “gray goo” stories are sometimes labeled “dystopian tales” but aren’t warnings about dangers but teach the reader that “nothing really matters”. IE it’s a terrible world out there and don’t expect happiness.
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Exactly, TXRed… Is there someone who has never spent time with children? Never inadvertently offended someone and had that sick feeling in their stomachs? Never cried over someone else’s sorrow? Never ate crow? Never suffered a public failure?
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I believe this sums it up pretty well. It’s one that’s in my copy book. “No Enemies” by Charles Mackay
http://www.bartleby.com/71/1517.html
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Well, other than the fact that one need not have an enemy in order for an enemy to have you…
But there, too… does someone who refuses to hold a grudge (have an enemy) not understand very well how it would work if they chose otherwise?
That’s like insisting that a virgin doesn’t understand temptation.
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ONE DAY’s worth of research? In my world, that might do for a single chapter. Generally, I need about 3-6 months’ research to write a historical novel (if it’s an era with which I’m not familiar), or a couple of weeks if it’s contemporary. Sometimes I need more than a day just to write an essay.
And all that “go to your location and drink it in” nonsense reminds me of the interchange between Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier on the set of “Marathon Man.” Hoffman, a student of Method school, went out jogging so he could come back and play a scene where he’s tired, whereupon Olivier said, “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?” A good writer doesn’t need to visit a location to make it real, only imagination.
Example (I’ve never been to Bucharest): “To many people, Bucharest was a depressing city, with all its crumbling Warsaw Pact-era concrete buildings and people who still walked around with tight, closed faces as though Ceaucescu’s secret police still controlled society. To Elias, though, the streets were not so much ruined as they were an opportunity–because he’d just landed the job of a lifetime and without meaning to, fallen in love with his boss’s married secretary.”
There. Took me three minutes to write. Anyone need any more location details? Didn’t think so. It’s not a travelogue, it’s fiction.
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Bows. Thank you.
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Happens I live in the setting for one of Tom Clancy’s novels, not his best. He had done just enough research to toss around a few local references, for color. It actually irritated me a bit, because things just didn’t fit. It was almost as if I’d come home from school to find the postman wearing one of Mom’s dresses.
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I recognized a local scene from the TV show “In Plain Sight”. It was fun, but so so so wrong. One moment they’re having a fight in a pet store and I’m thinking, Hey! Pet store! I’ve been there! The next they run out the door and around the corner and… oh… it was so *wrong*. I have no idea where they ran to, but it sure wasn’t around the corner.
So, I suppose that I’m saying that it’s not just books. Even with television the “set” is just a bit to hang everything else upon.
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I get the same feeling when I watch CSI (LV version). I enjoy the show better if I pretend it is in an alternative reality LV.
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Yep, that happens to me on a larger scale as well – I recently finished an otherwise very good Baen althist book (Robert Conroy’s 1920: America’s Great War ), wherin he’s got the Kaiser’s armies invading the US from Mexico and entertainingly fighting their way up the length of California towards San Francisco, after burning Hollywood (OK, the defenders kind of blew it up first. I told you it was entertaining). Then right when he gets to the geography I actually know about, first he goes all hand-wavy-vague on the terrain they are fighting through, then suddenly the Kaiser’s shock troops are breaking through the defense line and running forward into the streets of south San Francisco, with nary a mention of the fact that the city by the bay is at the very northern end of a DAMN LONG PENINSULA and is really quite a ways away from the “plain” where he (vaguely) has the rest of the German army located*, right on 35 miles from where those southern streets of San Francisco were located in 1920.
Good runners, those German shock troops.
Conroy needed a good map exercise for his finale.
That said, if alt hist and WWI are your thing, I’d still recommend it. It was a good read.
* As far as I can tell, Conroy ends up with his German lines stretched basically across the Santa Clara valley, with the place where young cavalry Col. Patton leads the first tank charge in history being pretty much right on top of where Google HQ is now located.
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**And Google HQ would have been a very poor place to put tanks, since in 1920 that whoel area was all marshland, but for the geometry of the attack to work as Conroy had it, that’s pretty much where they had to be coming from.
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I don’t know, driving tanks over Google HQ sounds like a pretty good idea to me. ;)
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Oh indeed – since I have seen that peninsula for my own eyes– your description made me laugh..
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John Ringo. Princess of Wands. The “Con Killings” section. He did the geography of the city I live in backwards & it makes my brain hiccup EVERY TIME I THINK ABOUT IT because I *really* want an Outback Steakhouse on my side of town (which is where Outback *is* in the book).
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Louis L’amour did the same thing in my area. He was exceptionally good at getting the geography right in his books, I have actually been to several places (like the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming) and been able to navigate by memory of what he wrote in his books, but here where I live he managed to move a river about a hundred miles. In all honesty I suspect it could have been an editorial ‘fix’, the river you should be looking down at is in the neighboring state, and the editors might have switched to an Idaho river.
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I’ve lived in Montgomery, AL for 5 years and my husband for 25. I winced at his description of Montgomery. It wasn’t really that bad. But I was tempted to tell him that 65 didn’t go that far and that he created a stadium and marshy island where there is a thriving suburb. I have 2 phrases for myself: artistic license and it’s an AU. It’s not my Montgomery. However he does get the feeling of rural AL correct. Driving in the rural area (less due to increased community building) between Montgomery (ca. 2003) and Birmingham gave me my first taste of empty land. Miles and miles of nothing but trees.
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LOL– now if you can get to that alternate world from here easily. ;-)
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There’s a certain segment of the military that welcomes the kind of bullshit that Sarah references here, but they’re not the sort you usually find populating the combat arms, or even the services that specialize in direct ground combat. The maudlin sentimentality of such folks rarely survives long in close contact with combat or combat troops. By the end of a week, most of them have come to the conclusion that death in combat is probably the best thing that could happen to their bloody-minded brethren that volunteered for the job in the first place.
You’ll find combat troops getting all teary-eyed over lost dollies they find abandoned in combat zones, along with lost kittens and puppies. What you won’t find in those same men is an iota of self-pity, or a desire for anyone outside the military to wax poetic over their “sacrifice”. Most of us considered ourselves well-paid, and well-paid for doing a job we enjoyed, most of the time. The secret shame is that we’d have enjoyed it all of the time, if we’d been allowed to shoot at people and break things every single day. If you knew the simple, nihilistic joy that most of us held in doing things like that, y’all would be horrified. In my specialty, we used to describe what we did as “Large-scale vandalism, and the wholesale destruction of public property…”.
We were people who looked at the beautiful historic countryside in Western Germany, and saw targets. Looking at the beautiful modern highway viaducts up near the Wasserkuppe around the Fulda Gap, we didn’t see magnificent architectural achievements, we saw things we wanted to blow up, and gleefully planned how to do so in ways that would maximize the destruction. Strictly speaking, you really only needed to drop one span of those things, to make them useless to the enemy. We, however, decided that dropping all the spans would serve as an impromptu anti-tank berm, and would be useful for the defense of the region. I wish I could reproduce the look on the face of the German Wallmeister when he realized we weren’t joking about doing just that, instead of using the precisely planned pre-chambers he maintained.
When wandering through the only intact 14th-Century village in that region, we didn’t see history, we saw a myriad of ways to demolish the place to make better defenses. Seeing those cute little “cultural landmark” placards hung up all over the place, most of us just snorted amusedly, and took note of where we’d likely to be able to do more damage with less resources. The surviving church steeple, the one that survived the Hundred Years War, Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler? Gone, regardless of cultural significance. The damn thing was just too good an observation post, and an obvious target for the Soviets. Better to rubble the thing, deny observation, and defend from the piled-up rubble.
Frankly, if war had ever come to Western Germany, your best investment for post-war prosperity would have been the concrete industry, along with demolition. Friend of mine was an Engineer planner, back then, and he did some impromptu calculations that showed we were likely to do more damage to German infrastructure fighting the Russians for 30 days in that part of Germany than the Eighth Air Force managed in the entire WWII period. And, the glee with which we would have done it? Immeasurable.
The life of a peace-time soldier is amazing, for a young man who likes things like firearms and loud explosions. That we have to occasionally go out and add some risk by dealing with heavily armed strangers? That’s just a part of the deal we signed up for, and the sad fact is, a lot of us wound up leaving the service during the long peace that preceded the War on Terror (TM) with a certain wistful regret that we’d never been to see the elephant ourselves. I had guys who’d grown tired of the peacetime, Clinton-era bullshit that trooped right back to the colors as soon as it seemed likely we’d be seeing action. I, myself, am more than a little pissed at the fate and circumstance that left me consigned to admin roles for both my tours over there. The mentality of the average combat serviceman simply does not lend itself to the maudlin meanderings of these oh-so-very-mournful pious assholes.
What I’d like to say, on hearing them whine over me and mine, is something to the effect of “F**k off, jack. I wanted to kill people, and the only legit way I could do that was by killing for the government…”.
Now, that’s not strictly the truth, but I’d love to be able to see the results of deploying that for shock value. I’m projecting that the facial expressions would be ‘effin priceless…
Most of us professionals looked at the histrionics of guys like Ron Kovic with utter disgust and revulsion, he of that classic autobiographical “Born on the Fourth of July” bullshit. The man played it like he was some kind of innocent, drafted and sent to war against the innocent North Vietnamese. Far from it–That hypocritical POS was a career Marine on his second enlistment. If he hadn’t figured out the deal by his second tour in Vietnam, he wouldn’t have had the brains to breathe, let alone sign the enlistment contracts where he volunteered twice for combat. Not to mention, he was a friggin’ Marine, and whatever vices they may have, it’s damn near impossible to mistake the fact that you’ve volunteered for service in an organization that’s all about killing and being killed when you join. Kovic was an experienced veteran, who parlayed his wounding into a whole “poor, poor pitiful me…” routine that made him fairly well-off. He was nobody’s victim, but his own, in other words.
People like him are who most combat veterans hate with a passion. You know the job is dangerous, you know it’s risky, and you still volunteer to go do your duty, your geas. These days, nobody is putting a gun to your head, and the alternative has always been there for you to conscientiously object to service, so don’t make it out that you’re some kind of special snowflake that is being martyred when bad things happen to you. After all, you were doing some pretty bad things, yourself, to other people. And, likely, you enjoyed that. At least, a little. Ol’ Ronnie baby was just fine with being a Marine, killing and breaking things, right up until someone almost killed him, and did manage to break him. Hypocrite, in other words.
Most of the guys I served with were enthusiastic for war. Even back at the height of the Cold War, we were all kind of hoping the Soviets would jump, just so we could find out what it was like. Young men are stupid like that. Hell, right up until they put Corporal stripes on my stupid ass, and made me responsible for an eight-man squad, I was completely identified with the idea of the Soviets invading. I wanted them to do that, just so I could see.
That ended after my first exercise playing nursemaid to those idiots, and me having the sudden epiphany that I was responsible for keeping them alive. After that, not so much enthusiasm for the idea of going to war–It became something I was going to do, but only because I thought I could do a better job at it than someone else. A duty, rather than a pleasure.
We pretty much knew we were going to die, back then. The expected lifespan, once the balloon went up, was measured in minutes. We spent a lot of time morbidly analyzing just what would go wrong, and there was more than a little bit of very morbid one-upsmanship going on between units: “We’ve only got about twenty minutes, once the shooting starts…” “Yeah? Well, we’re about sixty klicks closer to the border, so we’re only gonna get ten minutes, and they’re probably going to be shooting us in our bunks…”.
The mentality, in other words, was/is pretty fatalistic. Timid men don’t sign up for these duties, and if they do, they don’t stay timid long. Or, they don’t do the duties for long.
