A while back one of my closest friends, who is a SWAT sniper, asked me about Grossman, specifically because I’ve spent a fair amount of time working with US Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF). I said I didn’t think he was SOF, especially not a Green Beret as I’ve never seen a Green Beret not mention which Special Forces Group they’ve served with in their professional bios. After yesterday’s post I emailed a friend who’d have a better idea and he responded that Grossman was conventional infantry who’d done the Ranger course, served only in conventional line units, and never saw combat. This was fully confirmed when the Marine vet who tweets as The Warax tweeted Grossman’s DD 214, in this case the National Archives Form 13164 (NA 13164), which is what is released when someone makes a FOIA request for someone else’s military service record:
For the uninitiated, LTC (ret) Grossman is a conventional infantry officer who only ever served in conventional Army assignments. He attended and completed the Ranger course in 1979, meaning he is Ranger tabbed. He never served in the Ranger Regiment, he was never a Green Beret/Special Forces. He wasn’t even Army Special Operations despite listing himself in his bio as a US Army Ranger. He was not branch qualified as a major and not selected for battalion command. He has no combat experience or deployments at all. This guy has never killed anyone, at least not while in uniform.
Failing to properly vet people’s actual credentials, experience, and expertise as opposed to their claimed credentials, experience, and expertise is a HUGE problem in the US. I’ve spent years fighting this problem within different US Army programs. I’ve managed to expose more phony PhDs than I can shake a stick at. Unfortunately, some of them are dug in and protected and can’t be gotten rid of. So I’m not surprised that law enforcement has the same problem.
Grossman is a fake and a fraud in terms of what he is promoting himself to be versus what he has actually done and is qualified to do.
He’s not a psychologist in the sense that anyone who is a psychologist in the civilian world of practitioners or academics would use the term. He’s qualified to be a high school guidance counselor. Don’t take my word for it, here’s how the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Counselor Education describes the masters in counselor education:
Graduates of our program will be prepared to:
- Pursue employment as academic advisers, career counselors and student affair officials in colleges and universities
- Pursue doctoral studies in counseling psychology or other related fields
- Pursue certification as a Licensed Professional Counselor or School Counselor (with additional requirements / coursework – see Program Details for more information).
He’s not Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF) in the sense that anyone within the various communities that make up Army Special Forces would use, he’s just Ranger tabbed. This is an accomplishment in itself as the course is brutal. It makes him Ranger qualified. But to those who haven’t served or haven’t worked with the Army/military, the way he presents the qualification is meant to imply something that he is not.
He has no experience in combat as he’s NEVER ACTUALLY BEEN IN COMBAT! He has no experience, that we know of, in actually killing anyone. And certainly not while in uniform in the US Army. He certainly has no law enforcement experience.
LTC (ret) Grossman is a combination of the death of expertise and a dearth of expertise pretending to be the expertise in order to run a very lucrative grift at taxpayer’s expense on both the front end (what he gets paid to teach this bullshit) and on the back end (when municipalities have to pay out in the lawsuits because law enforcement practiced what Grossman preaches).
I’ve placed a correction and an update to yesterday’s post to reflect this new, accurate information regarding Grossman’s misrepresentation of himself.
Open thread!
Just in case anyone decides they want to know who this Adam L. Silverman guy is to say such things, here’s my credentials:
I have a PhD in criminology and political science (awarded by the Department of Political Science with a specialty in Criminology) from the University of Florida. I have taught in several criminology programs and was the undergraduate and graduate core curriculum – epistemology, research design and methods, theory, and statistics – coordinator in an applied criminology and security program. In 2007 I was recruited to go to work for the US Army. First in a supervisory contract position, which included my deployment to Iraq in 2008. This was followed by a civilian mobilization under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act of Title IV of the Federal code, where I served as a supervisory GS 15 assigned as the Cultural Advisor to the Commandant and Professor of Culture, Strategy, and Policy at the US Army War College, as well as the staffer acting as the Deputy to the Director of the Army Culture and Foreign Language Directorate. During this assignment I served, under temporary assigned control, as the Cultural Advisor to the following: the Commanding General of US Army Europe, the Commanding General of III Corps, the Director of the Institute for NCO Professional Development, the Branch Chief of Civil Affairs. I also provided subject matter expertise support to SOCOM, CENTCOM, EUCOM, Army Special Operations Command, Army Central Command, the 101st Airborne Division, SOCOM’s Civil Affairs Capability Based Assessment, SOCOM’s Joint Civil Information Management Test Development, JIEDDO, and the Near East Desk at the Department of State. My subsequent civilian mobilization was with the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Security Dialogue in the Middle East and my assignment was as the Cultural Advisor to the Commanding General of US Army Europe. Following that I served as Senior Fellow for Special Operations, which was a contract position, at SOCOM’s Joint Special Operations University. My training to work for the US Army as a cultural subject matter expert was overseen and conducted by retired Green Berets, Civil Affairs, and Psychological Operations Soldiers.
zhena gogolia
You should tweet it at Tom Nichols.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: I don’t tweet, but I can email it to him.
