Now, your daily dose of extracted rhetoric

[pecunium]

The "Right" likes to say the "Left" doesn't understand the troops. They like to say that they support the troops, and the left despise them.

So, it's interesting to see the sort of "understanding and support" Dave Rye (a news guy [TV and Radio] guy in Montana), has for the troops.

"Pardon my skepticism, and certainly no disrespect for the dead Montana soldier, but in my time in the Army I never heard such a word as "recalcitrant" escape the lips of any Staff Sergeant. I doubt if it’s spoken all that much in Ismay, either.

The soldiers had the help and probably the encouragement of a writer with an agenda, from a newspaper which has always had one. Its continually declining circulation now mainly consists of those who want desperately to consider themselves sophisticated as well as compassionate, even if that means always branding the U.S. as the chief villain on the world stage—-in fact, especially if it does."

The Grace Note on that little piece of insulting bile (as a SSG, let me say I've used words a lot less common than recalcitrant, in conversation no less, so in a piece of persuasive writing you can sure as shit imagine I'd use it) is that line at the front.

He could have made the accusation of the soldier being a dupe while SSG Gray was alive to respond. The Op-ed he's talking about came out weeks ago.

If I wanted to be tendentious I'd say Mr. Rye waited because he 1: is lying through his teeth, or 2: is a base coward who didn't want to deal with the response of the man he insulted.

But the insult is deeper than that. He's said soldiers, and soldiers in positions where life and death of subordinates, as well as the successful accomplishement of mission, are dumber than a box of rocks (he also said the residents of Red State Montana aren't too well educated either).

Me, I've known more than a few SSGs (and PVTs, for that matter) with more than a little education. Language both beautiful and scatolocigal has come from between their lips; often in the same tirade.

I await the Right's, justifiably outraged, denunciation of this loudmouth for his calumnation of this dead soldier; in specific, and the rest of the Army in general.

Forgive me if I don't hold my breath while I wait.

Comments

[niamh-sage.livejournal.com]

and certainly no disrespect for the dead Montana soldier

Whenever I see a phrase like this prefacing something, I know immediately that what follows is going to be exactly the thing the writer is trying to excuse him/herself of (in this case, disrespectful).

What an ignorant and patronising thing for him to say.

i'm positive that the right

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

do anything about this jackass.

I try to just keep my head down and pray lots to the goddess for our soldiers.

I'm an officer's daughter (Air Force Coloniel when he retired) and the sister of a guy (Army Captian was highest rank0 who was ruined in VietNam. As far as i'm concerned his name should be on the wall because what we have today is not the guy that got sent a second time as a Huey pilot. He got a standing VA prescription for Librium and ended up abusing it, which led to lots more fun.

I respect the soldiers and what they are doing because they either think they are doing the right thing or at least obeying orders. I have absolutely no respect for the current regime in Washington, including the chicken shit Democrats in the house and senate.

I wish we could do better, but we have stolen presidency and I'm still not absolutely sure that the asshole will secede power when the time comes for the turnover. I'm even suspicious enough that i do not put it past him to order black operatives to do something that kills citizens a la 9/11 to make sure that we have an "Emergency government." but that comes out of the blackest part of my plotting, suspicous heart.

sigh. And whimper.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Doesn't it just warm your heart to know that people like him "support" you? With friends like that...etc.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Let's just say that people like him get my blood pumping.

TK

[anna-en-route.livejournal.com]

So essentially accusing a dead soldier of getting mummy to help him with the big words is "no disrespect".

Gosh I'd hate to see him actually offer disrepect.

Ugh

[crazysoph.livejournal.com]

On a slightly different tangent, this affirms the general notion that the Right are, among their other sins, highly anti-intellectual. It's not just being annoyed at the sense of arrogant superiority they attribute (I suspect projection plays some role) to the Left, but deep, deep suspicion at any skill of the mind, so that even just the use of the right word for the right moment becomes a red flag, a warning that they're somehow facing a threat... (personal reference: school yard experiences of reactions to using "big words". Some people just don't grow up, do they?)

I'm trying to take this a step further, but people much better than I have written reams about the role of anti-intellectualism in American life and its specific role in our current situation. Definitely a moment that I'll watch the big kids play. Thanks for reading and extracting this guy; I find my bile gets the better of me after a mere couple of sentences.

Crazy(and just maundering a bit with a brain only half-awake after one coffee, even with the attack of bile in her gut...)Soph

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

A quote (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken) that's been making the rounds:

"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.' The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. "

IOW, they're projecting.

[kodi]

That's an awful lot of disrespect for four sentences.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

You know, with him claiming to have been in the army, and knowing how Staff Sergeants speak, it's very easy to wonder what a Staff Sergeant had occasion to say to him.

Maybe "If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet."

[fjm.livejournal.com]

From the UK this seems bizarre: the complexity of syntax and vocabulary of US "army speak" at all levels, is actually a source of much humour here. Not only is the idiot insulting, but he clearly hasn't heard very many interviews with US soldiers at all.

[doryllis.livejournal.com]

Hee hee ... you said scatological.....titter..

Oh wait...as a soldier I'm not supposed to know what it means, am I?

With all the respect due that sentence. Yeah, buddy, people in the army can have $5 dollar words in their vocabulary. Most NCOs (at least in the guard) have college education by the time they hit SSG if not their full degree.

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

I lived in Clarksville for several years, and knew more than a few people stationed at Ft. Campbell. I knew people who had GEDs and people who had at least a bachelor's degree, all in the enlisted ranks--and almost all of them were voracious readers and autodidacts, whether of motorcycle history and mechanical systems or world history.
It occurs to me that Rye's image of NCOs is influenced more by John Wayne's character in The Sands of Iwo Jima than by actual acquaintance with NCOs.

[ohari.livejournal.com]

It's been a good long while since I got out, and I am sure that wartime promotion rules are somewhat different, but when I was a Sergeant, you had to have at least a two-year degree to be promotable to Staff Sergeant, and a four-year to make SFC. Plans were in the works even then to drop those requirements down one level in the pay chart (Sergeants required to have two years of college, SSGs 4).
Fuck this guy right in his ear.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

In the 15 years I've been in, that's never been the case.

There have been attempts to make various levels of outside education, but even the requirrement that a First Sergeant have an AA/AS, but since that's a duty position, not a rank it falls through.

Don't even get me started about how they screwed up with wartime promotions, and the turmoil this has caused after the fact.

TK

[soldiergrrrl.livejournal.com]

I posted this, but do you have link to the original or something I can point to when I need to back it up?

Thanks!

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Words are failing me.

DV