Why Are There So Many Skulls On Everything?

**CoffeeGrunt** · 12-08-2015, 06:53 AM

Service at a GW or Maccy-Ds is a bit different to service in Helmand, don't you think? I mean, it's pretty demeaning to your own military service to compare it to a retail job. Apples and oranges, y'know? Until GW puts its employees through months of 'rebuilding' before making them sign documentation accepting the possibility you'll die in their service, then you can't really compare them.

Not to mention the fact that GW managers typically have no clue what's happening in the head office where the real decisions are made, and thus as an example actually kinda undermine your point...

**Psychosplodge** · 12-08-2015, 06:58 AM

*head tilt*

**YorkNecromancer** · 12-08-2015, 07:26 AM

You know, I've got Denzark on block for a reason. But then everyone started quoting him, and I couldn't help but read some of it, and I wasn't going to say a thing and then my eye landed on this crap:

useless taxpayer

Like firefighters? Nurses? Doctors? Teachers? Police?

All of whom are also public servants. All of whom also risk their lives in that service? All of whom keep the nation safe at home while the armed forces are away, serving on foreign shores?

To call them 'useless', I think, reveals more about the mindset (which might be called an arrogant one) that the military drills into its servants than it does anything else.

Of course, I believe I did point out that the military does this in my piece. I said:

The first is the idea of being a protector. They work to convince their neophyte soldiers that through the army’s ministrations, they will become defenders. Of exactly what varies according to cultural and religious beliefs, but mostly? It requires telling the recruit that their actions as a soldier are of real, direct benefit to that soldier’s loved ones.

So, ‘We require you to go to this particular piece of land and attack these people who used to be our allies and to whom we have sold many, many weapons for a variety of reasons including renegotiated trade treaties, the religious factionalism of our allies and the political necessities of making concessions to certain industrial groups who have lobbied hard for this through thirty separate business channels’ becomes ‘You’re keeping your mum safe from bad men who want to kill her.’

This first motivation is enough for a lot of people. After all, who doesn’t want to defend their family? Who doesn’t want to keep their mum safe? Their husband? Their kids?

Who wouldn't feel proud to be a defender? Who wouldn't feel that little bit better than everyone else who doesn't do that? Who wouldn't feel like maybe they deserved special treatment for putting their life on the line in a way that's clearly and fundamentally different from what firefighters, nurses, and the police do? Who wouldn't feel that because they're risking everything, that puts them a step above everyone else who doesn't?

useless taxpayer

I mean, a firefighter running into a burning building... That's obviously materially different to the kind of risks a soldier takes each and every day.

useless taxpayer

Likewise, the nurse who has to talk down knife-wielding drunken fratboys on a Friday night... That's obviously materially different to the kind of risks a soldier takes each and every day.

useless taxpayer

[url=http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/may/01/headteacher-kills-herself]Likewise, the teacher who spends fourteen hours a day, marking and planning and suffering from a stress-related heart attack because all they want is for the young people in their charge to succeed in later life as happy, empowered members of society...[/url] That's obviously materially different to the kind of service a soldier makes each and every day.

useless taxpayer

Likewise, the police officer who has to step out into a world that loathes her each and every day, a world than might kill her at any moment... That's obviously materially different to the kind of risks a soldier takes each and every day. Especially in the UK, where the police don't ordinarily carry guns.

useless taxpayer

The idea of a mindless automaton who wants to kill so joins the military, is balls.

Never said the military were mindless; your Strawman arguments become obvious here.

I never said the military were mindless; I said they'd been reconditioned. That can happen to anyone - geniuses included.

Clever people are better at believing things than stupid ones, because they're better at justifying why they're right. Unless a person questions their beliefs relentlessly, they are quite capable of going through life with all kinds of assumptions.

useless taxpayer

I don't think the vast majority of the military are stupid. I've talked to lots of them. Taught lots of them. Some of them are the cleverest people I know. They're not stupid.

But they are reconditioned.

You can see that because we all know that [url=http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/lifestyle/2012/07/why-so-many-ex-soldiers-end-prison]more than a few soldiers have a hard time fitting back in with civilian life[/url].

I think a great many highly intelligent individuals populate the army. I do. But as I also said,

whatever the army chooses to offer the soldiers instead of their life, it has to be attractive

What could be more attractive than seeing yourself as better than literally everyone else in the world?

useless taxpayer

Quod erat demonstrandum.

**Cutter** · 12-08-2015, 07:58 AM