Wag
But he gets a solid thumbs up from the NRA and the gun manufacturers lobby because the fear that he spreads amplifies gun purchases nationwide, both civilian and police.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
OT – Recently in Glenn Greenwald….
prufrock
I wonder how the usual suspects will react to this instance of stolen valor?
Chief Oshkosh
Sooooo, what do we do about this guy? What are the options? Should the DD214, with explanation, be sent to all police forces, accompanied by a demand for explanation if the recipient force uses Grossman’s crap? And can the various police unions be drug into this? Does the DOJ have an interest? Has he been audited by the IRS? (always a good avenue to pursue wrt to these grifters).
Not sure who can do what here, but I’ll to ask my local state rep (who we’ve known for years) to ask our police dept and union local what their stance on Grossman is. Don’t know if that will matter.
Adam L Silverman
@Wag:
Adam L Silverman
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Someone should explain to him why those smaller states were created by the Republican majorities in Congress after the Civil War.
Adam L Silverman
@prufrock: It isn’t stolen valor. He did serve in the US Army. Retired from it after 23 years or so of service. What he’s doing is subtly misrepresenting himself and allowing others to majorly misrepresent himself in regard to expertise and experience.
Adam L Silverman
@Chief Oshkosh: Feel free to put your local rep in touch with me if he needs to have this explained to him by someone who has worked in both the words of criminology and works with the military.
Adam L Silverman
@zhena gogolia: I emailed it to him. I doubt I’ll get a reply, but who knows.
zhena gogolia
Open thread, so — this is golden!
dmsilev
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I am unaware of any moves to strip Senators from underpopulated states. Perhaps Glenn in his wisdom can, with an appropriately large number of updates and sufficient self-aggrandizement, post evidence to the contrary.
Frank Wilhoit
We seem to be in the midst of a virulent outbreak of overthinking. The problem with overthinking is that the problem is identified at the wrong level and therefore no measures or persuasion taken against it can be effective.
When organizations — commercial, governmental, non-profit — purchase training programs, management have already decided what message (pseudophilosophy) they want the training to reinforce. The rest is methodology and presentation. Grossman (nor anyone like him) has never changed any minds; he teaches how, not what, still less why.
Unaccountability is a color. People select into the unaccountable professions because they want to be unaccountable, full stop. Stop overthinking that.
Ransom
So much dishonesty all the way down. The Engen review in CMJ you linked is an great fisking of killology. But people are so self-delusional, even for those who should know better. Take the Marshall “most never shoot at the enemy” claim. I’m not ex-military, but my casual understanding of combat is a) mostly you hardly ever SEE the enemy, because they are HIDING from you and b) to fire your weapon is to reveal your position. It seems from what Engen found out, Marshall just made that up, and is directly contradicted by the Canadian ww2 after-action surveys where it was noted that too MUCH small arms fire was a problem due to wasting ammo and revealing position.
Searcher
@Ransom: Yeah, but you can’t generalize from those bloodthirsty Canadians to the rest of civilization.
oldster
Okay, but from the videos that I have seen, he is quite open about being a sick fuck, and that’s not false advertising. He really is a sick fuck!
dmsilev
I have to admire the opening of this article:
Leto
This is what confuses a lot of people. People can go through Ranger school (other branches included), get the tab, but not be an assigned Ranger. Part of the Ranger training is taking that experience/knowledge back to your unit to be a more effective leader. But what ends up, seemingly, to happen is people then use that tab for further personal gain. They use the fact that people will hear Ranger, assume they’re SF, and just won’t look into it any further than that. It’s just another form of grifting which betrays a members Core Values. Not shocking on my end because I knew plenty of dirt bags, but it continues to 1) portray the military in a poor manner and 2) help erode trust within/outside of the institution.
This is akin to people claiming they were a SEAL, but then being exposed as supply clerk working on the same base as SEALs. Only way to combat it, like Adam said, is exposing them for the shitbags they are.
Baud
@dmsilev:
That’s exactly the type of thing a member of a genuinely repressive and tyrannical party would demand.
Anonymous At Work
@Adam L Silverman: This is a resume that screams for a Daubert hearing on witness expertise. Trainings done by him or based on his “methodology” scream for the kind of cross-examination that will disqualify him from being used in trials. How has this NOT happened yet?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Adam L Silverman:
What board of idiots elevated him to LTC? Sounds to me he should have never made it to MAJ.
Tom Levenson
@Adam L Silverman: I will tweet it at him.
Kay
@Baud:
DC having 2 senators will dilute the rural states- that’s the theory. It’s the same argument his friend Tucker Carlson makes for why black people shouldn’t vote.
Jesus. He just gets worse every day. I love how he imagines he’s coming up with this himself when it’s like boilerplate far Right dogma and has been for decades. He’s poorly informed and lazy enough to think he invented it.
WereBear
From conversion therapy to Trump University, it’s the Republican way.
Baud
@Kay:
New England should be pissed then.
jonas
Wasn’t Tom Cotton or other Republican sleazeball called out recently for a similar sleight of hand — getting Ranger certification, but never actually serving with a Ranger or Green Beret regiment and then claiming that he was some kind of bad-ass special forces operator?