To tell the truth, I’m a little embarrassed to be drawing a retirement check, these days. I got paid reasonably well for 25 years to do something that I would have likely paid money to do, if I’d never joined the military at all. I mean, who the hell needs adventure travel when some damn fool is willing to pay me good wages to go floating around the Panama Canal in early spring? With guns, no less, and playing an exquisitely detailed LARP? Cripes, we had laser tag before it was even invented! High adventure, good pay, good friends… What more could a man ask for?
Of course, in the darker moments of supervising police call in the dead of winter on some backwoods portion of the Pacific Northwest base I was assigned to for a lot of my military career, one would reflect on the fact that you pay for your 10% fun times with about 90% sheer, unadulterated and highly monotonous routine dullness. For every hour you’re out chasing tanks around a maneuver area, there’s about another twenty or so where you’re either turning wrenches, shuffling papers, or teaching some idiot how to tie a simple demo knot for the thirtieth time.
Don’t cry for me, America. I actually enjoyed it, and for a semi-sociopath like myself, it was actually a pretty good place to be. God alone knows what I would have gotten up to in early adulthood, had there not been some framework like the Army for me to identify with and serve in. On the whole, it’s probably worth what it costs the nation in peacetime, just to keep people like me suitably distracted. There’s no telling what I would have found to do with myself, otherwise.
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How the hell do you edit, on here? I screwed up some italics tags up there, somehow…
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You can’t. I can. Tell me what edit you want. Sorry. I WILL move out of this provider, but not this year, probably.
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Sarah–Can you delete the original and insert this one in it’s place?
This should represent what I had intended for the first post to look like…
There’s a certain segment of the military that welcomes the kind of bullshit that Sarah references here, but they’re not the sort you usually find populating the combat arms, or even the services that specialize in direct ground combat. The maudlin sentimentality of such folks rarely survives long in close contact with combat or combat troops. By the end of a week, most of them have come to the conclusion that death in combat is probably the best thing that could happen to their bloody-minded brethren that volunteered for the job in the first place.
You’ll find combat troops getting all teary-eyed over lost dollies they find abandoned in combat zones, along with lost kittens and puppies. What you won’t find in those same men is an iota of self-pity, or a desire for anyone outside the military to wax poetic over their “sacrifice”. Most of us considered ourselves well-paid, and well-paid for doing a job we enjoyed, most of the time. The secret shame is that we’d have enjoyed it all of the time, if we’d been allowed to shoot at people and break things every single day. If you knew the simple, nihilistic joy that most of us held in doing things like that, y’all would be horrified. In my specialty, we used to describe what we did as “Large-scale vandalism, and the wholesale destruction of public property…”.
We were people who looked at the beautiful historic countryside in Western Germany, and saw targets. Looking at the beautiful modern highway viaducts up near the Wasserkuppe around the Fulda Gap, we didn’t see magnificent architectural achievements, we saw things we wanted to blow up, and gleefully planned how to do so in ways that would maximize the destruction. Strictly speaking, you really only needed to drop one span of those things, to make them useless to the enemy. We, however, decided that dropping all the spans would serve as an impromptu anti-tank berm, and would be useful for the defense of the region. I wish I could reproduce the look on the face of the German Wallmeister when he realized we weren’t joking about doing just that, instead of using the precisely planned pre-chambers he maintained.
When wandering through the only intact 14th-Century village in that region, we didn’t see history, we saw a myriad of ways to demolish the place to make better defenses. Seeing those cute little “cultural landmark” placards hung up all over the place, most of us just snorted amusedly, and took note of where we’d likely to be able to do more damage with less resources. The surviving church steeple, the one that survived the Hundred Years War, Napoleon, the Kaiser, and Hitler? Gone, regardless of cultural significance. The damn thing was just too good an observation post, and an obvious target for the Soviets. Better to rubble the thing, deny observation, and defend from the piled-up rubble.
Frankly, if war had ever come to Western Germany, your best investment for post-war prosperity would have been the concrete industry, along with demolition. Friend of mine was an Engineer planner, back then, and he did some impromptu calculations that showed we were likely to do more damage to German infrastructure fighting the Russians for 30 days in that part of Germany than the Eighth Air Force managed in the entire WWII period. And, the glee with which we would have done it? Immeasurable.
The life of a peace-time soldier is amazing, for a young man who likes things like firearms and loud explosions. That we have to occasionally go out and add some risk by dealing with heavily armed strangers? That’s just a part of the deal we signed up for, and the sad fact is, a lot of us wound up leaving the service during the long peace that preceded the War on Terror (TM) with a certain wistful regret that we’d never been to see the elephant ourselves. I had guys who’d grown tired of the peacetime, Clinton-era bullshit that trooped right back to the colors as soon as it seemed likely we’d be seeing action. I, myself, am more than a little pissed at the fate and circumstance that left me consigned to admin roles for both my tours over there. The mentality of the average combat serviceman simply does not lend itself to the maudlin meanderings of these oh-so-very-mournful pious assholes.
What I’d like to say, on hearing them whine over me and mine, is something to the effect of “F**k off, jack. I wanted to kill people, and the only legit way I could do that was by killing for the government…”.
Now, that’s not strictly the truth, but I’d love to be able to see the results of deploying that for shock value. I’m projecting that the facial expressions would be ‘effin priceless…
Most of us professionals looked at the histrionics of guys like Ron Kovic with utter disgust and revulsion, he of that classic autobiographical “Born on the Fourth of July” bullshit. The man played it like he was some kind of innocent, drafted and sent to war against the innocent North Vietnamese. Far from it–That hypocritical POS was a career Marine on his second enlistment. If he hadn’t figured out the deal by his second tour in Vietnam, he wouldn’t have had the brains to breathe, let alone sign the enlistment contracts where he volunteered twice for combat. Not to mention, he was a friggin’ Marine, and whatever vices they may have, it’s damn near impossible to mistake the fact that you’ve volunteered for service in an organization that’s all about killing and being killed when you join. Kovic was an experienced veteran, who parlayed his wounding into a whole “poor, poor pitiful me…” routine that made him fairly well-off. He was nobody’s victim, but his own, in other words.
People like him are who most combat veterans hate with a passion. You know the job is dangerous, you know it’s risky, and you still volunteer to go do your duty, your geas. These days, nobody is putting a gun to your head, and the alternative has always been there for you to conscientiously object to service, so don’t make it out that you’re some kind of special snowflake that is being martyred when bad things happen to you. After all, you were doing some pretty bad things, yourself, to other people. And, likely, you enjoyed that. At least, a little. Ol’ Ronnie baby was just fine with being a Marine, killing and breaking things, right up until someone almost killed him, and did manage to break him. Hypocrite, in other words.
Most of the guys I served with were enthusiastic for war. Even back at the height of the Cold War, we were all kind of hoping the Soviets would jump, just so we could find out what it was like. Young men are stupid like that. Hell, right up until they put Corporal stripes on my stupid ass, and made me responsible for an eight-man squad, I was completely identified with the idea of the Soviets invading. I wanted them to do that, just so I could see.
That ended after my first exercise playing nursemaid to those idiots, and me having the sudden epiphany that I was responsible for keeping them alive. After that, not so much enthusiasm for the idea of going to war–It became something I was going to do, but only because I thought I could do a better job at it than someone else. A duty, rather than a pleasure.
We pretty much knew we were going to die, back then. The expected lifespan, once the balloon went up, was measured in minutes. We spent a lot of time morbidly analyzing just what would go wrong, and there was more than a little bit of very morbid one-upsmanship going on between units: “We’ve only got about twenty minutes, once the shooting starts…” “Yeah? Well, we’re about sixty klicks closer to the border, so we’re only gonna get ten minutes, and they’re probably going to be shooting us in our bunks…”.
The mentality, in other words, was/is pretty fatalistic. Timid men don’t sign up for these duties, and if they do, they don’t stay timid long. Or, they don’t do the duties for long.
To tell the truth, I’m a little embarrassed to be drawing a retirement check, these days. I got paid reasonably well for 25 years to do something that I would have likely paid money to do, if I’d never joined the military at all. I mean, who the hell needs adventure travel when some damn fool is willing to pay me good wages to go floating around the Panama Canal in early spring? With guns, no less, and playing an exquisitely detailed LARP? Cripes, we had laser tag before it was even invented! High adventure, good pay, good friends… What more could a man ask for?
Of course, in the darker moments of supervising police call in the dead of winter on some backwoods portion of the Pacific Northwest base I was assigned to for a lot of my military career, one would reflect on the fact that you pay for your 10% fun times with about 90% sheer, unadulterated and highly monotonous routine dullness. For every hour you’re out chasing tanks around a maneuver area, there’s about another twenty or so where you’re either turning wrenches, shuffling papers, or teaching some idiot how to tie a simple demo knot for the thirtieth time.
Don’t cry for me, America. I actually enjoyed it, and for a semi-sociopath like myself, it was actually a pretty good place to be. God alone knows what I would have gotten up to in early adulthood, had there not been some framework like the Army for me to identify with and serve in. On the whole, it’s probably worth what it costs the nation in peacetime, just to keep people like me suitably distracted. There’s no telling what I would have found to do with myself, otherwise.
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Yep– I met the rangers and the Navy Seals… Great men and really good at breaking things. ;-)
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Gah. I hate the “thank you for your service” crap. Nothing says “appreciation” like making me a bit part in your psychodrama.
Great post!
Hopefully, the recent unpleasantness has weeded out most of the worthless #$%&s that were getting promoted during the long peace. Some of the Staff and NCOs in my outfit were lifers either because they enjoyed the power trip, or they knew that they’d never be competitive in a meritocracy.
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Eh. I say thank you for your service for two reasons — first, because I didn’t get a chance to serve, and I’m glad someone else served Second, given my gender, profession and origin, I want to tell the military “I’m not one of those idiot who thinks you did nothing.” So, don’t punch all of them. Some are like me. The left doesn’t say “thank you for your service” they say “Aren’t you upset the man sent you over there to kill or be killed?”
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I don’t generally thank servicemen, because I think most are embarrassed for being thanked for doing what most consider their duty.
However, on one occasion when two Marines (in dress blues) came into the hamburger joint where I was buying a mean, I went over to the register just before they ordered and said to the cashier: “These two men are well-known forgers, so you shouldn’t accept their money. Here’s $25. Give them whatever they want.”
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“mean” = “meal”
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The restaurant in the median offered an average mean, unless you got it a la mode.
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Arrrrrrgggggghhhh! Stats jokes!
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Their service showed considerable variance allegedly because if you paid extra you could have a standard deviation on the way out the back
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*jaw drops, blinks, rereads subthread, closes jaw* Y’all win.
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Oh, c’mon. He’s an accountant. While that’s not the same as a statistician, he’s going to be more closely familiar with such mathematical terminology than average. I mean, RES is certainly painfully punny at times, but that one was no more than I expected* from him.
* Said in a dismissive manner to distract from the jealousy I have of the way he is able to construct such punography.
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Math!! AAAAAAAAAUGH!!!!
::grabs frantically for Excedrin and adult beverage::
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Fractional Exponents! Cubing a Binomial.
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::foams at mouth::
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Yeah — have done that too…
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Heh. Trying to pick a junk food to eat at a truck stop, forget what State I was even in, and a group of four soldiers came in, on their way from one place to another. I ended up in line behind the apparent leader, he went to pull out a card, I tossed some cash on the counter instead. Clerk went for the cash.
Smile and a nod and we went our separate ways.
Mew
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I made a Marine cry by telling the waitress that she was to bill his (and his wife’s) meal to me, without letting him know.
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My husband made me fall in love with him even more on our anniversary once … we had been given a gift card to a premier steakhouse and were really enjoying our meal when in came a Marine in uniform and his lady. We were seated not far from them and could see how they were ordering abstemiously (for that kind of place), and just thoroughly enjoying an elegant night out in each others’ company … so dh gave the gift card to the waiter to pay for their meal … he kept it anonymous because he’s like that.
