his page collects several days worth of blogging, in which I began talking about Price Club and the bovine behavior that most shoppers exhibit, and then rather inexplicably segued into a discussion of how it's a good thing our US armed forces are basically mercs, since if they really were a representative force of the people, we'd all be in damn deep trouble.

The discussion continued in more detail the next day, and then yet more detail/explanation, when I began replying to reader mails from readers confused by or objecting to my initial, not-all-that-clear post.

They proceed in order, and if there are ever any more blogs on this topic, I'll add them at the bottom of the page.

February 13, 2003

Every time I am at Price Club, I find myself looking around at the weakness and sloth and helplessness, and wondering how long any of these butterballs would survive if they had to run for their lives, or fight for them, god help us all. First of all, they would have no idea that a threat was coming until it was right on top of them, so wrapped up are they in their own garbage-shopping/baby scolding/free sample consuming/cell phone yapping little worlds.  They can't even keep from walking out right in front of other people with their moving carts; what hope would they have with actual attackers?  And even if they did have to fight, could they?  Would they?  I see nothing but sheep and victims.  I would imagine that a talented pick pocket could clear $500 an hour at Price Club, and never have any risk of being caught.  The only difficulty is that all of these guys are so fat that their wallet is stuffed into the back pocket of their jeans like a slice of butter in a biscuit.

The beauty of America is that none of this matters, since odds are that none of them will ever actually need to do anything to defend themselves or fight for their lives.  Society protects them from interpersonal assaults or unpleasantness, the police and courts and laws maintain the society, and the mercenary armed forces protects the country.

Yes, I'm saying that the modern American troops are basically mercenaries.  Yes, they are Americans, we're not hiring Prussians or Mexicans to fight for us.  At least not yet. But the people who staff the US armed forces are young and poor and of a different social stratus than most of the rest of the country.  Most are lower class, or lower middle class, few have a good education pre-signing up, and once they are serving they are kept apart from the rest of society much of the time, and a lot of their interaction with society is the sleazier aspects; whores and bars and low income military housing.  It's not the same as some vicious band of Magyars, paid to protect an Italian prince's fiefdom in the 1600s, but it's not a whole lot different.  There's certainly no chance of a draft of all adult males, and if there were, it would be pretty pathetic.

It's not as if we want to return to the olden days of villages having to band together to fight off invading bandits, women and men and children armed with pitchforks and kitchen knives, fighting for their lives. And it's a damn good thing we don't need to.  For about the first time in world history, virtually anyone who has even a modicum of money can gorge themselves and live in a comfortable dwelling, while having enough leisure time to devote it to nothing, and an easy enough job that they don't need to rest all the time just to be able to perform it again the next day. This makes for a very soft society, and even what few vestigial survival instincts we retain are atrophied by the ease and child proofing of modern life.

People constantly get themselves killed stepping off a curb into traffic without looking, or trip over a hole and break their ankle since they weren't paying attention.  All the legal onus is on the other person or business.  Stores should be sure there aren't any wet spots or someone will fall.  Attractions have to be totally safe so some idiot won't get their hand stuck in a hole.  Parking lots can't have a hole or someone will step in it.  There's never any since of, "Well, I guess you'll pay attention next time." when someone stupidly injures themselves.  It's always the fault of someone else, never the idiot in question.  This has been taken to about the most ridiculous extreme by making it illegal for bars to sell a drink to a person who is drunk, since the drunk might stagger off and crash their car.  You wonder how long it will be until stores aren't allowed to sell anyone anything heavy, since after all, they might hurt their back trying to pick it up, or drop it on their foot, or god knows what else.

And not all of this is a bad thing; lots of products are unsafe and the only way they are made safe is by lawsuits forcing their manufacturers to improve the design.  If you buy something and are using it properly and it explodes and blinds you, then obviously that is the fault of the product maker.

But if you send some stupid trouble-maker kid to the office, and he instead runs out and swings around a bar and falls on his idiot head, there is no way he deserves anything other than scorn and derision, as well as detention.  Certainly not $840,000. And yes, that's in Oz, not the US, but almost all of the above rant applies equally to all of Western Civilization.

Unfortunately.

(More on this "soldiers are mercenaries" topic in tomorrow's blog.)

February 14, 2003

Yesterday, a long-simmering boil on my soul finally burst forth, and in a shower of pus and bile, I went off on the slow, oblivious, corpulent sons of bitches who exist solely to get in my way at Price Club.  I've long semi-jokingly reported on Price Club visits as the best possible way to refresh my hatred for all humanity.  And while that's not entirely true, it's not all that far from the truth.

As I typically do, I could not/did not stick entirely to my "slow obese people at Price Club" opening though, and segued it into an excoriation of American society, and by extension all Western Civilization.  As part of that I commented on how the US Military is basically a mercenary force, at this point.

A reader, Tom by name, took exception to that.