Kay
@Baud:
All of the Right wing theory on voting and representation can and was summed up in Charlottesville:
“you will not replace us”. That’s all you need to understand all of it.
Dee-Lurker
On Killing was on the NCO reading list when I was in the USMC. I had a totally different takeaway from the author’s presumed intent. I read it as the ways and means authority structures seek to make killing easier through tactics of distance and dehumanization. These were ways of mitigating the short and long term psychological costs of combat so that wars could be waged. This isn’t a positive narrative. It’s actually corrosive and demonstrates that war, while part of human nature, is not conducive to human flourishing. We should find ways to emphasize those traits of solidarity and compassion that makes war obsolete. That he chooses the opposite tack shows that he is simply in it for the money and notoriety.
germy
But enough about Seb Gorka.
Baud
@Kay:
Yep. The irony is that replacing them is the best possible outcome for them.
germy
I wonder if Grossman will ever see this balloon-juice thread.
Maybe, if he has some sort of “google alerts” thing tied to his name.
But if he did, he might get tired of reading about Bob Dylan’s old manager.
SFAW
@Kay:
It’s a “thought” process that gets applied to almost all aspects of life by the Party of Traitors. “Same-sex marriage cheapens my own het marriage!” And so forth.
I wish they’d all just move to a country more to their liking — Russia, Somalia, Hungary, Turkey, Dumbfuckistan. If they do, then the USA can maybe start fixing things more quickly.
Wapiti
@Leto: He was stationed at Fort Lewis. There was a Ranger Battalion there. Based on his files, he didn’t have what it took to be an officer in the Rangers.
Another Scott
@Searcher: [ snort! ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@Ransom: It was directly contradicted by American after action reports as well.
germy
Adam L Silverman
I just added this as an update up top:
catclub
@Baud:
When said party wants to stay in power by getting more people to vote and winning majorities of the voters.
Adam L Silverman
@oldster:
via GIPHY
Ruckus
@Kay:
I believe there is a psychological term(s) for the personality defects that Greenwald has in abundance. I believe that most of us probably know that term, from our recent national political disaster of 2017-2021.
Baud
@catclub:
The D stands for Diabolical.
jonas
How much you bet that Grossman will eventually double down and claim he *was too* SOF, but that his assignments and deployments were so secret, they’re not on his official file.
germy
From his killology page.
Adam L Silverman
@Leto: One of the favorite presentations I’ve ever heard was from the lieutenant colonel (I expect he’s been promoted by now to colonel) doctor of psychology who was assigned as the US Army Special Operations Command command psychologist back in 2015. He explained that when he finally decided to take the assignment, he told them he wouldn’t get to Bragg right away. They asked why. He replied that he was taking the Ranger course. They told him that wasn’t necessary. He told them it was. He then proceeded to explain his questioning his own psychological wellness while sitting cold, damp, and starving in some bog somewhere on the course. But give him credit, he decided that in order for the Soldiers he was going to be working with, whether Green Berets, members of the Ranger Regiment, Civil Affairs, PSYOP, SOF Aviation – he needed to be ranger tabbed to be taken seriously. He didn’t have to do it in that it wasn’t a requirement. But he decided he had to do it because it was a requirement.
Omnes Omnibus
That little bio of his lies about being a paratrooper as well as being a U.S. Army Ranger. From his DD-214, he never served in an airborne unit. He is parachute qualified, not a paratrooper.
FWIW his list of qual badges looks fairly typical of what you would tend to see in a company grade IN officer in a light division. And it looks to me like his last non-teaching military gig was as a company commander.
As far as the language goes in a line combat arms unit, you tend to refer to someone who has completed Ranger school and earned a Ranger tab as a Ranger – BUT that is in a situation where no one is falsely going to believe that the person in question served with the 75th. As step down from that in the prestige scale, I completed the Airborne Course, I wore wings on my uniform, and I had the 05P designation on my MOS. I looked on it as an accomplishment and have always been proud of it. I have not ever claimed that I was a paratroop because I never served in an Airborne unit.
Baud
@Adam L Silverman:
The things people had to do to gain credibility before Twitter. smh
rikyrah
Nail this muthaphucka.
Omnes Omnibus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Which part of his record says he never should have made major?
Michael Cain
I’ve never understood why people claim something that’s so easy to check. I’ve taken two runs at a PhD. Friends with PhDs told me both times, “We know you can do the coursework, Mike, and we’ve worked alongside you while you did research that was easily good enough. But you lack the tolerance for academic b*llsh*t that’s necessary.” That’s a reasonable description of why I bailed both times. Well, that and my personal research interests always seem to fall into weird little interdisciplinary spaces.
Amir Khalid
If memory serves, that charming man Senator Tom Cotton was also only Ranger-qualified, but went around calling himself an actual Ranger.
cain
I question whether this is the real Adam – the real Adam would have ended his post with “Open Thread!” or “Stay Frosty!”
ET
Fred Wellman just tweeted out this post so we may get some interesting traffic.
Kay
@Ruckus:
He makes the most boring conventional argument ever and acts like he’s the first person who came up with it.