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Oddly enough, I don’t get many “thanks” from civilians. Most have come from fellow vets of all branches, and most involve nothing more than a glance at my Navy-related tshirt, catching my eye, and nodding. I will, however, take the time out to try to shake the hand of a disabled vet or (more rarely) POW.
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Over at Vuurwapenblog, Andrew had this:
http://vuurwapenblog.com/2013/10/18/please-dont-thank-me-for-my-service/
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I’ve got to admit, this “don’t thank me for my service” bit is a little…baffling I guess. I read Andrew’s post, and down through the comments. I’ve heard it elsewhere and it makes little sense.
I get not wanting to talk about your service, and I certainly understand the differing perspectives of service and service experience. But this is not that. This is the citizenry acknowledging, openly, the military and its role in our society. It is acknowledging risk and sacrifice inherent in a system which stands for us all. It is taking the time to recognize that our society rests, in part, on the potential service of others.
For me, somebody walks up and thanks you for your service, it’s not about you specifically, it’s about the institution and its place in our society, as well as all those who’ve gone before. I’d much prefer the culture be inclined toward open acknowledgement than shunning and shame. Even when they’re just mouthing empty platitudes they’re bowing to cultural pressure and that has real value.
Is it an uncomfortable moment? Sure. Difficult to find the right response? Yep. Awkward, particularly from the insincere? Oh, yeah. So?
Maybe I’m missing something.
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I think it is another thing ruined by the liberal left. To many have heard “thank you for your service” from those who are insincere and really mean, “please stand here and acknowledge me, so that even though I have never did anything worth wasting the air breathe I’ll feel better and improve my self-esteem.”
I’ve never heard anybody complain of being thanked for their service by fellow veterans or sincere family members of veterans.
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I probably wandered too far down the rabbit hole, but I’ve been reading comments (elsewhere) from people complaining about just that: sincere, insincere, whatever…don’t thank me, I didn’t do it for you.
That’s…not useful.
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Hmmm … mebbe I bin misunderstanding it? I allus thought “thank you for your service … ” carried the implicit sotto voce completion “… unlike the other services who exist to aid you in your mission and mostly succeed in getting in your service’s way”?
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I say thank you to people in gratitude for doing something essential that I didn’t.
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Well, you’re probably not playing a bit part in my psychodrama. You’re most likely playing a bit part in my son’s education that he should appreciate the sacrifice of military servicemen and firemen. If you want to be an @$$ about it, that’s okay. He needs to learn that lesson about human nature too.
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Ser Taylor… A bit further down, there is a reply I made to this sort of thing that sort of explains better why it is so many of us are graceless when it comes to this sort of thing, and what it is that your thanks is really triggering for us.
It’s not that your gratitude is taken amiss, it’s that it triggers memories, and the realization that we who are receiving it are really not worthy. It’s a bit hard to explain, to an outsider, but those of us who were properly acculturated to the military have a very hard time with the idea of taking credit for things we did not do.
There’s a very apt line in that old country song, the one that goes “…all gave some, but some gave all…”. When you walk up to someone like me, and say “Thank you for your service…”, there’s this little problem of memory that you have unintentionally triggered. I’m remembering all the friends, acquaintances, subordinates, and fellow servicemen I never met, who are never going to hear your words because they were the ones “who gave all”. It’s hard to take, knowing I live and am whole, being there in front of you, and that they did not. One feels a bit of a fraud, you see…
I really don’t know how one would phrase such a thing, but I would really be a lot more comfortable if good people either said nothing to me on the issue, or if they would somehow come up with a way to communicate their thanks to that unkempt mob of the dead who trail behind me in my memories. They’re really the reason I find it hard to accept thanks–By comparison, I only offered myself up on the same altar that they sacrificed their very beings upon. And, for whatever reason, blind luck, fate, or desperate unsuitability, it was not mine to make that sacrifice. Remembering those who did is humbling, and I really find it very uncomfortable to be credited with anything even approaching their level of sacrifice.
You see, you’re also playing out a role in my psychodrama.
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I understand this explanation well. I know that a service member thanked me for my service recently. I was dumbfounded. I happened to serve in Japan during Desert Storm. Many of my friends, who were marines in communication were sent there. I said goodbye to them. So I don’t think of myself at the same level as these good men (and some good women.).
Yes, I served, but I was far behind enemy lines. So I had that fraud feeling, you described. The soldier in question told me that I was being silly because I left my country to serve in other countries (Japan and Panama). I lost a lot of my youth to the military (true). I had made a sacrifice that was every bit as important as the ones who were on enemy lines. Since the soldier in question had spent several tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, I decided that that little niggle of self-hate was unnecessary. Yes, I didn’t give all– Yes, I wasn’t required to give all… but it wasn’t about giving all. It was about individual service.
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When you stop and think about it, it’s easy to process it in a way that allows you to be graceful about the whole thing. When it hits you out of the blue, by surprise, it’s not always easy.
I recall one rather graceless reaction of mine, that I’m sure left the good citizen who started the whole thing by gushing to me in thanks, after another acquaintance mentioned I was a veteran. The unseen component to that reaction of mine was that I had just gotten word via an old friend that a mutual friend was dead, having committed suicide.
Now, the reason for that suicide may have had a more proximate cause in the collapse of his marriage and family life, but when you trace the wires back, the divorce and estrangement from his kids had everything to do with his military service. His wife was a bit of a jealous bitch, you see, and did not find it easy that he was three-timing her with the twins Duty and Army. After he retired, he no longer had the other two, his wife divorced him, and… Well, do the math. The way he worked the numbers ended with him, a tall stool, and a short rope looped over a rafter in the carport.
You can imagine why I reacted the way I did, even if I didn’t really understand it myself, at the time. It was one of those deals where you just react, react poorly, and then when you’re sitting in your car out in the parking lot, you wish you could go back for a re-do.
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I am so sorry to hear about your buddy.
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I was in Navy bootcamp during Desert Storm, so I got the Defense ribbon on graduating, but never felt I earned it. I ended up volunteering (young and dumb) for submarines, during the inter-war period of the mid-late 90’s, so when someone thanks me for my service, I never really felt like I was doing anything. We poked holes in the ocean. All I did was run the electric plant and keep the motors/pumps/lights burnin’. So, yeah. I get what you’re saying…we served, but didn’t Serve, not at the pointy end of the stick (although I’ve heard it said that submarines made their own front lines).
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Well – you know– sub sailors ;-)
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Hehehehehehe….”I have no recollection of the night in question, Your Honor.”
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I replaced it, but left both up in case I screwed something up!
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Thanks! My apologies to everyone for having two such verbose posts up.
And, BTW, folks like you that say “Thank you for your service” always manage to make yourselves distinct from the general lot, so it’s not quite the same thing. I’ve had some, and I suspect you’d number among them, who have managed to make me blush and want to stammer “Aw, shucks, ma’am… T’warn’t nothin…”.
Some others manage, with no really quantifiable reason, to make me want to hoist Mencken’s proverbial black flag, and start slitting throats. I honestly don’t know why, either. It’s just a certain quality to their mien.
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Some mean it, some are reciting it by rote. I have no idea what characteristic makes it obvious which is which. I still think it’s good for society for those rote folks to be stuck doing it.
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Heh, I was roaming the old walled German cities thinking, “Let’s see, they probably put the cannons here, and I bet the aim point was that thing over there, and oooh, ain’t no way you’d get cavalry up that slope, so you’d have to . . .” But then I’m also the one who got excited when I finally got to see the Fulda Gap and the topography first hand. And who appreciated why no one in their right mind tried to wage war in the Dordogne. The tour leader was mildly appalled. *shrug* When you turn a military-history major loose in Europe . . .
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I’m not a military history major, but I love having “some time by myself” in old forts, citadels and castles. We took the kids to the places, but I prefer to be alone or with Dan who respects my thoughts being all wrapped up in logistics, and waits for me to say something so he can give his input. (Or asks questions, if it’s a place familiar to me not him, but, you know, adult questions… not pretending to have a machine gun and shooting your brother on the stairway. I mean, I love the kids, but NEVER do physical research with kids in tow.Unless like mine now they’re adults.)
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When I was on a business trip to Japan, the representative of our distributor took us to see Osaka castle. He asked me what I thought of it.
I didn’t mention the shanty town in the park adjoining it. I thought that would be tacky. No, here’s what I went with.
I look at this castle and I see, thousands of men wading the moat, arrows sheeting down from the top of the wall. Men fall, struck. Those killed outright are the lucky ones for the wounded slip under the water, dragged down by the weight of their armor and pressed by those following, to drown. Those who cross the moat, face the wall. It’s not a vertical wall, but it’s steep enough that they have to climb it on hands and knees while arrows continue to fall, and heavy rocks roll down to knock them from their perches to land in the moat and join the others who drowned there.
And then, finally, if they reach the summit, scrambling up the rocks slippery with the blood of those who preceded them, they place their hand on the top only to have a sword–Japanese swords were of remarkable sharpness–or naginata (a kind of halberd–a broad chopping blade at the end of a short staff) to fall upon it, severing the limb and they, too fall to the moat, which by now is deep crimson from spilled blood.
And through it all, the warcries are half eclipsed by the screams of wounded and dying, the smell of spilled blood and feces from people disemboweled by spear or sword.
That’s what I saw when I visited Osaka castle. It wasn’t just some pretty architecture, but a place designed to gruesomely kill people.
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You forgot the gun fire – both canon and musket/arquebus. Osaka castle was designed to survive siege bombardment and in fact did so in the winter siege of 1614
I actually find it inetresting that a number of Japanese castles have layouts remarkably similar to the layouts of Vauban fortresses. I’m not sure how much of that is parallel development and how much is Japan getting advice from Dutch, Portuguese etc. traders. The really scary castle is the Imperial palace in Tokyo. Knock down a few buildings on critical roads, blow up a few bridges over bits of moat and you couldn’t take it today without overwhelming force assuming it had motivated and well provisioned defenders.
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What I described above was just an off the cuff description, based on what I saw without having studied the history of the castle.
But, you know, I’ve always wondered. The purpose of a castle is to kill attackers in job lots, and do so as one-sidedly as possible. This encourages the attackers to settle for an extended siege and wait for starvation or dysentery to render one side or the other incapable of continuing.
Which led me to wonder. Would the inhabitants of the castle simplify their sanitation problem, and complicate that of the besiegers, by tossing the accumulated contents of their chamberpots out upon the besieging army?
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Yes. See the “garderobe” in numerous medieval castles
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Being a professional soldier means that when other people think you’re admiring the pretty-pretty scenery around you, you’re actually thinking “Hmmm… I’d put the machine guns over… There… And, let’s see… The mines ought to go here…Then, when the vehicles are stopped right about at that spot, after they hit the mines, the troops will debark, right into that ditch we’ll fill with more mines and block off with wire, and I can call for that pre-planned mortar fire, and open up with everything else…
Meanwhile, everyone else with you is looking at the wildflowers and mountains, and going “Ooh… Ahhh…”.
To be quite honest, I think a lot of us probably should be kept behind walls, heavily medicated, and brought out only for serious occasions like major wars. It’s been close to thirty years since I started my career in the Army, and I still look at landscapes with the same eye I developed for taking advantage of terrain in order to maximize my ability to help the other guy die for his country. I can’t not do it.
Scary thing is, I actually find it relaxing. Still. I had hoped I’d get this out of my system with a single enlistment, or so, but never quite managed.