I have been a big fan of your writing ever since I discovered your column on diabloii.net and then checked out your homepage. However, what you said regarding the armed forces today is utterly reprehensible. I am in reference to your description of the armed forces as “basically mercenaries.” It is my sincere hope that I read into what you said too much and that you were simply phrasing a fleeting thought haphazardly. To equate American soldiers, sailors and marines with mercenaries just because some of them came from low-income families is preposterous. Even if some of these young men and women do come from lower rungs on the socioeconomic ladder I fail to see why it should play any role in your opinion of them.

The statements also come as quite a shock to me based on previous ideas you had put forth. For instance, in yesterday’s blog you referred to a dream in which you proposed a plan to cut defense spending, but give all troops a 25% pay increase. Why the conflicting messages? Are you in support of the U.S. military or are you against it? 

Perhaps I am skewed in my perception of the message you intended to get across; I remain optimistic that this is the case. I will close with my belief on the matter. Whomever serves the USA in armed conflict deserves our utmost respect. Troops work absurd amounts of hours, and they do so with a salary that is meager at best. I wish that you would retract your statement about them being mercenaries or at least go into more depth as to why you think this. 

I can see Tom's PoV on this, but the issue is his interpretation of what I said.  I agree with his ending paragraph entirely.

My saying they were a mercenary force was meant as an insult and reflection on the soft, gutless, sit at home population that has become so helpless and incapable of self-defense.  I mentioned villagers banding together to battle brigands, and while that's not a realistic comparison to the modern world (at least not the civilized Western parts of it), at least outside of various pockets of civil war and anarchy (what used to be Yugoslavia, for instance), it's an example.  The initial concept of the US military was of a volunteer, civilian-based corps.  That ties in to the whole second amendment, which is what gun fans always bring up to justify their ownership of semi-automatic machine guns.

Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

I'm not going to get into gun control issues today, but the concept of this, back in the 1770's when it was written, was that there was no large standing army, and that it was up to the citizens to band together in times of strife, to serve as a fighting force and to keep order.  Therefore the average man needed to possess and know how to use a firearm, since he would quite possibly need it against Indians or the British or whoever.

The world has changed greatly since this time, and gun control people argue that as a reason this amendment shouldn't allow private ownership of such dangerous weapons, since there isn't any need for citizens to band together in a posse to fight off a raiding party of Narragansets.

As I said, I'm not getting into that topic today, but I bring it up since back in that time, people were expected, even required, to be able to fight when they had to.  The average person was much more alert and aware, as they had to be since there were not so many laws for public safety, not so many cops to control pick pockets or muggers, etc.  This is somewhat similar to my comments in the past about the extended childhood today, where 16 and 17 year olds are seen as children, while in the past and in much of the rest of the world they've been married and working full time on their own land for 3 or 4 years.  While I treat the baby-ification of US youth with some scorn, it's essentially a good thing.

• It is a good thing that we have such safety and organization in society that we can afford and allow people to remain children to such a late age.
• It is a good thing that adults can wander around without a thought or worry in their heads as to their personal safety or protection.
  • No matter how annoying it might be at Price Club when one of them is meandering along in your way.

This state of affairs is why I say our military are mercenaries.

They are not "average" citizens, called upon to protect their own country.  They are basically lower class people who didn't have the same job opportunities and college tuition money, and are therefore forced into a dangerous, low-paying, difficult job to allow the rest of us to sit on our lazy asses and cheat on the taxes that go to pay their salaries.  Much as in past centuries rulers hired mercs to protect their lands and war for them, so they wouldn't have to dirty their own hands with such troublesome labor.

It's even worse when they are used not for protection or peace-keeping, but in military operations for the personal gain of those in power, or their business associates.

Some enlist to get college money, some to avoid prison, and some for idealism to protect and serve.  None deserve to be paid poorly and sent off to Afghanistan or Iraq or Panama or wherever to take out political enemies or secure oil fields or natural gas pipelines under the guise of anti-terrorism.

And yes, there is a good blog to be written about military atrocities, crimes that the US military is not innocent of by any means, and yes, soldiers are often nutty, violence-prone Rambo types who have the morals of a horny rat, and feel that their weaponry and training give them the right to do what they wish to locals.  The US Military has a long record of horrible behavior in foreign countries, to the point that most citizens in Japan and South Korea are quite vocal about wanting the US bases gone, after soldiers have raped local children, or run over people in military vehicles, and appear to be above the local law.  There was an inexcusable case a few years ago, I believe in Italy, where some US pilots were hopped up and joy riding in a fighter, screaming down canyons that were prohibited to planes, and cut a cable car loose with the tail of the plane, killing like 25 people going up a ski lift.

I also regard most military spending as pork and of no strategic value other than to the congressmen from the district the spending is being funneled to.

But I'm not going to get into that either.

My contention, if it's not been made clear thus far, is that our soldiers are now like mercs since they are treated poorly, paid poorly, and are not a demographical representation of the people they are fighting for.  If this comparison is an insult, I mean it as one for the general population, in their sloth and indolence, and as a compliment for the actual military forces, for rising so far above the general level of those they are paid to serve.

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