His whole tendentious yawnfest about how the far Right is “populist” is 150 years old. Does he read anything? He can’t really be walking around thinking these are wildly original theories, can he?
germy
@ET:
He got this reply:
germy
PaulWartenberg
When I worked at Pasco County’s Hudson Regional (the main library), I would get weekly phone calls from the county commissioner overseeing background checks for resumes for county job openings.
I would get a couple of names, and with each name a list of colleges from which the applicants had gotten their diplomas.
Nearly every college I researched turned out to be “diploma mills”, fake colleges that issued diplomas if you paid them a lot of money. If I remember correctly, I only found two people out of dozens who had graduated from accredited degree programs.
It is horrifying how many fake people are out there trying to lie their way into civil service jobs… and God help us into any jobs at all. Like Silverman said, the lack of genuine expertise out there ought to make our public agencies do a better job vetting their hires and their consultants.
And I honestly think someone should charge Grossman with fraud, if he’s selling himself like this.
Kay
@Ruckus:
This is actually the SECOND time Greenwald has attempted to claim the Right is “populist” and the Left should align with them. He did the exact same thing in Obama’s 2nd term. Grover Norquist was the Real Lefty. Same fucking thing.
I guess he’s going to roll this boring theory out once every decade.
Benw
This is my shocked face.
MazeDancer
So, he is the same kind of Ranger as Tom Cotton – not a real one.
ETA: Now, seeing Amir’s comment.Yes, same lying liar Ranger “Tab” course graduate. Not an actual, genuine Army Ranger.
Ken
@dmsilev: Reminds me of this XKCD, although the community in that cartoon sounds much nicer than the, ah, “bloated whale carcass” denizens.
Wapiti
@Adam L Silverman: Regarding his AA degree; when I was a junior office, some of the schools offering degrees at the on-base education centers were definitely out of state. I couldn’t say whether Fayette State did that. They might have not been limited to Fort Bragg.
Adam L Silverman
@Anonymous At Work: I am not a lawyer.
trollhattan
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
As compared to…a fraudulently repressive and tyrannical party? Suppose that might describe the Republicans whose boots Glem loves to lick.
Fine sleuthing, Adam and Co. Drag this lunatic out into the sunlight and let’s see how he responds. Besides raging that Liberals are attacking him because they fear the truth. You know, minute 2. I can say I’ll be PISSED if my tax dollars are paying for his “services.” City police, probably not. Sheriffs, very possibly.
Adam L Silverman
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I am not on the promotion boards…
Ruckus
@Kay:
I believe that he thinks so highly of himself because few others do.
He’s full of a couple of things and one of them is himself. An example of the other thing was dumped on the White House grounds by idiots with pink wheelbarrows.
Adam L Silverman
@Tom Levenson: Okay, have fun!
Adam L Silverman
@jonas: Yes. It’s a grey area. In one regard, being Ranger tabbed means you’re Ranger qualified and a Ranger. But in the other regard it doesn’t mean you get a tan beret and are or have served in the Ranger Regiment. When people think of Army Rangers they think of Pat Tillman. Not a logistician with a Ranger tab.
Adam L Silverman
@Dee-Lurker: This is an excellent take away.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: He folded like a cheap suit after the third email. He want from overbearing, pompous, supercilious, arrogant, and argumentative to whiny and apologetic really quickly.
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: It was a jungle out there. In this case a literal one.
Ruckus
@Kay:
How does it dilute the rural states, other than DC has a higher population than some of them and they have 2 senators? Of course CA has an even larger population and still only has 2 senators. Maybe it’s the concept of land having more value than humans which is the problem.
I believe we all know the actual problem and it isn’t equality, it’s the exact opposite. fucker carlson wants to be more equal than everyone else.
MazeDancer
Here is a link to @Tom Levenson tweet to Tom Nichols about Adam’s post.
twitter.com/tomlevenson/status/1385639828948230152?s=21
The rest of us can like and RT our Tom’s tweet to increase its visibility to other Tom. And our timeline.
Adam L Silverman
@ET: Fred’s a friend. I sent it to him.
Adam L Silverman
@cain: I did end it with Open Thread!
Adam L Silverman
@ET: I sent it to several people that I figured would put it on blast. I’ve decided some rubble needs to be bounced on this.
Adam L Silverman
@PaulWartenberg: People in Pasco County can read? When did this happen?
Omnes Omnibus
@MazeDancer: As Adam said above, completing the Ranger course is hellish, and earning a Ranger tab is an accomplishment. Also, there are enlisted soldiers in Ranger battalions who have not completed Ranger school. Thus, they are Rangers, but not Ranger tabbed. Military stuff can get more complicated than it seems, and Grossman’s real offense here is being intentionally obscure so that people will assume his credentials are impressive than they really are. Honestly, in the world of a peacetime army in which he actually served, he has a very decent collection of badges. EIB, Airborne wings, Air Assault wings, and a Ranger tab is nothing to sneeze at. He could have told the dead truth about his credentials and still looked impressive.
