In becoming a veteran in any kind of combat two stages are a part of the process:
1) You adapt to actual fighting conditions; then
2) AFTER 1)
You adapt the conditions to you.
In the first shock you realize that you are alone. The guys beside you are moving, and you may lose them. Then you’re dead.
It is nothing like the textbooks, which see that the Third Regiment is moving in so and so direction.
You don’t see any Third Regiment. You see soldiers to your right and left who are on your side and you hear the deadly stuff coming from the other side. All the training in the world, at least back in my lifetime, doesn’t make you a member of the Third Regiment in that first real engagement.
“In my day.”
Young guys tell me modern Regular Army Training has performed wonders in this direction, but what you and I are engaged in here is more like the old stuff. When SPLC hit, I was totally discombobulated at first because I didn’t know how far they would go and many of us are still adjusting to the shock of that first engagement.
And, of course, we have the total difference in the mentality of those who theorize about the struggle and the outlook of those who get out there and RAID! regularly.
Since we have such a combination of experience and theory, newbies and old hands, it is hard for me to make a general recommendation about varying the Mantra. Newbies need to stick monomaniacally to it until they REALLY know how to gage RESULTS.
And to REALLY learn that RESULTS are not “winning arguments.”
That “Anti-Racist is a Code Word for Anti-White” sign led to newsworthy gathering where anti-whites won all the arguments, because only they were allowed to argue.
But the sign started to put an end to the free and easy use of the word “anti-racist,” one of their major weapons. It did not “win an argument” or make one of us look like a Respectable Hero, it was a major step in pulling the anti-whites’ very false teeth.
Newbies look for medals. Veterans look to their part in winning the war.
#1 by Wm White on 09/17/2013 - 2:36 pm
Bob’s insight into how the lone soldier feels in battle also gives a perspective on how the general officers or (politian’s/elite) visualize a battle or political campaign: “people” as nothing more than cannon fodder (the masses) grouped with names (eg 3rd Regiment or 4th District), used to obtain an objective. Whether the objective benefits the masses or not is of little importance or consequence. The masses just need to “believe” it is for their benefit.
Bugs represents not a new but a more natural way of looking at society, where the leaders are an integral part of any outcome.
***
“I am the first servant of the state, or (first servant of my people)” –Frederick of Prussia
#2 by Jason on 09/17/2013 - 8:16 pm
Reminds of me of the corporate world in which operational decisions are made by people who have never been involved in operations!
You have a VP of Something teaming up with High-Priced Consultant to put a system in place, that anyone actually doing the work could tell you won’t work. In big companies, they are often AGAINST getting any real input from people with real world work experience.
#3 by Jason on 09/17/2013 - 8:07 pm
Bob (or someone) said he deliberately made some Minis with mistakes in them, so the other side would leap to point it out, and end up doing our work for us. That takes a high level of experience, but the idea that you might purposely insert a mistake to get results helped me get over wanting to “win an argument”.
New guys often want to craft bullet-proof arguments (I did), but really, why would I care about winning debate points on a YouTube video? LOL.
It takes time to realize that a comment so “perfect” that no one can respond to it, gets no traction.