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I was never a soldier (I repaired mainframe computers in the Navy), but when I am in a coffee shop I will eye the customers to see their weaknesses. I saw this huge guy with a barrel chest and a huge neck with tiny knees. Ummm… yea… I would go for the knees. So yes, I look for weaknesses all the time. My hubby civilized me a lot. ;-)
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And here I thought that was just normal survival-mindedness. :)
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No we’re nuts ;-)
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It’s a blessing and a curse.
About the only thing that keeps me from really hurting people who piss me off in person is that I’m often appraising them for weaknesses, and considering how I’d take advantage of those weaknesses to either seriously injure or kill them. The beatific smile I’m able to produce while doing that often disquiets them, I’ve noticed.
Did the same thing in school, with various bullies, and the smile usually threw them off their game.
Only one ever developed the balls or wisdom to ask me what I was thinking about, when I was smiling at him while he did his thing:
“And what’re you thinkin’ about?”.
Happy little voice from me (said bully was a senior in high school, a football “hero”, whilst I was a mere freshman nobody):
“What your head would sound like, when I break that bat over it…”.
Strangely, I got left alone, after that. A lot.
Reflecting on things, I think I still have a lot of residual rage issues to work through. Rough childhood, being a kid who was “odd”, and who took a lot of crap from people who were disturbed by that.
So, on the whole, it’s a good thing I’ve developed this coping mechanism. However, if I ever let slip the reins of madness, I’m likely going to be a lead item on CNN for a couple of days.
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I had that smile too– ;-)
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@Kirk: I actually had to chuckle at your high-school bully encounter. That is AWESOME, and I wish I’d had the confidence to pull off something like that when I was younger.
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Is there a limit to how many threads deep you can do a reply on, here?
In any event, this is directed at RabidAlien…
See, the thing is, that wasn’t a planned, or thought-through encounter. If anything, it was a glimpse into the rats-nest my then teenage mind was. I wasn’t making that up, or playing with him. I was actually thinking that through, and imagining what the sound would be when I swung through with that bat, and what would happen after I did it. The only consideration that really stopped me was that I knew I’d never get away with it, and the authorities would come.
If I’d been able to think of a way to make it look like an accident, in that moment? If I could have thought my way through to “getting away with it”?
It would have happened. That simple.
You really don’t want to take a kid who’s got some form of mild autism that corresponds to some variant of Asperger’s, and spend his entire childhood screwing with him and harassing him. Don’t kill his pets, that are his only real friends, because you think it’s funny.
Bad things happen, not the least of which is that you successfully condition someone who would probably have been fairly harmless left alone, to instead become functionally sociopathic.
I’m all for implementing the death penalty for bullies. Not for what they do, but for the second-order effects of them having their little fun.
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@Kirk: (I think we’ve hit the far wall regarding how far posts go)
I understand, though. Had some dark thoughts myself, but rarely the opportunity to speak them (nor the courage).
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@ Rabid Alien, Try writing mad scientists. It’s very therapeutic.
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@Dr Mauser (love the name!): wrote a psychopath one time, it was very therapeutic considering the work stress I was under. Need to drag that one back out and see how it stands up to daylight again…
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We are familiar with the basic principle. Writing changes pleasure reading forever because you are thinking hmm, that’s a bit ham-handed in the foreshadowing department.
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YES!
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I once pulled this off by accident. I was reading through the novel and noticed that I put all the references to plants in the POV of the character with the interest in gardening. (Not, mind you, ooh pretty but that patch needs to be deadheaded, and they are using magic on this patch because that flower should not be blooming for another hour yet.)
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Oddly, playing too much Squad Leader as a kid had a similar effect on me for many years.
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Not a military history major, but did have a father, uncles, cousins etc who would play this game whenever we met each other out…
How would you defend this McD’s playground? This strip mall? How would you attack it? 18th century only (varied, depending on who asked).
*chuckle* We got escorted out of several different IHOPS in one year, and there’s a whole stretch of I40 we weren’t allowed back on.
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Once my father, both my sisters, and I had read a book, involving time travelers, and were sitting around dinner when it came up.
My father objected that on the military side, they never worried about running out of ammo.
One sister objected that on the clothing side, women in the era they arrived in were willing to instantly drop skirts and take up blue jeans, despite their being shockingly immodest.
The other sister and I objected that landing in an absolutist age, the locals merely had to be told about religious tolerance and democracy to be converted. (I forget which of us did which.)
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*Wobba wobba wobba* Do you remember the name of this book? Because I’d really like to avoid it.
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Eric Flint’s 1632
To be sure, I once described this incident in another forum and had someone correctly identify it based on the information given.
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I always figure to buy them a beer (or similar – but I generally meet ’em in bars) in addition to saying thank you. After all words have essentially no cost but a beer involves me handing over real folding money.
Generally speaking that gets me some interesting stories to go in the pile of stuff I will at some point mine for fiction. It may also get me friends who are interesting and who if need be will not only hide the body but assist me in the corpse creation process.
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I recall reading the biography of a WWII sub commander, Fluckey, who was awarded a Medal of Honor for his exploits. He was travelling across country in uniform and stopped at some little mom-and-pops in Montana. The proprietor recognized the MOH ribbon on his chest, told the help to give Fluckey anything on the menu for free, but asked in return for Fluckey to tell his twelve-year-old son how he got that ribbon.
Would like to have been that twelve-year-old.
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Hoooooly……dang, I would give my left nut to have the opportunity to meet Gene Fluckey!! His biography is insane, I’ve played PC games with less action than he LIVED! …without dragging out some of my reference books, isn’t he the commander who, later on in the war (’45 or so), when Japan had learned the lessons of the open ocean (they belong to the wolfpacks) and their cargo ships merely sprinted from overnight anchorage to overnight anchorage behind a screen of mines, wasn’t Fluckey the one who snuck into a shallow harbor (ie, can’t dive deep enough to not still be visible from the air) and just started flinging torpedoes like a politician tosses out lies? IIRC, when he escaped the destroyer who chased him for something like 12 hours straight (before finally reaching deep water) and reported back to Pearl, they didn’t believe his tonnage claim and adjusted the total down, even when Tokyo Rose confirmed all the sinkings (attributing them to an air raid by an entire squad of B29s, because one sub tiptoeing into the harbor and doing THAT much damage was unthinkable). It wasn’t until long after the war, when someone interviewed survivors and civilian witnesses, that they realized Fluckey was actually as badass as he claimed to be.
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OT — why ALWAYS the left nut? Or, as son calls it “My economic girly man nut”?
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Because the “right nut” (like the right hand) is more important than the “left nut” (like the left hand). [Wink]
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One (usually the left) hangs lower than the other (else they would “clack” when men walk) and thus the right one is closer to his heart.
Alternatively, military men are trained to “step out” with their left foot first, thus the left nut is the one put forward.
Of course, from the Latin we know that the left is the “sinister” nut and thus the one more easily spared.
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I see that there have been a couple of replies already, but to put it differently, didn’t your son already answer that question by his alternative description? Wouldn’t that logically be the one that a man would be least unwilling to lose?
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Yeah, that’s the one.
Also landed a party on Sakhalin that planted charges on a train track and blew up a train.
And landed a party on Hokkaido that tore up a bunch of semimilitarized yachts.
And went to sea with the first ballistic missile launchers ever fitted to a submarine.
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Because left-handed children come from the left one? :)
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@Kent: Thanks for clarifying! I remember the incident with the train (used a mine planted under the track, the weight of the train pushed the track down enough to trigger the mine), the Japanese forces nearby assumed the explosion was from a battleship or destroyer, and Fluckey was able to waltz away UNDERNEATH the searchlights looking for him. The ONLY invasion of mainland Japan (not counting the fact that…IIRC, Iwo Jima [Okinawa?] was considered to be a prefecture of Tokyo) that occurred during WW2 (a nice counterpoint to Japan’s invasion of the US…up in the Aleutians). Heck, one single patrol of Fluckey’s would make for a 3-hour epic Hollywood production with enough action and explosions to make Michael Bay weep a tear of joy!
As for the ‘nut’ thing, I think its just personal preference. Maybe semantics. Maybe something else with an important-sounding name. I don’t question the voices in my head when they make decisions like that anymore…it angers them when I start asking things.
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Some of us who thank servicemen and women have sons and daughters of our own serving, so we can’t help ourselves.
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Chris Kyle, the author of “American Sniper,” was pretty straight-up in his book about his love of warfare. He didn’t serve 4 tours because he had to. Society needs warriors.
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Kirk, I r4laize a long time ago. There are people who have a “real military/security” mindset, and there re those that can’t even be TAUGHT it. Most can sort of learn it, but not really. Those who can’t learn (or understand it), are the red shirts/cannon fodder/spear carriers of today. Destined to die, quickly, and in large numbers, so the real work has time to be organized.
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“For every one hundred men you send us
ten should not even be here.
Eighty are nothing but targets. Nine of them are real fighters and
We are lucky to have them…for they the battle make.
Ah! But then there’s one…one of them is a warrior.
And he will bring the others back.”
~ Heraclitus of Ephesus 500 BC
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Bless you! You’ve said just what I’ve long thought, and said it much more eloquently. Um… er… can I slug the next starry-eyed nitwit who gushes “Thank you for your service.”
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You’re welcome, Ben. I’m part Irish, and I suspect an ancestor or two of mine may well have French-kissed the Blarney Stone. They sure didn’t stop with a genteel peck at the thing, that’s for sure.
Much though I’d love to authorize a slug or two for the nitwits who gush, I’d just as soon we didn’t start down that road. If I start punching people who irritate me, I’m going to be spending the rest of my life doing that, instead of getting on with things. Not to mention, those poor beknighted fools really don’t know any better, and it’s better that they gush rather than shudder with fear and revulsion upon seeing us. Which, I suspect they’d be doing, if they could actually read minds.
I know one thing for certain, after a career in the service. Most of us who did time under the flag are decidedly not very nice people, compared to the values of most of our fellow citizens. Hell, I wouldn’t invite myself into my own home, if I could avoid it…
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Dear God,
Sarah can’t find an alternative that allows for editing quickly enough for me. Please help her find something, and quickly.
Thank you.
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I know one thing for certain, after a career in the service. Most of us who did time under the flag are decidedly not very nice people, compared to the values of most of our fellow citizens. Hell, I wouldn’t invite myself into my own home, if I could avoid it…
I’m part of a FB group for those who have served AND qualified on submarines (there’s a distinction, sorta like the guys who have been to BUDS/Ranger school, and those who have graduated), and someone posted a link to an Amazon.com review of “Das Boot”, in which the lady (term used loosely) spent several paragraphs complaining about how vulgar and violent it was, how much dark humor and profanity and grab-ass-edness there was. She was “physically ill within 10 minutes of starting the film”…yet sat through the 3-hour version. It brought a tear to my eye, though, as the Veteran community (and sub vets in particular) posted 300+ (not a typo…over three hundred) responses to this individual telling her, in no uncertain terms, how much of a moron she was. I got out after one enlistment, in 98, and to this day, my wife still doesn’t get most of my humor or understand why I laugh at “inappropriate” things.
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I’d invite you in, but I’d make you put your gun in the locker if you were going to drink more than 3 or 4.
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You really oughtn’t. Though many are starry-eyed, yes. “Thank you for your service” is less about those of us who served and more about the starry-eyed nitwits acknowledging something outside of themselves. Our culture needs it.
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I hope you don’t start doing that. My husband always says “thank you,” but it’s out of a sincere respect because his dad is a veteran.
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There’s a difference between someone saying it out of respect, and someone saying it because its the hip, feely-good thing to do. Sorta like how everyone is supposed to feel guilty and volunteer to help the needy during Thanksgiving/Christmas holidays, but couldn’t give two stiff farts for them the other 11 months of the year. Your husband is doing it for the right reasons. He has my respect (for what that’s worth, LOL).