Ken
@Adam L Silverman: Didn’t you say once that the real test was whether you could get into one of the Ranger’s bars? Might have been someone else. And the word probably wasn’t “bars”, but I don’t remember what the services call their exclusive clubs.
rp
Greenwald is such a freak.
Adam L Silverman
@Wapiti: St. Leo’s, which is in St. Leo, Florida, has extensions on every Air Force Base. I adjuncted for them at MacDill when I was doing my doctorate to make some extra money and get some extra teaching experience.
germy
@Adam L Silverman:
When he realized who he was talking to.
Adam L Silverman
@Ken: Don’t think that was me.
Adam L Silverman
@germy: The sniveling started in his reply to my reply where I explained who I actually was, copied and pasted my professional bio – basically what you find at the link on my author page here – and attached my full CV.
Chief Oshkosh
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks, Adam. I’ll be seeing some of those folks next Thursday.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: Since it is a gray area, i have always thought that the onus should be on the person to make it clear. Say you had a Parachutist Badge and Ranger Tab, not that you were an Airborne Ranger. Still impresses the “rubes” and doesn’t piss off the people who know the difference.
Amir Khalid
@Omnes Omnibus:
But he wouldn’t have been as credible, would he, when he talked about how sexy it was to kill people? That was something he needed to sell.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m proud of my work for the Army, including my deployment. I was once introduced online when doing a guest column for him by Tom Ricks as a veteran and I corrected him immediately in a comment, thanked him for the thought, but stated I was not a veteran because I have never served in the military. Recognizing this truth doesn’t make my particular type of service any less valid or real. Nor does it diminish it.
Ruckus
@Kay:
At some point all Greenwald is ever doing is trying to justify his existence.
This point was passed a long time ago. A very long time ago.
When has he ever spouted any thing of actual, real, positive substance? Everything I’ve seen, read, or seen discussed has been about him, in one way or another. He adds nothing to any discussion, other than an ignorant opinion.
VOR
@germy: Yes, the Mayor of Minneapolis banned. Then the head of the Minneapolis Police Federation announced the police union would pay for the courses.
rp
Skimming GG’s twitter feed…
Starfish
@Leto: In the previous thread that Adam posted, I made a comment about Kristin Beck’s memoir convincing me that SEALs were not good people. Adam pointed out that Kristin had been a good SEAL, and there is a certain personality type that goes with that.
There is a scene in the book where a real SEAL runs into a fake SEAL and is unimpressed, and I am pretty sure that SEALs are people that we do not want to be on the bad side of.
germy
@VOR:
They’re addicted to that shit.
Eric Dickworth
I was a cadet in MAJ Grossman’s Psych class at USMA in 1991. He was a friend and kind mentor, eccentric and thought a lot about himself, but charismatic and decent for young minds. He had yet to fully drink his product, he was still formulating thoughts and I still believe retained objectivity.
I helped proof “On Killing” in its infancy and it was a good historical narrative of SLA Marshall and combination of other writers to present some thoughtful commentary on something the military had little current experience in unless you were at the Desert Storm/Battle of 73 Easting or some specific Panama engagement. His book also accelerated him into the limelight after Columbine and News outlets were looking for “experts” to explain this phenomenon of mass shootings.
Fast forward to when I was a combat experienced LTC and reunited with Grossman to hear him at Ft. Leavenworth in 2011. I was disappointed and disenchanted with his almost evangelical approach to fear-mongering and putting professional restraint aside in favor of warrior mindsets. He was still using overhead projectors and acetate slides from the 1990s. His worldview had devolved since 9/11 and Beslan instead of evolving with all the lessens we were learning in the COIN arena. His work showed little growth, just rehashing old material.
He fashioned himself more into celebrity-prophet (for profit) and I sadly think abandoned some core values along the way. I am disgusted by many of his comments and saddened to see the tragedy of a man whom I admired in my youth and was once a centered and bright teacher.
One more point- the Sheepdog metaphor might be more correct if looked at in a different perspective. What Grossman and proponents of this mantra fail to realize is this:
Sheepdogs are not moral creatures, they are not altruistic. They are conditioned to do the bidding of the master for scraps. This often entails herding, and compelling sheep through threatening posturing and violence so the master can earn his livelihood. The herd might have to contest with predators, but the herd would be just fine without the sheep dog.
L85NJGT
@Chief Oshkosh:
Stakeholders don’t give a shit. To them policing is a Dirty Harry movie, and that stuff Adam posts, while spot on, is overly complex for an elevator pitch.
Go at them on cost – what does this cost the department, the town, the city, the county? What are they willing to give up to pay for the ravings of a crackpot? Emphasize the kooky, and demean it as the latest fad.
JanieM
@Ruckus: There are plenty of others like this, although Greenwald seems to be one of the more egregiously overinflated. (True confession: I don’t pay any attention to him these days except for snippets I see here.)
The past five years have brought me to a point where I don’t really care what anyone thinks unless they’re actually trying in good faith to solve a problem. (Or being frankly the entertainment.)The world is so awash in I’m-so-much-cleverer-than-everyone-else self-aggrandizing BS that we’re in danger of drowning in it. I turn the internet off sometimes just to make sure not to overdose.
