Maggie's Farm

This is just thinly veiled military propaganda, designed to make it appear as if only "professional" and "highly paid" men can do the job. All State parasites, like the Marines, try to convince people that they are heroes. Do you remember the movie "Backdraft"? Firemen are heroes. The T.V. Show "Cops"? Police are heroes. "E.R."? Doctors are heroes. "Dear White People"? Blacks are heroes. "Baa Baa Black Sheep"? Pilots are heroes. "JAG"? Lawyers are heroes (and soldiers are too, because they don't tolerate any criminal activity).

Then of course we have that ridiculous Statist phrase "First Responders." These are heroes who have exclusive permission to rescue people. So if you're just a regular person, you aren't supposed to do anything. And to make sure that you don't do anything, Police departments all over the country are now buying Motorola Encrypted Radios. So citizens will no longer be able to listen to the Police scanner. Just shut-up and stay home.

The Marines are bullshit. We have other high performance military units, like the Army Rangers. You don't see them trying to tell everybody how great they are. And the truth of the matter is that there are plenty of men who would volunteer for free. But the Marines don't want volunteers, because they are a parasitic organization. Their only job is to get more money. We don't need the Marines. They are dishonest, they cost a fortune, and they are not a "tradition." Unless you call watching T.V. a tradition.

XRay, I'm glad that you mentioned "Semper Fi." That term is supposed to indicate honor; or exclusiveness. Our military is not supposed to be an exclusive organization. It's supposed to be a single organization; with tanks, and boats, and infantry.
Right now, if the military wants to fight a war, commands have to go through dozens of channels. The Joint Chiefs of Staff can't order the Marines to capture a certain person. The order has to be relayed, five or ten times before it is acted upon. And every time that order is relayed, the efficiency of the entire military organization suffers.

I don't give a rat's ass about the Marines. They could disappear tommorow, and it would be fine with me. All of these exclusive branches like the "Navy" and the "Air Force" and the "Corps of Engineers" need to be combined into a single organization; with the simplest possible chains of command. We've got tens of thousands of "Officers" who just get in the way. The only thing we need is the Army. They can control everything from a central location, and they can coordinate all activities. So like I said, the Marines are parasites. They don't want to join the Army; they want to play dress-up and pretend that they are an independent organization. They are not. They are just a branch of the Army.

We need one single direct chain of command. That's how you fight a war.

Rebecca, I'm glad that you are proud of your grandson. But serving one's country doesn't just involve following orders. Sometime's the man is right, and the country is wrong. I'm not telling you that I'm infallible, I am simply trying to point out that quite often, governments make bad decisions. So it's up to individual citizens to point out, and then correct those mistakes.

Patriotism is not the act of blindly believing everything that you are told. Patriotism requires thought, and sometimes action. Our military was able to rest on it laurels for fifty years, and during that time, it became fat and lazy. The Marines are just one example of how too much money and too little responsibility can corrupt an organization. I contend that the "Esprit de Corp" of the Marines is unearned.

I'm not trying to insult your grandson. I'm simply trying to make it clear that the current situation is unacceptable. If we had to fight a war tomorrow, we wouldn't be prepared. Lots of our own men would get killed.