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My dad was a veteran, though not of combat, and his opinion of the Army was not terribly high. However, I think he was grateful the Army got him off the ranch and taught him enough electronics (they made him a radar operator) to put him on the path to a successful and prosperous career as an electrical engineer. Which in turn meant there were plenty of books and stacks of Analog (this was back when Ben Bova was the editor) lying around the house, and an atmosphere conducive to reading them. Combined wtih a solidly conservative sense of duty and values, though that took somewhat longer to really soak in.
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Ben, instead of slugging them you could always smile back and tell them you know a recruiter they can talk to. ;-)
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Whenever anyone (in circumstances where my own modest military service has come up or become apparent) thanks me for my service, I have to resist the urge to look behind me to see who they’re talking to. I made some very bad choices going into the military and as a result, well, I was trapped in a “career field” for which I was very poorly suited. (One has to wonder what would have happened had I made different choices. Then I think, I wouldn’t have the wonderful little girl currently sitting in the next room and decide I’ve been repaid handsomely for the earlier trials.)
On the one hand, I was never anywhere close to combat and we were told “you go before women and children” (although there were darker stories that the Security Police were given orders to ensure we “weren’t captured”, and yes, that meant exactly what your suspicious little minds thinks it meant); on the other, I have no idea if anything I ever did mattered to anyone and, well, one can see why I feel more than a trifle embarrassed when somebody thanks me for my service.
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After some thought about it, I think I know why being personally thanked for my service grates.
See, I managed to come through the whole thing more-or-less without a comparative scratch. I was incredibly lucky, because there were more than a few times through my career where I should have wound up seriously screwed up, or dead.
Some of my friends, acquaintances, and men I trained and led were not so lucky. I reference that poor young man, SPC Edward Pimental, who the Red Army Faction targeted for murder in a honey trap, simply to get his ID card so they could get on to the base. Which they could have done in a thousand different ways, and avoided killing him for that card.
See, the thing is this: Nobody is able to thank or personally acknowledge what those guys gave up, in order to serve. You can’t–They’re dead, either at the hand of fate and circumstance (even training in peacetime has a certain lethal risk, you know…), the hand of the enemy, or they couldn’t handle the stress of what they went through, and they died at their own hands.
Now, if it were folks walking up to you and saying “Thank you for what all of you did…”, it would be one thing. I’m sure a lot of people are really thinking that, but when they voice what they’re saying, it’s specifically thanking me as an individual. Nobody mentions the friends or the subordinates I lost along the way. Ever. And, that is what grates–I feel like a fraud, and as though I’m stealing honors that others, far more deserving, accrued. It’s like someone is trying to hand you accolades for something you didn’t do, and for which you feel you deserve no note.
As I said, the random person doesn’t recognize that when they thank me personally, I’m not hearing them thank all the others, the nameless, faceless honored dead. I’m still here, still alive, and I’m simply not worthy, compared to those others. I simply got lucky, or I’d have been the guy who died from friendly fire, when they mistook his recon mission for infiltrating Iraqis during Desert Storm. He left behind a wife and three kids, and I still remember all of them like it was yesterday. That’s the kind of thing your mind flashes to, and why we who are thanked are so often very awkward about it.
I really doubt anyone is going to remember to thank those kids for their dad’s service. Hell, at this point, I doubt they remember him, really. Memories fade, and I may well be the only person thinking of him this morning, some 20-odd years past his death. And, hell… I’d have to go look up his name, even though his face is burned into my memory from the last time I saw him with his family at that unit holiday party before I left that assignment. Hearing of his death a few years later tore at me, because I remember him most clearly with his wife and kids, and what a great family they looked like, together.
That rankles me. And, I’ve just realized that that’s why I don’t like having people mention my service in terms of personal thanks addressed at me.
I can’t think of a glib way to phrase such a thing, but I’d really prefer it if people who do feel the need to thank me personally would find some way to acknowledge that faceless host behind me more clearly. I know it’s probably what they’re thinking, and they’d tell me that they meant to thank all of them, and I’m just the surviving representative present that they can address, but it still hurts because when they thank me, I feel like I’m stealing honor that’s more due those grey dead ranked behind me in my memories. It’s survivor’s guilt, of a kind.
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That, I understand.
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You remind me of this scene.
While fiction, it might help get the idea across to folk who haven’t “been there.”
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Try: on behalf of those who sacrificed for our country, I thank you for your recognition.
My Beloved Spouse and I came of age during the war in ‘Nam and feel forever compelled to atone, in what small ways are possible, for the disrespect paid our forces who served in that period. (With the exception of John Effing Kerry, whose name deserves linkage with one Benny Arnold.)
When somebody thanks you for your service they are thanking you for your willingness to put your body between your country and our enemies. Whether you were happy to do so does not change the fact we benefit from it and appreciate the benefits’ source.
OTOH, thanking a politician for his (her) service is akin to thanking a whore who not only short-changed you but gave you the clap.
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After thinking about, I’ll expand a bit. I understand your point, viscerally. What was even more uncomfortable for me was, after getting out and going back to Iraq as a civilian, being thanked for that. I understood where it came from but it still left me feeling out of place and uncomfortable.
But, I guess I had it explained to me pretty clearly (and firmly) by a senior NCO that it wasn’t about me. These folks didn’t know me, after all. I was a proxy for those who’d gone before, those who couldn’t be thanked in person, maybe even someone in their own lives they’d never be able to thank. And because I was standing for those who’d given more than was asked of me I’d better damn well stand there and accept the gratitude offered in their stead. After that, people expressing gratitude took a different character and I tried to be gracious.
My surprise came about, I suppose, at learning of so many vets taking it another way.
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I understand what you’re saying, but I would humbly suggest that many of us who offer our appreciation do understand more than you think. My husband and I haven’t not served but many of our family members have and one of the young soldiers killed in Afghanistan recently, who made the news because the family wasn’t paid the death benefit because of the government shutdown, was very close to a member of our family. We contribute what we can to organizations like Fisher House and Wounded Warriors and really do appreciate the sacrifices all soldiers make. I wish there was a way to convey our thanks to all those who serve when we thank the servicemen we see, but there isn’t much we can do beyond thanking the one person in front of us.
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Offering lists to people on How To Do things will always beat Having To Do Things. It’s the modern way, and we are meant to be eternally grateful.
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I went over there and read as much of that as I could stand on a Monday. More than I wanted, but I did skim some. Yeesh.
For all the talk of knowing your “privilege” and “owning” it and recognizing the “centrist” nature of your worldview, some folks sure are willfully blind about their perspective. There are cultural and gender assumptions never-ending in that mess. TXRed’s observations above about number 7 are spot on. Now consider doing that as a man in today’s climate. And spend a day being silent? Hm. I’ve known guys who could spend weeks being silent. Even then, the only talking they might do to break the streak would be a courteous “ma’am.” Spend a day crying? Ugh. I know very few people who are willing to be that self-indulgent. As to laughing at things only I find funny, I’ve been doing that my whole life. You don’t notice the stares after a while.
Whatever self-affirming hair shirt somebody wants to wear is none of my business, but sharing it with the rest of us as a path we should follow? And putting it out there as grand wisdom? Scoff, I do.
This is that same sort of obsessive naval gazing they’ve been preaching in the universities (and I understand it’s seeping more into primary, now) for years. The willy-nilly misapplication of cultural and religious concepts hard-won over millenia of human interactions boiled down to a hodge-podge of trinket behaviors devoid of their essential underpinnings. Circle the candle and be grateful? To whom? The candle? Why? The candle doesn’t care. (Note: no deity is necessary in a true gratitude exercise. But actual self awareness is.)
And this doesn’t touch on the ‘lessons.’ I don’t wanna. Crying teaches you courage? I’ve known some courageous people. It had nothing to do with crying, and nothing to do with punching trees or loving prize idiots. Somebody who thinks it does has no real experience of courage and its costs.
Sorry for the ramble, I should have taken the cue from our host and slept on it. This one sends the ol’ canted brain into a flat spin with the subsequent dizzying loss of altitude. Blech.
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One aspect of “Tribal Morality” IMO applies to Liberals. Tribal Morality generally applies only to your behavior to other members of your tribe. For example, killing (for any reason) somebody who’s not of your tribe isn’t murder (unlawful killing) unless they are a member of a neighboring tribe that is as strong (or stronger) than your tribe. A traveler far from home or has been “kicked out of his tribe” was generally “fair game” unless he was tough enough to be not worth the attempt.
Liberals IMO operate under “tribal morality” while pretending otherwise. If a person isn’t a member of the “Liberal Tribe”, then a Liberal believes that he doesn’t have to treat that person the same way that he’d treat a “fellow Liberal”.
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The problem I have with the argument over the war in Iraq is that I don’t think either the “pull out now” or the “stay the course” people have their heads screwed on right. No matter what we do, short of recreating ourselves as the 19th Century British, is going to foster lasting democracy in that pesthole. Had I my druthers, we would have gone in, wrecked the government, shot Saddam and his repulsive sons, and left after saying something on the order of “cross us again and there’s more where that came from”.
Yes, pulling out of Iraq now is a mistake. That doesn’t mean that staying isn’t also a mistake.
Where the Liberals get off posing as anti-war has always baffled me. They are responsible for getting us into World War I, World War II, Korea, and arguably Vietnam.
Every would be ruling class in the history of the world that I know anything about has had an elaborate and largely bogus facade of moral superiority. The Liberal Intellectual Radical Progressives are no better. I have to say, I look forward to their guillotining.
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Oh, I think that going in, crushing all opposition, setting up a provisional government, and then educating the next two generations in how to be decent human beings would probably do it, but there’s no way we could stay that course for 40 years.
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Hey we did that in Germany and still are looking at a socialist-style government. Heck…
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Yes. To quote Pratchett, the leopard never changes his shorts.
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Yep– I read that recently ;-) and not here.
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On the other hand we had useful FOB’s in Germany for all that time. And even though they are a socialist style government they aren’t constantly in the streets advocating killing us, and attempting to follow through on it.
Peace through superior firepower only works if you prove you are willing to use that firepower. Frankly we haven’t proven we are willing to since Korea.* I don’t think what we did in Germany would really work in the Middle East, because it is a totally different mindset and culture, but it would probably be more successful than our current non-strategy. Possibly if we would have went in with the whole country designated a Free Fire Zone and our ROE’s being basically shoot first and ask questions of the corpses, we might have been successful. But I believe the only way to bring peace to the Middle East is the same way the Mongols did, but until they hit us with a nuke (made more likely by our inestimable leader’s ‘deal’ with Iran) we aren’t going to have the intestinal fortitude as a country to do that.
*Those idiots who try and claim we lost in Korea drive me nuts. When we say we are going to protect South Korea from invasion, go in and push the invaders out, protect the border of South Korea, and they are still a free country over half a century later, that doesn’t compute as a loss to me.
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Actually we did have Germans trying to kill our service members. USAFE Ramstein AFB, August 31, 1981 by the Red Army Faction. It was a dangerous time then.
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Red Army Faction
People forget how much Soviet-funded nastiness was going on all around the world, right up until the wall was actually falling, and ll the funding channels dried right up.
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Yep
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I went through the 21st AG with the young man they killed for his ID card, SPC Edward F. Pimental. It was only in passing, but I remember him because he was in the same little group I was in, getting our orders cut. When I saw his name and picture in the Stars & Stripes, that was a hell of a shock to my young ass.
Nobody remembers him, at all, these days. Except, of course, his family, and a few other fellow Soldiers that still honor the memory.
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a very sad end for that young man–
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We didn’t do it quite the way I meant, though. We certainly ceded their government back to them before the 40 years were up, which would have put it around 1985.