Starfish
@Baud: Link me to your TikTok so I can judge your credibility.
VeniceRiley
Wasn’t the former Governor of Minnesota himself a fake seal along these same lines?
Leto
Had to step away but getting back to this:
@Wapiti: that can be true (he didn’t have what it took), and also he might never have tried out for them (idk and frankly it doesn’t matter in this context). Getting a Ranger tab is, in it’s own right, an impressive thing and that’s what most people coast on. Honestly that was my main point with this.
@Adam L Silverman: I would love to hear that presentation. People like that are a rare breed, but usually have a great perspective on things.
Ken
@VeniceRiley: Playing one in a movie doesn’t count?
Kay
@Ruckus:
It’s the same concept as “vote dilution”. If DC has two senators then that’s two additional senators, making Nebraska’s two less powerful.
It’s about power on both sides of course, it’s just Democrats are the only people admitting it’s about power- of course it is and DC residents shouldn’t be afraid to admit it- they want political power. They should get it, too.
Leto
@Adam L Silverman: @Omnes Omnibus: this is what I was trying to convey in my original comment.
@Starfish: Agreed about personality types wrt SEALs. Special Forces in general. Also agree about not wanting to be on the bad side of a SEAL. I can’t swim that well anymore :P
Anoniminous
Shorter Greenwald: The Republic went to hell when girls and Negroes were allowed to vote and is going to hell because ditto.
There. Saved everybody hours of time.
Darkrose
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
As he so often tells us, this asshat is a Jewish man married to a Black man in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, and yet he thinks the Democrats–a party that’s in the dictionary under “Herding Cats” is doing the real tyrannies?
He is a whole piece of shit.
Ruckus
@JanieM:
Agreed. There are times I check the internet and go, “What the hell am I doing, I can waste time better than this!”
The world really is about existing, and most of us add, at best only a very, very tiny bit of positive. In reality there are what 9 billion humans on this rock and most of us can add, in one lifetime, not a lot of value. It is actually far easier to subtract value than add. Art, words, enhancements to humanity, these are steps to better but any one step is extremely small and difficult to really get right. All one has to do to stay in the middle is not try hard, or at all. To pollute more than others, to be self centered, to hate, to do nothing at all, is not positive. We reward those that even seem to be positive and often that positive really isn’t. A medical person can easily be positive, but some are rather negative. But the reality is that few of us add real value, most are place holders and some are hugely selfish and negative. It is the concept of life, few can be at the top, the vast majority will be somewhere in the middle and way too large a portion will be at the bottom sucking the life out of living.
Adam L Silverman
@Eric Dickworth: Thanks for stopping here and providing us all this important context. I really appreciate it.
Adam L Silverman
@VeniceRiley: No, Jesse Ventura was legit in regard to his service in the Naval Special Warfare community.
MazeDancer
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, Tom Cotton made the same “mistake” saying “Ranger” to, as Adam said, make people believe he was Pat Tillman.
Don’t understand why they can’t just say, “I got the tab, but was never a Ranger”. So they can get credit for both telling the truth and completing the course.
Ruckus
@Kay:
I do understand their point. I just think their point is bullshit.
It’s pretty damn lame for them to believe that it’s OK for them to not want to be diluted but that they can dilute everyone else.
Maybe it’s me that is delusional, that the world isn’t fair (it isn’t) and never should be. But why should their group (whoever they are) be more powerful than mine? These are arbitrary limits and laws we are setting up, why is it better to be illogical, prejudiced, hateful, dishonest than logical, fair, loving, and honest?
Ruckus
@Darkrose:
Right down to the real nitty gritty. The truth.
Omnes Omnibus
@MazeDancer: Again, I wouldn’t tell a Ranger tabbed person that s/he wasn’t a real Ranger. Not unless I was both tabbed and serving in the 75th (Ranger) IN.
Ruckus
@Leto:
Would you even make it to the water? I know where I’d end up. Right where I started.
The Moar You Know
@dmsilev: it’s my new crusade. Senatorial representation as currently constituted made sense when only 5% of the population lived in urban areas.
That number is now over 80%.
This is not equitable, reasonable, or defensible.
Miss Bianca
@germy: “the martial art of the firearm”?
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: The body has to go somewhere.
Leto
@Ruckus: Gotta hide the body somewhere!
Edit: Dammit, Omnes! /shakesfist
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: @Leto: That’s what the wood chipper is for.
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yeah, THIS is the part that I don’t get. I mean, why lie when the truth is just as good?
@rp: Yeah, well, unlike most “hypocrites on the left”, Greenwald actually played a substantial role in *putting* Reality Winner in prison.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Moar You Know: No, senatorial representation as constituted made sense when you thought of the United States as a collective of individual states like the EU not as one nation. it was set up that way to satisfy those people while the more democratically inclined and those who saw the US as one nation got the House. The compromise is one of many in the Constitution.
Subsole
@Leto:
So, this is a bit like a guy who gets trained to repair x-ray machines, never actually fixes any x-ray machines, then sells himself as one of the country’s leading x-ray repairmen? Do I have that right?
