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pecuniumThe US has class issues. Most of us pretend they don't exist. We promulgate the myth that everyone is "middle class," which of course admits, in a back-handed sort of way that there are classes to either end of the middle.
I live in a class based world, because armies have class. Officers, NCOs and enlisted. All three of them are unique. There is always overlap, because one can't fuction if one doesn't interact with all of them (well, the enlisted can, sort of, but not for long).
The Army pretends it values the middle, the NCOs ("the backbone of the Army is the Non-commissioned man, as Kipling said, which was more subversive than it appears, because every single member of the "other ranks" mentioned so casually in reports of the dead, were non-commissioned).
But try to see anyone who isn't an officer getting listened to by the rest of the world. There were no crusty old sergeants major waxing pontiffic about the goings on at the front if one tuned into CBS, or CNN, or Fox. Nope, it was all retired generals. No one was there to tell people about the grunt's-eye view.
Because we don't, as a culture value the craftsman. We value the boss.
This comes up because someone at The News Blog tried to insult me by informing me that he was a retired commander of the USN, and that my blithering ignorance and stupidity were why I'd not managed to rise above Staff Sergeant in the National Guard.
Class. He thought he had it, and I didn't, and that he (a puffed up civilian) could strike me with trembling awe because he has a commission in the Navy, and I a lowly peon in a second string slice of the service. To quote Bugs, "He don't know me very well, do he?"
I am an NCO by choice. There are lots of people (esp. when I wasn't yet an NCO) who press me to take a commission. Ain't gonna happen.
I might take a Warrant, but they are changing the Warrant Corps so much I may not do that either. It isn't that I'd make a bad officer, in some ways I have more of an officer personality. But I like what I do. I'm good at it, and if I take a commission I can't do it.
Which means both I, and the Army, lose.
And I'm in the Guard by choice. I could have gone active at any time. It didn't strike me that the petty bullshit of day to day army life was worth it. Looking at the regular Army types I went to Iraq with, I didn't see them doing a whole lot better than we did (and I don't think any of my fellows were part of beating prisoners to death, which some of them were, so on that count I can be proud, in part because I helped train about half of the guys who deployed out of my unit)
So this Navy yobbo tries to make me feel insignificant, by braying about his commission. Whoo-hoo.
Deeds, not words. I know what I've done. I know how to puff it up, so it looks good in thumbnail bio-sketches. I know what parts are puffery, and I know what parts are the real deal. The meat and potatoes which make my service worth more than a bucket of warm spit.
But class hides that. No one will think that I have had the equivalent of 10 percent of the total interrogators in the Army go through schools at which I was teaching (thats one of those things which sounds more impressive than it is, but is pretty impressive all the same. I don't see it that way, to me is was just a day's work). No one will ponder that of all the NCOs in the states who applied for an exchange with British NCOs, I was one of about a dozen who were picked. No one will think that I helped mentor a 2LT, straight out of West Point and that I did it in a war zone.
They see a guy who didn't have what it takes to be a "leader" and had to settle for making sure the troops were trained and the plan was executed.
We do the same thing when we see transit workers as, "unskilled" labor. Or treat the teachers as less than the administrators. Those who do the work, with grubby hands and weary back, are bemeaned by it.
So the Navy guy; he can kiss my ass, not because he was rude (that happens) but because he didn't learn the lessons that living in a class society ought to have taught him... that the backbone of a system is its "non-commissioned" members.
I live in a class based world, because armies have class. Officers, NCOs and enlisted. All three of them are unique. There is always overlap, because one can't fuction if one doesn't interact with all of them (well, the enlisted can, sort of, but not for long).
The Army pretends it values the middle, the NCOs ("the backbone of the Army is the Non-commissioned man, as Kipling said, which was more subversive than it appears, because every single member of the "other ranks" mentioned so casually in reports of the dead, were non-commissioned).
But try to see anyone who isn't an officer getting listened to by the rest of the world. There were no crusty old sergeants major waxing pontiffic about the goings on at the front if one tuned into CBS, or CNN, or Fox. Nope, it was all retired generals. No one was there to tell people about the grunt's-eye view.
Because we don't, as a culture value the craftsman. We value the boss.
This comes up because someone at The News Blog tried to insult me by informing me that he was a retired commander of the USN, and that my blithering ignorance and stupidity were why I'd not managed to rise above Staff Sergeant in the National Guard.
Class. He thought he had it, and I didn't, and that he (a puffed up civilian) could strike me with trembling awe because he has a commission in the Navy, and I a lowly peon in a second string slice of the service. To quote Bugs, "He don't know me very well, do he?"
I am an NCO by choice. There are lots of people (esp. when I wasn't yet an NCO) who press me to take a commission. Ain't gonna happen.
I might take a Warrant, but they are changing the Warrant Corps so much I may not do that either. It isn't that I'd make a bad officer, in some ways I have more of an officer personality. But I like what I do. I'm good at it, and if I take a commission I can't do it.
Which means both I, and the Army, lose.
And I'm in the Guard by choice. I could have gone active at any time. It didn't strike me that the petty bullshit of day to day army life was worth it. Looking at the regular Army types I went to Iraq with, I didn't see them doing a whole lot better than we did (and I don't think any of my fellows were part of beating prisoners to death, which some of them were, so on that count I can be proud, in part because I helped train about half of the guys who deployed out of my unit)
So this Navy yobbo tries to make me feel insignificant, by braying about his commission. Whoo-hoo.
Deeds, not words. I know what I've done. I know how to puff it up, so it looks good in thumbnail bio-sketches. I know what parts are puffery, and I know what parts are the real deal. The meat and potatoes which make my service worth more than a bucket of warm spit.
But class hides that. No one will think that I have had the equivalent of 10 percent of the total interrogators in the Army go through schools at which I was teaching (thats one of those things which sounds more impressive than it is, but is pretty impressive all the same. I don't see it that way, to me is was just a day's work). No one will ponder that of all the NCOs in the states who applied for an exchange with British NCOs, I was one of about a dozen who were picked. No one will think that I helped mentor a 2LT, straight out of West Point and that I did it in a war zone.
They see a guy who didn't have what it takes to be a "leader" and had to settle for making sure the troops were trained and the plan was executed.
We do the same thing when we see transit workers as, "unskilled" labor. Or treat the teachers as less than the administrators. Those who do the work, with grubby hands and weary back, are bemeaned by it.
So the Navy guy; he can kiss my ass, not because he was rude (that happens) but because he didn't learn the lessons that living in a class society ought to have taught him... that the backbone of a system is its "non-commissioned" members.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-02 03:34 pm (UTC)After all what is the RAF for?
Air Traffic Control? sell it to NATS
Enginering: 3rd and some 2nd line maintenance is now already in the private sector
Police: give it to the MOD Police and the gate security to Securicor
Admin: sell it to Capita RAS
RAF Regt: don't make me laugh! already competeing with the Royal Artillery for a redundant air defence role
Transport and tanking: lease it and hire the pilots from BA/Virgin
the only thing left is the point bomby bits, and even they won't fly during the day, in bad weather, or at night incase they collide with something or are seen and shot down.