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And we didn’t take over their schools. Of course, we also haven’t taken over OUR OWN schools, which leads to us being effectively “occupied.”
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Hey! Maybe we could start a new “Occupy” movement: Occupy Education!
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Yep – and some of the leaders we picked were did NOT have our values either. I keep forgetting his name *sigh
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I can see the brain stutter *sigh…
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Yep.
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The options boil down to a.) punitive expeditions where we go in and kill a bunch of people and break a bunch of things, and hope that at least scares them into better behavior for a generation or two, b.) ignore it, or c.) do as we did.
Option A is not consonant with American values. At least, with the values most of us espouse–My own segment of society would be perfectly happy with stacking heads the way Ghengis did, but it’s probably a good thing we’re not running things. Option B was what we tried from about 1978 until 2001, and we can see where that got us. C was what we were doomed to, having an actual decent human being in charge when it happened.
I honestly believe that the choices George Bush made reflect his essential decency as a human being. He chose an oblique path, one that would leave the status quo intact enough to avoid disrupting the world’s oil markets, and setting off a nuclear war on the Indian sub-continent. He also didn’t want to be the guy who did what amounted to a drive-by shooting by a nation-state, which is what a merely punitive expedition really is. So, we did the humane, don’t-rock-the-boat thing, and attempted to pull some international relations judo moves. Which, I have to admit, were working pretty well, right up until we elected a wrecker administration that promptly pissed away all the sacrifices we made in both countries. Had Bush not embarked on a 50-year project, we’d have been better off. But, he had no idea he’d be followed by what came after him…
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Yes. Well summed up. I’ll state I DO have issues with a) — though it’s sometimes the best course. So, I’d do it, then pray a lot and assume I was doomed. But I’d still do it. WHICH IS WHY NO ONE WANTS ME IN POLITICS. Seriously. My religion is pretty tough on “tempting the Lord thy G-d” but whenever I say “Okay, if I’m going to starve doing this, I’m going into politics” my income mysteriously doubles. JUST saying.
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You’re probably in my segment of the population, Sarah. Scary thought, that.
Had I been running the show in 2001, we’d probably just now be finishing up the final phases of the post-war cleanup across a very broad swathe of Southwest Asia. The destruction would likely have been massive, and delivered after the Saudis and Pakistanis refused the draconian terms I’d have set sometime in early 2002, once I had incontrovertible evidence of what they’d done or turned a blind eye to, in order for 9/11 to have happened.
However, I guarantee you one thing: After I was done, and for a thousand years after, any surviving fool in the region who espoused terrorism and/or raising a hand against the United States would be dragged down and murdered by his peers. For their own safety, you see…
The example would have been made, much as Ghengis dealt with Khwarazim. I’d have been burnt in effigy after, of course, and used to frighten children for generations, but the majority of the people in that region would likely do what the Ismailis did, those last, dwindling survivors of the Old Man of the Mountains and his terrorist cadres.
And, what did the Ismailis do? They abandoned violence, and are now more reknowned for their dancing and pacifist philosophy than they are their skill at assassinations. That’s how thorough Ghengis and his heirs were, and a mark of how they responded to similar behavior.
It’s probably for the better that I wasn’t running things, at least in the short term. Long-term? Who knows.
People really ought to respect George Bush more for being a decent man. The other alternatives are far, far worse.
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That sounds like the Kratman school of thought. I tend to subscribe to something very similar myself. Not sure what else would be in the program but I’m pretty sure no one would be doing the Hajj to Mecca anymore due to Mecca being a highly radioactive crater
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Yep!
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1. Reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons: please the anti-war crowd.
2. Stabilize the local economy as they engage in a brisk export business involving self-illuminating glass: please the appeasers/liberals.
3. Get the point across to the jihadists that we are not a nation to trifle with: please the pro-military crowd.
One response to make EVERYBODY happy? Yeah.
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I like this idea lots. Would today’s precision bombs be able to turn Iran etc into a glass crater w/o destroying Israel?
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Sure, Israel is quite a fair ways upwind for most fo the weather patterns – but I wouldn’t want to be in Afghanistan, or Pakeeeestan, or India after that exercise. Parts of China would probably get a pretty good dose as well.
Precision Nuclear Bombardment is a relative term.
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I’m really only interested in Israel,
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Seconded. It probably makes us terrible people…
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No it doesn’t. It’s a modern country stuck in a really bad area.
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I am concerned we would harm enough of China to anger them but not so much as to deter their reprisal.
Not that there aren’t solutions to that.
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It’s kind of hard to make a precision nuclear weapon, though I understand that we were tending that way as much as a nuke can be (scaling down the destructive capacity coincident with more accurate targeting).
That said, I expect that you COULD use an enormous yield weapon to create an immense X-Ray laser that would be very directional and set it off high enough that fallout would be minimal.
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We were tending towards ‘cleaner’ nukes with less fallout, which would have helped out China, and India to an extent. As far as Pakistan and Afghanistan go, I would just consider them targets of opportunity.
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The problem is that the residual effects of Soviet anti-nuke agitprop won’t let congress fund building any new warheads that are A) more supportable, and B) better (more blasty and less radiation-y), even just using recycled special materials in new designs (Plutonium RECYCLING! It’s GREEN!).
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Nuclear power is the cleanest power there is. See Ringo’s discussion of this in the very beginning of Into the Looking Glass.
If you always live in a high density area and never drive through/visit rural/low density/empty parts of our country you will always be in that cocoon. If you’ve never lived in what some people call flyover country it would be difficult to break out of it. You can if you are empathetic and more just live for a year or two somewhere else.
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Soviet anti-nuke agitprop may be the worst of the toxic environmental devastations remaining from that culture, just as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion remains the worst legacy of its predecessor regime.
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Alternative sites, such as Nagasaki was. Or…”hey, we happen to have a dozen extras, what should we do with them?” Or….”dangit, I *ahem* told maintenance that my targeting system was off by a few hundred miles….darnit.”
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Kratman isn’t as extreme as I am, and has more scruples.
Me, I’m perfectly at ease with the mentality that Niven attributed to his Pak Protectors: If it’s a threat to you and your children, kill it. And, then, kill it again. And, again, just to be sure.
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Ah — another one…. >:)
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That’s one of the things that I really like about this place…I’m not the only one (outside of my family) that feels this way.
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Much better said than I did, although I attempted to espouse the same basic thoughts above before I read your comment. I’m sure ATH was already on the NSA’s watch list, but if not number of fellow traveler’s on this post will be sure to put it there. ;)
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I have long mused over the ironic fact that the best way to prevent armed aggression is to engage in such overkill that everybody says: don’t eff with him, he’s bleedin’ crazy.
Folks typically overlook the fact that Genghis Khan’s atrocities were intended for propaganda purpose: surrender & pay a small tribute or resist and be annihilated. Khan’s troops were not well-suited as occupying forces, so it was in his interest to win quickly and decisively, meaning terror was a useful weapon. Supreme excellence in the art of war and all that.
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…the best way to prevent armed aggression is to engage in such overkill that everybody says: don’t eff with him, he’s bleedin’ crazy.
<BritishParliamentaryQuestionTimeMode> I thank the honorable Wallaby for his insightful comment, and I direct his attention to Schlock Maxim 37, wherin his premise is slightly adjusted in accordance with this government's policies.</BritishParliamentaryQuestionTimeMode>
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People also overlook the fact that before Ghengis did unto Khwarezmia what he did, he first sent a peaceful message to the ruler of the land. He wanted trade relations. The local governor at the frontier city of Otrar, one Inalchuq, took the opportunity to confiscate the first caravan’s goods, insult them, and imprison all 500 of the merchants. Ghengis then sent three ambassadors, two Mongol and one Muslim, asking for the caravan to be freed and allowed to return. The Shah chose to shave the Mongols, behead the Muslim, and sent them back to Ghengis.
See, Inalchuq and the Shah thought they were safe: There was no way the Mongols were going to cross the desert and mountains to get to them. Ghengis did not take the insult well, and decided that if the Khwarezmites were going to treat his envoys and merchants like that, well… He’d treat them the way he was treating China. With whom the Mongols had grudges of long standing.
Khwarezmia lasted two years. By the end, the Shah was fleeing from city to city, with the Mongols close behind. This is the campaign that resulted in the destruction of Samarkand, and most of the agriculture in that region. It still hasn’t recovered, eight hundred years later.
The descendents of those who lived there before the Mongols still use Ghengis Khan as a bogey-man to frighten the children. The Old Man of the Mountains, who was actually an heir of the original, thought he’d play the same games with the Mongols that he played with the various Muslim leaders. What he got in return was to be hunted down and killed, his mountain fastnesses destroyed, and all vestiges of his power erased.
Want to know how to effectively deal with terrorists, in a long-term way? Study Ghengis.
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Yes. The Mongol government (what there was of it) was actually one of the most liberal of its time. Freedom of religion, and basically lots of freedom with low taxes and the little people treated much better than any other power of the time I am aware of. They just didn’t make the mistake we are making of treating their enemies better than their own citizens.
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If all roads lead to Rome, then at the other end of that road lies Kabul. Afghanistan sits on the edge of civilization, and has throughout history. And every major empire eventually runs into the Afghan problem: a place too remote to control, close enough to harbor your enemies, and filled with people who hate everyone and are itching for a fight.
The normal response from most civilizations would be slaughter. A few of the European nations would have opted for subjugation or propping up a friendly dictator. Only America would go in and spend ten years trying to fix the place. It’s in our nature. We want to solve the problem for good so that it doesn’t bother us later.
Any urban gay couple will tell you, the locals never like it when you start trying to gentrify their neighborhood.
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OTOH, 60 years ago Afghanistan was on it’s way to modernity. More or less. I did a *tiny* bit of research on the issue to see if a character’s family background would work… I’d had her grandfather *and* grandmother be doctors in Kabul before her family fled to England. The Taliban taking over and outlawing female education (and thus, female doctors and nurses and *all* medical care for female patients along with it) is actually somewhat recent.
Afghanistan has a decent amount of agricultural potential, if only it had enough security and transportation infrastructure to export. I saw an article just after the first couple years of the war about how US agriculture was blocking development of Afghan capacity to export.
Not surprisingly, when we try to fail, we fail.
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“Afghanistan has a decent amount of agricultural potential, if only it had enough security and transportation infrastructure to export.”
Aren’t they the biggest opium exporter in the world?
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Maybe. High value, doesn’t rot in transit…
They’re also where a whole lot of our “bulb” flowers come from… tulips!
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I guess what I’m trying to say is… people want to feed their children. Instead of exporting civilization, we’d do better to attempt to export capitalism and reliably free markets.
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Ah, but you see, the two are inextricably linked. You cannot have working capitalism as we know it, without first having a high-trust society. Traditional bazaari capitalism, yes. The kind of capitalism where you have functional national-level markets, and you can write a check in Tulsa drawn on a bank in Maine? Not so much.
When Achmed can’t rely on that check from Kabul to clear in Kandahar, or that someone there will accept it just on the face of it, you’re not going to have an easy time of transplanting markets as we know them. You can get something close, but the things that made American- and European-style capitalism just can’t work in an atmosphere of high distrust. Nobody’s willing to lend money to a stranger, under those circumstances. It’s all about the connections, and when the connections don’t rely on merit, but on family/clan/tribe relationships, things don’t go well.
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Isn’t that what we did after WWII?
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Had I my druthers, we would have gone in, wrecked the government, shot Saddam and his repulsive sons, and left after saying something on the order of “cross us again and there’s more where that came from”.