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca:
It’s not just as good, but it’s good. It’s more like implying your degree was summa when it was magna.
Omnes Omnibus
@Subsole:
No.
Subsole
@Kay: Just another squirmy little hyperbigoted operative, when it’s all said and done.
Karl Rove minus the talent.
Subsole
@SFAW: Trouble is any country willing to have them will pay them to stay here and sabotage us.
And they are just fcking petty enough to do it.
Edit: Otherwise, we are simpatico. I would strip them naked and drop their collective ass in Siberia. They hate us so much, they can leave the way they came in – naked and without tools.
Subsole
@Adam L Silverman: Huh. Learned something today.
Eric Duckworth
@Eric Dickworth: Eric Duckworth- stupid typo
Subsole
@Ruckus: White supremacy? Glenn goes back a long, long way with the klanhood krowd.
Subsole
@germy: Hojutsu?
What is that, discount-rack gun-kata??
Eric Duckworth
@Adam L Silverman: my pleasure Adam. For the Record: I mistyped- it’s Eric Duckworth
PS- his classroom comments lesson on the psychology of Sex in 1991 (he tended to focus more about sexual morality) still stands in my mind as one of the most awkward educational moments for some of the phrases he used…of which I will not repeat here.
The Moar You Know
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s too long and detailed, although letter-true. I’m looking for the elevator pitch here.
Because the senatorial system really is truly indefensible and needs to be changed. Twenty percent of the nation, and not our best twenty percent, is running the other eighty percent into the ground. It needs to go. Not a hundred years from now, but now.
Adam L Silverman
@Eric Duckworth:
This means you were destined to comment here. If it weren’t for the typos, I wouldn’t have any posts or comments at all.
Adam L Silverman
@Eric Duckworth: I’m sure it was “educational”.
Subsole
@Michael Cain: No matter how easy something is to check, it is always easier to just not check.
The Prussian Fire Drill is real.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yes but I would no longer be operating it…….
@Leto:
I believe that Adam has solved that for you……
Ruckus
@Miss Bianca:
His entire concept is bullshit, he’d be remiss if his bio wasn’t as well.
Ruckus
@Subsole:
White supremacy is one of the things he seems to believe in. I was referring more to the one white male he believes in above all others and all else, himself.
And that trait has a name. And yes it presents differently among different people, but it can be boiled down to the same concept.
JML
For anyone who needs translation on what being a GS-15 is like for Adam’s resume, when I worked at the Pentagon they were usually Division Chiefs (in the services) and treated diplomatically like they were an O-6.
Not that Adam needs my validation, but I know government “ranks” can be like reading a foreign language to people.
sab
@Adam L Silverman: Hah! Every comment I ever type I have to go back and change all the “m”s to the “n”s I intended to type. And “i” and “u” are also adjacent on the keyboard.
Adam L Silverman
@sab: I feel your pain.
Subsole
A history professor I follow on twitter refers to what Grossman sold as “the Cult of the Badass” -essentially the idea that the ‘warrior mentality’ is less about making good warriors (nevermind acceptable soldiers) and more about masking insecurities in masculinity.
It is, as you can probably imagine, an absolutely disastrous dogma for any modern military, and uttetly corrosive to democracy.
Mary G
I know the thread is probably dead, but can’t resist this:
Having watched McKinsey work over the corporation I where I was employed back in the day, I endorse this message.
Subsole
@JanieM: Truth. We have confused contrarianism with cleverness, sarcasm with wit, and cynicism with clarity.
Subsole
@Kay: Yep. They pay their share, but get no real say.
We fought a war over that, way back in some distant age.
Subsole
@Darkrose: Mild correction – he is a RICH Jewish man married to, as I understand it, a VERY connected (and extremely young) black man.
Not that that will save him when the helicopter rides start.
Subsole
@Adam L Silverman: “So that’d be yer partner there in the chipper, then, eh?”
Chief Oshkosh
@L85NJGT: I’m fortunate that my state rep and senator have their heads screwed on straight and consider (and sometimes act on) constituent concerns. They probably already have bad training like Grossman’s stuff on their radar, but it still worth discussing with them.
Bottom line is, there is not much I can do about how the constabulary is trained. One of the few things I can do it talk to my elected officials.
I haven’t seen many other options presented here for actual action on the part of the unwashed masses about what is a pretty specific issue. Happy to hear more in that direction, but until then, it’s:
Dear Sir or Madam, here’s something awful that’s happened in other municipalities (please see attachment). Please confirm that our little part of the world is not doing not doing this. If our town/county/state is doing this, I want it stopped. Thank you for your time and consideration. Signed, C.O.
john fremont
@Dee-Lurker:
Another long time lurker and former Marine.
That book was added after I had left active duty and that’s what I seem to remember when I started reading it. In the early 2000’s, ISTR Grossman was concerned about the combat scenes in movies and video games and how they could be dehumanizing young people to taking human life. This Killology seminar I didn’t know about until now.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@sab: Just don’t let autocorrect try to correct Aerochrome.
sab
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Steeplechase told me how to shut down autocorrect years ago. Autocorrect turns mere typos into truly scary new statements.
