What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons…

– Wilfred Owen

  • joe@lemmy.world
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    What’s wrong with writing poetry on an aircraft carrier? I can’t speak to being on an aircraft carrier, but on a submarine you are not in war mode 24/7; there’s time to do ordinary things. (usually).

    Let me guess: Tommy here hasn’t ever served in the military, right? All he knows about it is from movies?

    • at_an_angle@lemmy.one
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      Talked to quite a few vets. My understanding is that outside of training, the military is like 90% waiting… I’m sorry, “assuming a holding pattern”

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        I wouldn’t say 90% but it is significant. “Hurry up and wait” is a common phrase in the military - you don’t exactly have much “free time” (where you could do as you please) but you do have a lot of time wasted because you have to be at this location at 5:30 so you can wait for an evolution at 6 that doesn’t actually involve you doing anything until 7:30. So you just sit around waiting to do shit but can’t go anywhere else. Poetry sounds like a better way to pass the time than what I did in those situations, which was usually nap or BS with the others waiting around.

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        Well, maybe free time doesn’t happen in the first year, but I was a nuke; quals weren’t all that bad from what I remember.

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        The chief’s quarters really need you to push out those Dive quals so they can go to a 15 section rotation.

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    Reminds me of the quote by Thucydides: “The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."

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    Alan Turing, a mathematician and gay man, is right up there with Oppenheimer, Churchill, Macarthur, and Stalin in level of importance towards the allied victory in WW2.

    I’m a veteran. A lot of really good troops in technical fields tended to not serve all that long due to better quality of life outside of the military. An ace technical troop is worth their weight in gold.

    Various types of mechanics and technicians, logisticians, network admins, equipment operators, pilots, various engineers, and other technical troops are the real power of the US military. Most of those are more technical than physical.

    It isn’t brawn that keeps around 100 USN ships deployed around the world at any given time. It isn’t brawn that gives the USAF a 48 hour turn around time for operating anywhere in the world. It isn’t brawn that keeps large ground forces supplied at bases all around the world. It is education, brains, and training.

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      I agree with the sentiment here, but as a history fan I have to challenge MacArthur’s place on that list.

      He’s well known for his personality, speeches and statements, not his performance on the battlefield, which resulted in the needless deaths of thousands of American servicemen simply following his unwise orders. MacArthur was a brilliant politician but a mediocre general, and should be remembered as such.

      If you want to reach for an American WW2 general worth his stars, can go with Patton or Eisenhower. They did well, even with the benefit of hindsight. We also had a slew of amazing admirals around about that time. They weren’t all good of course, but we had enough.

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      I remember when Putin’s War started. Over on that other site someone commented that one of the things that’ll make or break the war for Ukraine is:

      Logistics!

      To paraphrase, “The U.S. is many things but they’re inarguably the masters of logistics. They can get anything, anywhere, across the globe in a shockingly short amount of time. If they back Ukraine, Russia’s in a whole world of hurt.”

  • Cjwii@lemm.ee
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    Didn’t Francis Scott Key write the Star Spangled Banner on a military ship during wartime?

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    right now, we are so woke in the military we’re losing recruits right and left

    Tuberville is blocking military promotions. If officers are not regularly promoted, they are discharged from the military. Tuberville is contributing to the discharge of US military persons and blaming it on “wokeness”.

    We’ve got people doing poems on aircraft carriers over the loudspeaker.

    Tuberville portrays this as a problem contributing to “wokeness”. As evidenced by this thread, there is a long storied tradition of war poetry. Including famous military persons.

    After Ingraham asked, “Could we confidently take on China?” Tuberville replied, “Oh no. Oh no. No, and we’re running Russia into China."

    This is false, China is warming to Ukraine. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-06/france-sees-china-easing-stance-on-ukraine-before-g-20-summit#xj4y7vzkg

    "They’re combining up and now BRICS is very, very concerning to me because they’re controlling all the petroleum in the world.”

    Blatantly false. https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/energy-investing/oil-and-gas-investing/top-oil-producing-countries/

    Tuberville is either lying or misinformed. Debunking these comments took some minor work and taught me how effective it is to spew bullshit.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      He’s a Republican correct? If so, you don’t need to ask if he’s knowingly lying, that answer is always “yes” especially if he’s a guest on Propaganda Now™©®

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        This is false. Republicans don’t always lie. If they did, literally nobody would believe them.

        What they do is actually far worse. They tell just enough truth to make their lies seem believable. That’s why they end up being dangerous: because they’re believable.

        I know you don’t believe them or find them believable, but enough people do that they keep getting elected.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          I know you don’t believe them or find them believable, but enough people do that they keep getting elected.

          More accurately enough people blindly vote with party lines to keep Republicans in power

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          The republicans don’t write the talking points, right wing media does. The politicians just parrot them. Right wing media dictates what the party is saying.

    • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
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      Break the system, complain that the system is broken and blame it on the Dems, repeat. He’s only fooling the morons but unfortunately, they vote too.

      • stigmata@lemmy.world
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        Breaking shit and blaming it on Democrats has been the Republican MO since I’ve started voting.

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    Yeah cause a Warrior Poet is something that nobody has ever aspired to, or claimed is the peak of masculinity.

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      Mad Dog Mattis, the supposed most well known recent iteration of the warrior poet/scholar archetype, is probably pretty pissed while reading about this.

      As a young Marine this guy was one of those guys you learned leadership examples from, I had the chance to hear him speak on several occasions while I served. It was pretty disappointing seeing him join the Trump administration, but made sense when you could plainly see that he and Trump absolutely did not get along, because Trump isn’t a real leader by any stretch of imagination.

      Tuberville is just another ignorant know-nothing Chickenhawk piece of shit, with extra racism and potential treason thrown in the mix to make him an extra large pile of shit.

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    I’m willing to bet he has zero evidence of anything he’s said. He probably cruises a CCP run website for his info.

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    The fuck does this dude think soldiers did in the Civil War and World War I?

    They had nothing but time and laudanum. You do the fucking math.

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    Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville is waging an unprecedented campaign to try to change Pentagon abortion policy by holding up hundreds of military nominations and promotions, forcing less experienced leaders into top jobs and raising concerns at the Pentagon about military readiness.

    A piece of shit through and through. Another day another member of the GOP weaponizing congress by holding random unrelated shit hostage to get their ways. This shit to fuck with womans right to healthcare out of all things.

  • Fuck Yankies@lemmy.ml
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    Caesar, Alexander and Tzu wrote poetry, you absolute troglodyte, and you think you’re more man than them? GTFO here…

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    I love the irony of the man responsible for holding up officer promotions and DIRECTLY AN UNEQUIVOCALLY DAMAGING MILITARY READINESS FOR A CONFLICT OR EMERGENCY is criticizing service members who do more good for this country on a bathroom break than this shitheel will ever do in his entire life.

    And even more so the irony that the Right’s ‘Anti-Woke’ culture is just a woke culture of it’s own on the other axis, but rather than standing for anything it just exist to oppose and stagnate. The sooner all these people retire and go back under what ever rock they came out from under, the sooner things start to improve across the board for the US.

      • stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world
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        Idk to me it’s a no-brainer

        American politics (I can’t speak for other companies sorry I meant countries) boil down to: do you want to make consistent, planned, and supported efforts to improve and progress the country or do you want to be the dumb fuck at the back of the stuck elevator yelling about how we should’ve just kept stairs.

        Regress or progress. It’s simple. Republicans only care about upholding their status quo. You might think you’re their friends until one day you realize your position was never what you thought it was and there’s always more room for coal in their burning trash pit.

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      Don’t forget this is the same rhetoric that right wingers used to compare Russia’s military to the US. Russia is real men, the modern modern military in the world, the best trained, the US is falling behind. The West thought that Ukraine would fall in days in the event of a Russian invasion.

      Then an invasion actually happened and the facade was stripped away.

      Zero surprise they’re recycling their old talking points for China instead.

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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        Oh, come on, no Russian (with balls turning around the correct axes in the skull, so to say) would believe that, about modern and best trained and falling behind.

        The West thought that Ukraine would fall in days in the event of a Russian invasion.

        That was sufficiently close, if you remember news and videos from the first weeks. It could have happened for all or most of the Left Bank Ukraine, if the Russian military would be just a bit less shit.

        That helicopter assault on Kyiv’s suburbs was rather Hollywood worthy. Ended with wasting best assault troops for nothing, though.

        I mean, returning to modern and so on, if an American believes that, then I’m not sure whether they’ve been to Mexico even, not anything in Europe, let alone Eastern Europe.

        Zero surprise they’re recycling their old talking points for China instead.

        Now about China they may be right. China manufactures lots of things. China has its own consumer electronics. China has everything for a bloody autarchy, though of course it would take decades more to reach that and I don’t see that being useful for them.

        China is much more serious than Russia. It really (as in many times confirmed) does things in terms of modern weaponry and control systems which Russia has been doing only on paper, which has become clear now for everybody.

        Anyway, it’s better to overreact, no?

    • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
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      And even more so the irony that the Right’s ‘Anti-Woke’ culture is just a woke culture of it’s own on the other access,

      Unexpectedly agree.

      but rather than standing for anything it just exist to oppose and stagnate.

      And with this too. Just “standing for anything” as I see usually occurs about things that don’t shoot back, but in general yee, that seems to be a correct description of most “right” folks I’ve met.

      Really “right” views (as what LOTR hobbits have in the book, for example) I usually encounter from people with chaotic-good alignment who would themselves most likely identify politically as leftists. Because the “right” is occupied by that swamp now.