You are describing what was apparently the Vice President Cheney and SecDef Rumsfeld position in the internal Iraq war debates – invade and conquer, install one of the Sunni Generals whom we could live with as the new Iraqi head of state (leaving the Iraqi Army intact), make sure they execute at minimum Saddam and his sons, get basing rights for one really big U.S. base, then mostly go home, except for some below the radar people left up north with the Kurds.
The one President Bush ended up choosing – the whole ‘building a vibrant Iraqi democracy to change the middle east from the inside out’ thingee – was the position championed by National Security Secretary Rice among others.
At one point I thought Condoleezza Rice would be an excellent choice to run as a Presidential candidate, but after learning about some of the internal positions she pushed I’m not so sure anymore.
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“At one point I thought Condoleezza Rice would be an excellent choice to run as a Presidential candidate, but after learning about some of the internal positions she pushed I’m not so sure anymore.”
there is something about Dept. of State that does that. Just about everyone who goes in, loses some of their common sense, then starts coming up with truly stupid ideas. Worse, you get someone really stupid, who then backslide a similar amount so you get disaster (i.e. Kerry and his lovely ‘agreement’ with Iran). I’ve a cousin who has been doing work for State, and we need to deprogram her constantly.
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I was going to say “Kerry” just before I read it, but I think that was planned. Kerry was brought in to make Hilary look good. And Hilary is just as bad, the press just hid it better.
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I think she is a bit better, but that’s not saying much, but those around her were the same level of effing clueless. Kerry just brings that to the fore.
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Hillary is just as bad, except she doesn’t claim to be a war hero. It’s really difficult to portray someone as both a war hero and an competent head of state when they not only don’t know which end of a gun the bullet comes out of (google Kerry and his ‘trusty 12 GA when he was running for president) but constantly open their mouth and prove themselves an incompetent jackass. You can patch over some pretty good sized holes, so someone has to look to see the patch, but you need something around the edges to attach the fiberglass to.
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he did manage to shoot someone in the back, intentionally even.
But patches are really rough when dealing with as huge a vacuum as his.
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Well, there’s also the element that by her own admission, elections are not her strong suit — or was it that she just didn’t like the process? I forget.
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Well before she got corrupted by State, she proved more than usually qualified for the Office by stating she wanted nothing at all to do with the position. While NSA she reiterated the stance, and has stated she wants instead to be Commissioner of the NFL.
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Sarah,
Hmm. Discussion of morality.
You know me. I self-describe as an “asatru leaning agnostic” or perhaps “a practitioner, if not a believer, of asatru.”
As such, my “moral compass” is differently directed than “because God says so.”
However, over time I have come to realize that given some basic starting points any belief system that includes a preference for the happiness and well being of people must eventually, as it’s carried through to its conclusion, come to much the same conclusions regarding basic morality.
If “God” really wants the happiness and welfare of people (pretty much by definition if one considers God “good”) then that must also be reflected in the moral rules set up by that deity. If, OTOH, there is no God and one simply considers the happiness and welfare of people to be a worthwhile goal one will, in the end, come to the same conclusions.
And if the “rules” one follows from “God” don’t lead to the happiness and welfare of the people, then I submit that ones understanding of what that God’s rules are might be a bit less than perfect.
I posted a modest blog on the subject a bit over a year ago:
http://coldservings.livejournal.com/48388.html
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Alternatively, one’s understanding of what constitutes happiness and welfare might be off. Or it’s the lack of following rules that’s the problem.
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The significance of G-d to morality is that the postulate of His existence suggests that one’s moral choices have transcendent significance. That’s a precious thing, perhaps even worth the threat of eternal damnation.
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I think I was feeling self-indulgent last night. I have been going through my papers, shredding a lot, so that I have more room and less junk around me. The hubby is doing the same. Of course, after seeing some of the old poems and papers, my mind started obsessing about the goals I had in my teens and twenties. (Sometimes my mind has a split personality because the other part of me was trying to find a shiny object to divert this line of thought). I saw every crossroad and every decision that dumped me here– a dumpy fifty+ year old woman with a chronic illness.
Okay– I cried.
I was going to make a mark on the world. I was going to get into the history books. I was going to be a singer and then a writer. Yea– self-indulgent … right?
So what did I do? I didn’t write a story or a novel. I wrote a poem. Damn. Why can’t I write a story? I can write stories… it’s just that the effort and work involved is a lot, while I am wired for poetry. I was born too late for my talents. There are so many people writing so many indulgent poems that even this group won’t read poetry. So yea, I was feeling stabbed.
Frankly I don’t like feeling these emotions– they are too intense in a dark way. So I don’t agree that feeling these types of feelings are good for normal people.
Hey– whoever said I was normal was lying.
So in a roundabout self-indulgent way, I think that woman who wrote the list has no intensity of emotion if she has to simulate it. It is those of us with the spark of madness who understand that it isn’t always good to feel the dark passions. Isn’t it better to turn the heart away from obsession and towards the light?
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There are emotions that are best left sleeping, be they destructive self-pity, or rage, or jealousy, or other things. As you say, Cyn, if we can choose between the light and the darkness, it’s better to turn to the light. Some folks who flirt with the abyss fail to realize that the abyss isn’t flirting.
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That is true– I have been near the abyss for a long time (introduced as a child) so I have a little immunity and can see when I am being manipulated sometimes. Some of these people have no idea what it is like when the abyss stares back.
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It doesn’t help that some of my medications unchain some of the emotions– just saying.
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Some folks with a paucity of experience and little imagination think these shallow emotions they feel are the depths of a particular feeling. For them, wallowing about in that scant pool may be “reaffirming” or “grounding” or some other hogwash.
Other folk with a bit of exposure and a touch of empathy recognize that some doors ought remain shut. And bolted. Perhaps bricked over? Because behind that door lies the well of the destroyer, and immersing yourself in those waters invites the dark things from the depths.
I think you’re right Cyn, she doesn’t have much intensity, and little feel for obsession, else she’d not write such silly suggestions.
I’ll keep an eye on that door and aim myself toward the light, thanks.
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Ack, don’t brick it over! Put it on a leash, and always make sure it serves your will and not the other way around.
I believe in restraint. Not too much: bottling it up will kill you- the part of you that is really you- if you leave it too long. Not too little: this way leads to, well, liberalism and madness (but I repeat myself).
My father raised me to be a good man. It’s debatable whether I’ll ever achieve the standard he set or not, but I’m trying. Men, in general, are stronger than women. Some are stronger than other men. Some have a particular skill set, or experience, or natural talent for destruction (or all three). That makes losing control dangerous.
Anger, self-pity, jealousy, and the other dark parts of the human psyche need to be kept in check, but should not remain unacknowledged. Having the capacity for these destructive emotions should be a caution in civil situations. It is more often the person who doesn’t think of or care about the consequences that loses his cool first.
Eh, maybe I’m making no sense here. I believe there’s a reason we have the range of emotion we do, and a person ought to have a decent balance in order to get along with other people in life.
It’s damned hard some times, but doing right by others is what makes us decent folk. Sometimes “doing right” means letting them suffer the consequences of their actions- or just getting out of the way so the consequences hit them right square in the mouth. Sometimes it means keeping the dark things in us in check by feeding source of our better natures.
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Dan– I don’t agree. Yes, a relief valve is good, but I am talking about wallowing and the practice of wallowing that is the propaganda of today. It doesn’t help a person practice self-restraint. Better out than in? (Shrek) only works if it is a little out…
Plus I have been watching the young adults in our area– and the goings-on… It makes me blush and I was raised in the 60s and 70s. (During the hippie love fests and then the sexual revolution before AIDS.)
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Although I think you got it right that we need to feed our better natures–… I didn’t see that last sentence which changed the entire meaning. lol DAN
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Maybe we’re talking past each other. Agree, wallowing is bad- that’s loss of control.
For the young adults in the area, well, I’m in my mid thirties and they make me feel like I should be in my fifties, the way I want to respond. “Get a room fer cryin’ out loud!” *chuckle*
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*Snort* When I was in college the first time and saw couples lip-locking (and more) on the quad, I wanted to tell them to get a room. I don’t care which team(s) you bat for, I’m not interested in watching.
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Just so they stay off of my lawn.
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People are not being taught to be civilized. What I really mean is decorum. There are times and places for certain activities. Which activities, when and where.
Did you know that before the 60’s it was considered impolite or vulgar to eat (most things) on the street.
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Probably– get a room or get a hospital bed (drugs) I am not sure which–
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Good thoughts– and you are so right.
I had an opportunity to visit an asylum for the criminally insane. One of my roommates worked there as an occupational therapist. The building reeked of madness and sadness. I know that I felt tainted by it. I was surprised when I found that the other girls on the tour didn’t feel it at all…
So yes– getting away from the door is the smart move if you can.
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I’m always surprised to rediscover how little empathy some folks have. And disturbed.
And I don’t mean empathy = compassion. Just understanding the state of someone outside themselves, and how thin the margin.
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Ok, so this is a response in two parts because I’m incapable of making a simple decision about which response I want to write. I’ll do the easy part now.
First: The lIst
My reaction to #2 1-4 and 6-10 is are YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!?!? Five looks like it might be somewhat useful, not to teach someone hard work by reworking a scene multiple times, but because there is a certain mental flexibility required as a writer and writing the same scene from multiple POVs can help a writer not only envision what one character may be doing but also how the other characters might react to it. Maybe I’m off my rocker, but it seems to me that this might be a useful technique. YMMV but I think I might just try this at some point. The rest of the list is not just bunk, but useless bunk but who cares. I will admit to having laughed at something that no one else got before (and you haven’t really lived until you busted out laughing because a waiter walked up to your table and said, “Hi, my name is Armando”) but that has nothing to do with writing. I’m an odd. It’s what we do.
Now, to your greater point:
Tribal morality, as used by leftists, is the biggest threat to what the US has always been in existence. It is not just that, it is a bigger threat than all other causes combined. Tribal morality is the reason that we’re only supposed to speak in PC platitudes. Tribal morality is why no one is supposed to own a gun. Tribal morality is why it’s ok to tell gay people that they can get married because freedom and tell others that they have to perform gay marriages in their own churches regardless of religious freedom, because the rights of Christians aren’t important (they’re outside the tribe) but the rights of gays are (they’re part of the tribe.) (For the record, I’m actually pro-gay marriage, but I also believe that religious rights should be respected in RELIGIOUS FREAKING BUILDINGS and that Uncle Sam should STFU and deal with it.)
Tribal morality, as you’re defining it, is the reason that IRS officials can get caught illegally questioning Tea Party groups… and then get promoted. It’s why Susan Sebellius still has a job. Tribal morality is the reason why the arresting officer, the police chief and the local DA all refused to press charges against George Zimmerman and he got put on trial anyway just to keep the rest of the tribe happy. True story. Trayvon Martin just happened to be a tribe member because of his race. Zimmerman was turned into a white male despite his Latino heritage just so that he could be cast from the tribe.
Tribal morality causes wars both civil and international. It gets ugly and I really hope that we can find a way around it in the US before things get as bad as the could be
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As you know I agree with you on both aspects of gay marriage — so I often get hit by both sides :-P
As for writing from varying point of views it is very useful, but as I was taught to do it, in Oregon — take a story that didn’t quite work for you, write it again from another pov. Mine greatly improved the story… also broke it. I.e. the presentation was better, but the character KNEW what was coming, so…. But totally worth it. Also, don’t do it when you’re depressed, and don’t do it over and over again. At least not if like me you might get STUCK doing it for days.
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I find it massively frustrating to be yelled at from both ends. Almost as frustrating as having people take my arguments and ascribe to me opinions I do not hold. I try so very hard to communicate with clarity and folks want to reduce things to argumentative tropes and pile on. Grumble.
On the writing exercise, I frequently try walking through a scene in my head from several different perspectives, but I haven’t written the alternatives out. Might give that a swing with a couple of stalled stories.