Normal typo you know what they meant. Autocorrect at it’s best gives you gibberish, at its worst misstates what you meant.
Bobby Thomson
Who?
raven
Late to this show but I love this stolen valor shit. It ain’t hard if you tell the truth but you star bullshittin and there’s plenty of people who will know immediately. There used to be a Seal Wall of Shame site but I think it expired.
raven
@jonas: And every swingin dick butterbar that showed ups got a fucking bronze star. Phoney motherfukers.
WaterGirl
@sab:
hahahahaha
Eric Duckworth
@Eric Dickworth:
However, Adam,
Grossman’s qualifications, service and CV stand on their own merits- he’s earned his place. Perhaps people interpret or conflate it for more than it is, and he lets them. but I do not feel he has misrepresented himself any more than many do on their own resumes. But I believe his rhetoric over the years has changed and he should stick the science of combat psychology, not indoctrination. I don’t think an ad hominem attack is required when we can intelligently argue the problems in his rhetoric.
Eric Duckworth
@Subsole: agreed. He removed the philosophy and morality that comes with the decision to use lethal force.
Adam L Silverman
@john fremont: Welcome.
sab
@WaterGirl: Huh? I don’t get the joke, unless it is about me with autocorrect before Steeplechase saved me.
Adam L Silverman
@Eric Duckworth: I think the issues here are three fold. The first is, as several others have mentioned, that his actual record and credentials are impressive for someone who served post Vietnam during peace time. And that if he’d just left it at that, without either inflating them or eliding them or allowing others who don’t know better to misrepresent them, then we’d just be focusing, as I did in yesterday’s post, on what he’s teaching. But he did not, which leads to the second two issues.
The second issue is a purely civilian professional credential one. He both represents himself and allows others to represent himself as a psychologist. He is not a psychologist. As can be seen in what I copied and pasted from the department that awarded his graduate degree at UT Austin, that degree credentials him to be an admissions counselor, a career counselor, a guidance counselor, or to go further and pursue a doctorate in education in counseling, which he did not do. There is nothing here to qualify him to undertake and/or conduct bio-psychological research, behavioral psychological research, or to speak as a subject matter expert on issues related to either.
And this leads to the third related issue. He has promoted himself as an authority on killing, especially killing in combat, based on his military service. He has presented that service in a way that allows others, especially others that do not have experience with military careers, to misrepresent him as someone who has a Special Operations background or served in Special Operations assignments. As well as allowing the misimpression that his experience on killing in combat was obtained through killing in combat. When my SWAT sniper friend first asked me about him and what I thought, my friend, based on Grossman’s reputation, thought he was a Green Beret. Largely because most police officers don’t know the differences between Special Forces and Special Operations Forces. Regardless, Grossman is neither. Yet he has allowed himself to be misrepresented as such.
If I was going to do an ad hominem attack, I’d make fun of the way he looks and presents himself when he talks about the best sex is sex after killing and you should enjoy it because it is a perk of the job that allows you to kill others. Frankly, I think it is simply enough to note that based on his actual record, Grossman has no actual experiential idea that this is true because Grossman has never actually killed anyone. Or, at least, not when he was in the Army.
ThresherK
John Kerry.
Really, that’s all I wanted to say in response to so many right-wing nutjobs who need to exaggerate their shit.
When Arena Football was a thing, I went to many of the local team games. At one, a guy was in an Army booth, probably younger than me, and asked if I wanted a lanyard or a tee (in Army black and yellow, big block letters–you know them), and I politely declined, because if someone thought I’d served, while being the suburban weenie I often resemble, I’d be mortified.
debbie
Not long after I moved back here (1995), it was revealed the head of the VFW here had lied about his service. If those vets don’t pick up on this kind of thing, we schlubs certainly can’t.
WaterGirl
@sab: I assumed you meant Steeplejack and that Steeplechase was a nickname.
I did not know we had a Steeplechase here, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t!
Matt Smith
@Adam L Silverman: Just to say, you’re one of the highlights of BJ for me. Always happy to see one of your posts in the feed.
J R in WV
@Kay:
While that was part of their chant, the part that chilled me was the “Jews will not replace us!” chant.
I’m not Jewish, have few relatives (one late aunt) who are Jewish, but this is Nazi bone-chilling cold…! Horrible, full of hate, the works!
J R in WV
@VOR:
Then the Mayor announces that taking the course will be presumptive proof of the incompetence of the putative officer, much like joining the KKK.
You’re fired!! Loss of pension, also too!!!
Just Chuck
I feel we should add “First of His Name” somewhere to that list of credentials. /s :)
john fremont
@Adam L Silverman: Thank you Adam
Skippy-san
@jonas: I suspect if you pull the string on Cotton’s Army service you find it to be nothing more than a resume bullet and nothing more. And I am quite certain he was a dick on active duty just like he is now.
Hugh
@Adam L Silverman: l
You mentioned Grossman never killed anyone in combat. But you did not either. You are merely an academic, not a soldier with combat experience, so you are not a credible critic of Grossman. At least he passed brutal Ranger training.