Posted on 12/31/2010 4:54:46 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
When Roman leader Julius Caesar became “dictator for life” in 44 B.C., he had an asset all aspiring despots need: the military’s loyalty. For without boots on the ground, a totalitarian nightmare remains nothing more than an ambitious villain’s dream.
This occurs to me when I ponder the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the overall transformation of our military. Now, I must mention something here: I’ve never been much of a conspiracy theorist. Frankly, I subscribe to the maxim, “Never attribute to malice what is better explained by stupidity.” I don’t for a second believe that most of the boots on the cultural ground — the lust-blinded homosexual activists and ne’er-do-well civil-rights hustlers — have ambitions beyond their horse-blinders agenda. Nor do I think that our rather dull Senators, such as mind-frozen Mainers Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, never gay Golden Staters Babs Boxer (sorry, ma’am, but it just seems fitting) and Diane Crimestein, and the provisionally pious Joe Lieberman, want to relinquish power to a potentate. That’s why we have the term “useful idiots.” But something does occur to me, something you may call a fantasy — or a nightmare. And I don’t say it’s likely or that it isn’t; just view the following as my thinking out loud.
Let’s say you were a leftist bent on orchestrating a takeover of the United States. I’m talking about someone with the mindset of Obama ally Bill Ayers, who once said that to cement a domestic communist revolution they might have to kill 25 million capitalists. Now, every informed person knows that leftists aren’t very popular in the military; our armed forces are a bastion of traditionalism, supporting Republicans and exhibiting Christian piety to a disproportionate degree. Given this, if a leftist had aspirations of becoming the first American dictator, it seems likely that the military (or at least elements thereof) wouldn’t back him. That is, unless he could transform the military.
How would you eliminate traditionalism from the armed forces? Obviously, by instituting its opposite: politically correct social engineering. You could perhaps start by enlisting more women and then making them part of combat units, and you could make military academies co-ed. Also be sure to have women serving aboard naval vessels, which will result in a sky-high pregnancy rate. You then could cater to the increasingly feminized atmosphere by issuing “stress cards” to trainees, who could produce them in boot camp if they felt a drill sergeant was being, you know, a real meanie. And you could bring in a psychologist nicknamed “Dr. Happy” to teach “resiliency classes.” Next, it helps if you start promoting members through the ranks based partially on a quota system. And don’t forget the requisite sensitivity training, classes in how to prevent things such as stereotyping and racial profiling. Also, it’s important to promote pliant, boot-licking lackeys such as Admiral Mike Mullen to positions of power. Then, once this is accomplished (and I know I’ve missed a few steps, programs and policies), you can dumb down the prohibition against homosexuals to a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and later on, finally, allow them to serve openly. Of course, all this will do nothing to solve the military’s manpower problem, but it may solve its manly-power problem. It will start to bleed good men.
And while conspiracists will say it’s by design, politics wonks will chalk it up to ideology and straight talkers will call it stupidity, that argument is secondary. Whether you contracted a deadly disease by accident or were purposely infected won’t change the fact that if you don’t cure it, you will die. And the point is that everything outlined in the above paragraph has already happened.
And the process continues.
And good men are leaving the service. Most of us have heard the stories, too. Just consider this posting under an American Thinker blog piece about the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”: “I no longer take pride in being a soldier. I will ETS as soon as my contract is up. To hell with this country now, [sic] I'm done fighting for it.” Or consider a couple of posts left under an August 18, 2009 Fox News piece about “Dr. Happy.” One serviceman wrote:
I about fell out when I heard about ‘stress cards’ in boot camp…. What idiot came up with those stress cards? Do they think the Taliban or Abu Sayyaf will stop shooting at you because you show them a little pink card with Hello Kitty on it that reads, ‘Please stop shooting at me. It lowers my self esteem’?... I don't know if I want to reenlist now or not.
And after complaining about spending several days a month in mandatory classes designed to combat things such as stereotyping and “racial profiling,” one ex-soldier wrote, “We only went to the firing range once during the last year I was in the Army, but we watched a ton of prevention presentations in air-conditioned auditoriums.”
The fact is that the kind of warriors you want in the military appreciate a robust, masculine, almost Spartan environment and are deterred by a feminized, namby-pamby, Dr. Happy approach. And good men did in fact leave because of Bill Clinton. Good men left because of social engineering. And more good men are leaving because of Barack Obama.
Of course, there are still plenty of good men left in the military. It is still a relative bastion of traditionalism. And it is still, most would say, far-fetched to believe that Obama might be laying the groundwork for a future dictatorship. As I said, I’m just thinking out loud.