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Another alternative to changing pov to shake things up is to flip the gender of the pov character. (Or the equivalent.) I suppose like any other tactic, it’s just a trick to sharpen observation, to see what you failed to notice the first time through.
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Tribal morality is why Africa is as screwed up as it is.
Everyone is loyal only to their own, and do whatever it takes to help their own get a leg up. It’s why nepotism is the norm, and why certain tribes are perpetually on top, while others suffer. It’s why Africa hasn’t gotten ahead, and likely never will.
Interestingly, the liberals have adopted this same primitive system, have implemented it, and are amazed to observe that many of the destructive social issues of Africa are now arising here in America. They’re blind to the consequences of what they do, and I’m of the opinion that it’s not possible to open their eyes.
The solution? I have no idea, but it’s an ironic observation that these fools are recreating the worst features of some very backwards countries here on their home ground.
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some people I know suggest that the answer is kill ’em all.
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“We will not sterilize every Jew and wait for them to die. We will not sterilize every Jew and then exterminate the race. That’s farcical. Dead men don’t hump, dead women don’t get pregnant. Death is the most reliable form of sterilization, put it that way. ”
[Reinhard Heydrich, _Conspiracy_]
Like that?
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Amen. The absolute worst thing about Obamacare and all the other obamanations is that they are applied inconsistently with favored groups getting breaks that others don’t, and unfavored groups getting extra audits and inspections.
The problem is that these people haven’t been to places where then end result of this approach is seen. They have no idea what it is like living in a banana republic where the cronies and relatives of the president get to win every auction and where if you make a successful business you better find a way to let the President’s family “invest” before they forcibly buy you out or shut you down. Sadly (and has been observed WRT obamacare’s technical short comings) natural laws and human laws are very different, but many of the liberal tribe don’t seem to get this. You can command humans and they’ll mostly obey, sort of. Gravity, the tides, friction and the like just go on regardless of what laws you pass.
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Tribal morality is why Africa is as screwed up as it is.
Not just Africa. Go read Col. Kratman’s essays on training for insights into how that’s The Way Things Work in the Arab world as well, and in fact is one of the unique differentiators in why America has been such a success.
This also explains why there’s so much effort from so many quarters to break that down and reimplement the whole tribal thing here.
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See also Mexico (and, pretty much anything south of us). One of the factors for them to come here, Legally or not, is they go from a member of one of many ‘tribes’ that is possibly being set upon or held down there, to part of a bigger tribe here that tries to help its own. Not to mention our own leftoids looking for more slave labor and a voting block they can exploit. That they still are better off as an underclass shows how bad things are back home. For what reason? It ain’t like Mexico is resource poor and unable to make anything. Saw something the other day about Fruit Farmers complaining that with a crackdown on Illegals and hiring them they are having a hard time finding enough people to work and those cost more (gotta pay them Minimum, and pay for the accounting for the IRS records, whether you 1099 or W2)
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I write about stuff because it interests me, and I try to write it in the way I’d enjoy reading it. But then I’m not making any money from this kind of writing. The writing I make money from is mostly of computer codes, and of papers describing how I wrote those codes, and describing the results of performing simulations with those codes. It really is two different worlds, and neither seems to have any particular connection to the world Miss A. Victoria lives in.
None of what I write is fiction. (Or, at least, none of it is deliberate fiction.) I enjoy a good work of fiction, but I can’t imagine writing one. My hat is off to anyone who can create an alternate world in their head and live in it until they can write meaningfully about it. For that matter, I can’t imagine writing nonfiction until I’ve immersed myself in the topic until I feel like I’ve lived it. Somehow, going and trolling at someone’s blog until they shout you down (which probably takes about fifteen minutes) doesn’t strike me as immersing oneself in anything. Nor does spending a paltry day pretending to be part of the Great Unwashed, as a kind of religious penance for the guilt of being better than them. It appears that religious indulgences are alive and well in Miss A. Victoria’s world.
I’ve never had to do physical labor for a living. (Mental labor is another matter.) There’s never been a time in my life when I’ve had to come home every night with anything hurting other than my pride and self-confidence. I am solidly in Charles Murray’s white elite. I see no need to apologize for that, but I also see no need to be condescending to people who work harder than I do for worse pay.
I admire a lot of veterans, and I’ve probably been guilty of the occasional maudlin outburst about Rough Men Guarding Me In My Sleep. Truth is that I cannot imagine doing what they do and enjoying it. I would like to think that if I had been in my 20s on 9/11, I would have signed up, but I doubt it. Maybe I would have done my duty after 7/12/42 if I had been in my twenties then. But probably I would have died in basic training by inadertently dropping a bazooka round from which I had just pulled the arming wire.
Miss A. Victoria’s world seems like ripe material for a Tom Wolfe novel, if she wasn’t so precious a snowflake. Pity.
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The worst job I ever had WAS physical. It was the worst because it was physically demanding, boring, and just demanding enough I couldn’t drop off into a dream without burning something. For a summer, a hotel in Germany had me iron clothes — bed clothes, guest clothes… I was cheaper than the automated ironer. Eh. I worked in this tiny room noon to dinner time (before that I cleaned rooms.) Yes, I got to my room at night barely able to stand. Some writing days are as bad, but in a different way.
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Yep, just like I was talking about above. Just difficult enough to keep you from going on autopilot. When I worked in the foundry, it was the either grinding belt that I had to keep an eye on, or else the dipper full of molten aluminum, depending on what job I was doing (thank goodness I didn’t work in an iron foundry – that was hot enough).
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I had a fairly rotten job working in an ice cream parlor as a kid. Not terribly physically demanding, but boring, and required more human interaction than I was comfortable with back then. And since I grew up in a government laboratory town, the customer base had a fairly high ratio of arrogant pricks.
But it wasn’t something I had to do for a living. It was paying for high-tech gadgets for my geeky hobbies, and I could quit anytime I decided the gadgets weren’t worth it or it was interfering too much with my college prep. So I don’t think it’s the same thing at all.
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But you can tell that it’s not the same thing. You can imagine how it would be different to be effectively trapped with no alternatives available to you.
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Yes.
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Borked the Charles Murray link: Try this.
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And, yeah, 1941. There needs to be an edit function for hasty comments.
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And 12/7, I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what happened in July of 42. :)
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Please please PLEASE fisk the whole thing! I’d love to get your thoughts on this obviously-leftist elite. overly-pretentious, morally-overbearing, hypocritically-pious, feely-good drivel.
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I do not want to go back to tribal morality. And the people who are encouraging that return have no idea what will happen to them if we go back to tribalism as a society.
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I do not know how balanced or reliable Max Boot’s research for his book on guerrilla warfare was (though I enjoyed the book), but he quotes a death rate of about 1%-2% per year from warfare in primitive tribal cultures. Out of the entire tribal population.
Do not want.
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How does that compare to inner city death rates at this point?
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Isn’t tribalism the lowest form of civilization?
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When I first opened the link to “10 Things to do to Make You a Better Writer in 10 Days” the header wasn’t in view, so it was a few minutes after I started reading the blog that I finally reached my “Whisky Tango Fox” moment, and scrolled back to the top, where the words “A. Victoria Mixon, Editor” were finally revealed.
Ah-hah!
That word “editor” explains everything that is wrong with that column/blog, tripe/drivel. She’s an editor! What the hell does she know about writing? If she was a writer (or an author–there IS a difference), she wouldn’t be an editor. (For the record, I have nine books of non-fiction–maritime and military history–mainstream published. Not self-published, not POD. I mention that so you know my comments aren’t something POOMA’ed by someone with no experience in the world of publishing.)
Seriously, folks, writing and editing are two VERY different, though related, tasks. Someone good at one is not by default good at the other. “10 Things…” isn’t advice on how to become a better writer, it’s simply a laughable effort to exercise petty authority and a feeble attempt at validation and affirmation for Ms. Mixon: “Wow, let’s see how many people I can get to jump through these pointless hoops because they’re convinced that, because I’m an ‘editor’ I know more about writing than they do!”
Pah! When she actually gets something of her own creation published, rather than being a parasite subsisting off the creativity of other people, THEN she can come talk to me about writing….
Remember, I’m Daniel Allen Butler, which means that’s the way it is…..
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She has some “literary” stuff published, apparently.
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Beggin’ pardon, Sarah, but being English as a Second Language you probably didn’t realize you had misspelled “crap” there. You see, under certain circumstances the final “ry” takes a “p” sound, while the “liter” acquires a “cr” enunciation. It has something to do with Mittelhaughtbrattislavian roots, I think. Really, it is the same principle as the pronunciation of victuals being vittles or Saint-John becoming Sinjin.
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<3
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Bravo, Sir.
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Love your last line and its evocation of Walter Cronkite!
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“Oh –And on that first suggestion – there are parts of the internet I would not advise you to troll.” (with or without Major Strasser?)
Veni Vici Vidi – modern translation: I googled it, I found it, I trolled it.
(as a double nested aside, “Veni Vici Vetinari” is available on t-shirts…)
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“Spend one day writing and re-writing a single scene. Make it a scene about confrontation, and write it the first time as if you were the protagonist and you were indisputably in the right. Then write it as if you were indisputably in the wrong. Then write it as if you were insane. Then write it as if you were unbelievably boring. Then write two scenes about different confrontations and cut-&-paste the characters’ lines into the opposite scenes. Read the first scene and notice how appallingly self-congratulatory victims are to read. – See more at: http://victoriamixon.com/2010/08/16/10-things-to-do-to-become-a-better-writer-in-10-days/#sthash.TNOIS0O3.dpuf”
Notice how all protagonists are automatically assumed to be victims. Yep, not to interested in any story this author might write.
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AARGHH!
Ignore the link, I have no idea how it got in there.
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Some websites are set up to insert the back link when you copy.
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Reading Thomas Sowell’s descriptions of The Vision of the Anointed I realized that what he describes is “morality as fashion statement.” His “Anointed” subscribe to moral positions the same way they don hats, suits, ties, dresses, shoes — according to how it makes them look in their mirror. If an outfit, such as a flying dress or a robe which displays the extent of their “personal” grooming or an opinion about the treatment of jihadis in Gitmo outrages the public, so much the better to present oneself as above the common clay.
You see, no matter whether we’re talking politics of abortion, same-sex marriage, “little Eichmanns” or American Exceptionalism their point is always the same: what does this say to the world about me?
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“Spend one day on research. Pick a handful of topics you know a little or nothing about and learn everything you can about them. Read articles. Take notes. Collate your findings. Write essays. Compare your conclusions. Look for the essential truth about reality underlying two of your topics, and write an essay on that. Do the same thing for two others. And the same thing for two others. Do the same thing for three. And four. And five. Write an essay taking the most fascinating fact out of each topic and linking them into a single theory of everything. Voila! You’re Einstein! Write a counter-essay proving yourself completely wrong. This step is necessary to teach you deeper understanding.”
Yep, do all that in one day, you’ll really have a DEEP understanding of those half a dozen topics after spending approximately two hours on each (12 hr. day) including writing fifteen essays.
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Does anybody have any faith this twit could understand the “essential” truth about manure if she spent a week shoveling it? I don’t even see evidence she has made reality’s acquaintance.
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Well, the two essential truths I found from my short lived grocery store ‘cleanup’ job were A) most grocery store stuff that needs cleaning up smells very bad, but nothing anything close to the big compactor out back where it was cleaned up toand B) I did not want to do that ever again.
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“Spend one day watching children. Children are people confused by their world, without adequate skills to either communicate or function within the social norms of their tribe.”
Alternatively, if there are no children available, spend one day staring in the mirror.
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<3
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Twenty quatloos says this brainless bitch gets invited to OryCon someday….
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