Dave says in his latest comment, “Don’t you see that that is what Bob Whitaker is trying to say?”

After what seems like a million years in this game what I say is very profound precisely because it is, IN RETROSPECT, so obvious. Let’s take hammering the Mantra in as an example.

The Mantra strategy goes right back to the oldest rule discovered and used by Western military strategists. Giant Eastern armies used hordes of soldiers whipped into frenzy to frighten their enemies into panic. From the Greek Hoplites to the Romans, Westerners developed an anti-terror approach.

In other words, facing terror tactics from the East, they developed a discipline to counter it. The Hoplites were a disciplined group standing sh9uld to shoulder against the screaming masses of Eastern forces.

Roman soldiers developed this further. In direct contrast to the screaming hordes of their enemies they learned to ignore the shrieks of their enemies and to stand shoulder-to-should in a line that did not pay any attention to the emotion and sheer number of the forces against them. They dealt directly with only one thing: the part of the enemy forces that was actually coming up against them.

The numbers of emotion of the forces that were COMING at them was ignored. They stood shoulder to shoulder and killed the disorganized, emotionally charge forces that actually REACHED them.

When you do that, the overwhelming masses and screams that were such a part of war in the East became irrelevant. No matter how they yell, the only ones who matter are the ones who actually reach your lines. And the ones who actually reach your lines from the screaming masses are disorganized pushovers.

Flash forward to the famous British Thin Red Line. If they had thought about what those Zulus would DO to them if they lost they WOULD have lost. But their whole approach was to ignore that and:

“Stay in Formation! Load! Aim! FIRE!”

I am not impressed that non-whites can get a hundred thousand demonstrators at with a snap of their fingers. It is the same old equation whites have always faced. Non-whites were always infinitely more impressive. And they always lost.

There is an old adage of Western military strategy: “One native can beat one civilized – white – soldier.” “In a battle between ten savages and ten white soldiers, the outcome is a tossup.”

“But when there are a hundred disciplined white soldiers, the savages, a thousand or a million, are doomed.”

The reason for this is old and obvious. There may a million of them, but only a limited number can reach your front line. If you stand and blast THOSE out of existence, the next wave is climbing over bodes, and it is even more vulnerable.

Stand shoulder to shoulder, and fire at the ones in front of you.

Thousands of times, from the Hoplites to the Thin Red Line, through millennia, soldiers felt suffocated by this conformity: “Our enemies are using variation and psychological warfare. Shouldn’t we be flexible and adopt some of that?”

The answer was, “Why? Do you see any sign that their crap is WORKING?”

Hit them with the Mantra. No matter what their numbers at their rallies, hit the ones who you actually reach with the Mantra.

As the thousands smashed against the Roman line or the Thin Red Line, anyone looking at the battlefield would have seen only the thousands coming on. But in the end the thousands were slaughtered.

Don’t tell me about News and Jews.

Stay in formation.

Load. Aim. Fire.

I spend a good deal of my time being furious and grief-stricken over the death of everything I was ever loyal to. Don’t let my “poise” fool you. I suffer from this all the time.

This is part of war. You see people you are close to die. You face humiliation and the enemy tries his best to make you feel hopeless. Whether it is in combat or in the bloodier battle of drug recovery, you have to watch while people you are close to die or are crippled for life. You get no respite. In fact the moment when someone gets hit is the moment when you can least afford to give yourself up to grief.

In one incident someone said to me, “He’s DEAD!”

I could see that.

The guy kept saying “He’s DEAD.” as if he thought I didn’t CARE. I was busy trying to keep me and HIM from being dead.

About the fifth time he said “He’s DEAD!” I replied, “So what am ***I*** supposed to DO about it?”

Which is the point.

You can’t do anything about the dead. This is the simplest point in war. It is also the HARDEST point about war one has to learn to face. Almost every critical lesson in life and especially war consist of points that are simple but cruelly HARD on a normal human being.

And not just human beings.

One of the most heart-rending parts of Meerkat Manor was when the group poor doomed Mozart belonged to was down to two members. Mozart was still looking for danger, but the other meerkat was doing nothing but cuddling up to Mozart. It died that night.

I identified more with those two meerkats than I can with human beings who have never been betrayed.

Mozart had been kicked out of her troop a couple of times, so she had experience of being alone, a situation which normally kills meerkats. She tried again and almost made it back.

Mozart certainly took every chance to cuddle with her dwindling fellows in the shrinking tribe. Almost all meerkats begin in a big group and then either never have offspring or start their own. Almost any large meerkat group has been at what we would call Valley Forge more than once. PLEASE don’t obsess on the historical example I give.

Stick with my POINT.

All meerkats cuddle. As the group gets smaller, they do so more desperately.

By the same token, all humans grieve. Humans need to grieve But when a meerkat does nothing BUT cuddle, he is lost.

All of us humans need to VENT. We need to see our anger and loss and express it to each other. But when all we do is talk about how bad things are, we are lost.

We can all see this. This is appoint which is simple but not EASY. In meerkat, there is a very fine line between doing the cuddling that is necessary for survival and giving up the ghost. All meerkat tribes go through this stage repeatedly.

Those who can deal with unbearable losses and go on survive. Those who fall short on that thin line between grieving and giving up the ghost die.

When we deal with the phenomenon of defeatism, there is no easy away to state it. Nothing is harder than rational grieving. But that line is the one that determines survival in ALL social animals.