But this is undoubtedly true: As in ancient Rome, civilizations do tend to transition from democracy to tyranny. It’s also true that this transition occurs when the people become sufficiently corrupt. And what is the state of modern America? It is such that her people elected a man who, in saner times, would have been investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. And this is not hyperbole. Remember that Barack Obama was raised by unreconstructed leftists, mentored by communist Frank Marshall Davis and gravitated toward Marxist professors in college. We also now know about John Drew, a contemporary of Obama’s at Occidental College who used to be a communist himself. He would discuss the Red faith with Obama and verifies that The One was “in 100 percent, total agreement” with his communist professors and was a flat-out “Marxist-Leninist” who believed in old-style communist revolution.
Now, there’s something else I can say about that transition to tyranny. To state the obvious, communist revolution is certainly some degree closer when communists actually start appearing in government. Of course, Obama’s college days are almost 30 past, so he might have hoped and changed, right? Perhaps. But, if a man is known by the company he keeps, note that Obama not only allied himself with Bill Ayers (what’s 25 million “corpsemen” between friends?) but also appointed avowed communist Van Jones and Anita Dunn — who cited Mao Tse-tung as one of her two favorite philosophers — to positions in his administration. And this doesn’t even take into consideration the de facto communists in his employ, people such as Valerie Jarrett, and John Holdren of Chinese-style forced-abortion fame.
Admittedly, it does sound like the stuff of late-night radio talk shows to say that Obama aims to remake the military in his own image so he can be a third-millennium Caesar. But his history certainly is enough to make one think out loud. And history is our only guide. Because whatever Barack Obama’s passions may be, the media won’t ask, and he won’t tell.
Comparing Obama to Caesar is an insult to Caesar. There wer some good things about Caesar at least.
The senior officer ranks have been taken over for decades. Read their bios and all the schools they’ve attended.
The real warriors get burned out at staff level and retire as Lt Colonels or Full Birds. The Air Farce is ruled by the fighter pilot mafia made up of Engineering graduates. The Navy? See the Air Farce... Even SpecOps is showing the rot that’s infected everyone else.
Repeal of DADT allows open ...... to get appointed to service academies and further infect the officer’s ranks.
As of now and for the last 2 decades, enlisted combat arms ranks are rabid patriotic conservatives by about 90 percent.
This makes being in the resistance fun. THEY ARE LAME.
“Number of guns in America 276 million...”
I don’t know where you found that number but I suspect it is grossly undercount.
And that is the “real” reason there will not be some kind of armed takeover. Even after training, those guys still can’t shoot straight.
I think this writer is onto something here. An army of pantywaists like Barack would support him. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be forceful, even cruel.
“Frankly, I subscribe to the maxim, “Never attribute to malice what is better explained by stupidity.”
Heh. Big mistake. Especially when it comes to liberalism. :)”
I agree. Things don’t just happen; they are caused.
“Zampolit”
At one time the Red Army’s `political officers’ had veto power, a commander’s order could not be carried out unless it was countersigned by the zampolit.
Anyway, look at what the U.S. Army has as the equivalent of the old Soviet zampolit: your unit Equal Opportunity officer (additional duty, often assigned to a minority officer) who forwards racial bias complaints, the Inspector General (who always asks if the chain of command has been consulted first), the AR 15-6 investigation process, and then there is the Congressional inquiry that can require a great deal of the commander’s time in response.
Now.... my experience with all four venues is that the system is generally good at screening out spurious or superfluous complaints. However, if the SecArmy and the Army chief of staff roll over about DADT repeal, those four could be turned into dangerous weapons of poltical correctness, indeed.
Just one old soldier’s opinion. I retire this month.
> The Left is too Stoopid to take anything over.
How, then, do you explain their 80+ years of virtually complete domination of Eastern Europe and most of Asia, as well as their continuing grip on China, their growing dominance in Latin America, and their dominance here in the States?
“The Left is too Stoopid to take anything over.”
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Please tell me that you really don’t think that. The only way I can agree is that they are stupid to believe as they believe but their roaring success in taking over and destroying almost everything that has made this country great certainly belies the notion that they are too stupid to take anything over.
Under orders of the old comintern in the early 30’s the left and their fellow travelers began the process of infiltrating every institution. With the publication of Gramsci’s works the left embarked on the deconstructionalist strategy that he envisioned. Like a cancer it infected EVERY SINGLE institution in the west. Their mission the total destruction of western civilization without having anything viable to replace it. Why would the left’s efficiency have somehow left out institutions such as the military and the GOP? They have been in the hands of the left since day one.
ping to above.
My own estimate on “number of guns in America” is closer to 350 million.
The quote a decade ago was 250 million, and the ATF has been logging about 10 million transfers (background checks) per year since then.
Some of those transfers are used guns, just changing owners and some are multiple guns per transfer, so I’m calling it, as a rough estimate, one new gun per background check.
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