Harriet Tubman was a civil rights leader, but she was also a military hero who risked her life fighting for freedom, our nation and the perfection of our democracy.
Actually, Secretary Hegseth, Harriet Tubman was a war hero
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202…— Greg Hernandez (@ghnarrator.bsky.social) July 4, 2025 at 10:40 AM
Edda L. Fields-Black & Kate Clifford Larson, at the Washington Post [gift link]:
… Many Americans know Tubman for her courage and sacrifice as conductor of the Underground Railroad, but fewer recognize her as a Civil War spy and military leader. Tubman was the first woman to lead a combat regiment during the Civil War, and in an opinion issued this year, the U.S. Army Office of the General Counsel acknowledged her as one of the few women who served as a soldier in the Civil War. Those contributions merit her the honor of her namesake, the USNS Harriet Tubman.
Now, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to consider removing Tubman’s name from the ship, alongside others named after former Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall… Hegseth is seeking to reestablish “warrior culture” in the military, but the removals would betray that culture…
Yet Tubman’s service during the Civil War is perhaps her most consequential legacy. After the U.S. military reclaimed Port Royal Sound, South Carolina, from the Confederacy in 1861, Tubman was sent on a critical mission to gather intelligence from the 8,000 formerly enslaved people who had escaped to Union lines. She was attached to Gen. Isaac Stevens’s headquarters and worked for Gens. Rufus Saxton and David Hunter, commanding a ring of Black men as spies, scouts and river pilots.
Tubman’s little-known mission came to fruition on June 1, 1863, when she guided three U.S. Army boats loaded with 300 Black soldiers from Col. James Montgomery’s Second South Carolina Volunteers, and a battery of White soldiers from another regiment, up the Combahee River into Confederate-controlled territory. Earlier, Tubman and her men had infiltrated Confederate plantations and identified the enslaved men who were forced to plant mines along the Combahee River to prevent Union access. With their help, Tubman’s men and the U.S. Army officers defused the mines. Those soldiers also rooted out Confederate forces, burned seven plantations— including the owners’ homes, barns, stockpiles of rice, and stables— and cut Confederate supply lines by destroying a bridge.
From those burned lands, hundreds of enslaved people flocked to the soldiers’ rowboats at the river shore. Fearful that the rowboats might capsize, Montgomery asked Tubman to calm the crowds. Using her strong voice, she started singing and was met with a joyful response of clapping and shouting. Seven hundred and fifty-six people were liberated that day; the U.S. Army did not lose a single life. The Combahee Ferry Raid is now considered the largest and most successful slave rebellion in U.S. history.
That Tubman was prohibited from enlisting in the U.S. Army did not stop her from risking her life for the enslaved, or for a nation that hadn’t yet recognized her rights as a citizen. Though she was not paid for her work, which also included nursing the sick and cooking for officers — she took in laundry to scrape by — her service with the armed forces helped make the Combahee River Raid one of the most successful campaigns of the war…
(I suspect that one stern look from Harriet Tubman would’ve caused Secretary Kegsbreath to soil himself.)
War for Ukraine Day 1,226: Russia Targets Kyiv Again
Matt McIrvin
She’s a hero for the opposite side from Pete Hegseth’s.
Baud
Apt reddit quote I saw this morning.
Rusty
“Warrior Culture” = white men for Hegseth. Its been a long time since we have had an administration so openly racist, misogynistic, and bigoted in every way. Just another failure ofnour press to honestly report it (when they aren’t openly colluding like the NYT yesterday)
Matt McIrvin
Nothing sadder than a Confederate from Minnesota.
satby
Reported yesterday that the suspended arms shipment to Ukraine was done under Kegsbreath’s orders, which certainly came from the felon’s order. Traitors.
satby
@Baud: truth. Just think about the Resistances in all the NAZI occupied countries and how many years they fought against overwhelming losses.
Soapdish
I’ve always been disappointed that Biden didn’t fast-track the Tubman $20.
Baud
@Rusty:
The NYT has been colluding since well before yesterday.
Baud
@satby:
Sometimes some people make me feel like we’re the cheese eating surrender monkeys now.
Suzanne
Everything FFOTUS touches dies, and yet so many of my fellow Americans are too fucken dumb to figure it out. Like, their pattern recognition is severely lacking. Just blows my mind.
Actually had a fantastic day yesterday. One highlight: I did not hear Lee Greenwood!
JoyceH
Oddly enough, you never hear real warriors gassing on about “warrior culture “. They leave that to the posturing little dweebs like Hegseth.
NotMax
Early FYI.
For any wondering about a possible NYC area meet-up, yours truly will be arriving there August 15 and departing September 1 and would like to arrange one. If at all interested, perhaps begin thinking on days, times and locations best for you within that period.
This is a VERY preliminary comment. There will be opportunities for suggestions closer to the dates mentioned.
Thank you and we now return to your regularly scheduled blog.
Betty Cracker
I’ve been fishing on the Combahee River! (Well, reading and watching birds while others fished.) I knew a little about its history thanks to my grandmother, who was a South Carolinian and a history teacher. There was a significant battle there in the Revolutionary War too, IIRC, but I wasn’t fully aware of the role Tubman played in the Civil War raid. Thanks, AL!
stinger
What a great story from the Post. Thanks, Anne Laurie!
I hate this administration from the depths of my soul.
Matt McIrvin
@JoyceH: I dislike the whole vogue for referring to soldiers as “warriors”. A “warrior”, to me, is the guy who’s gonna do the My Lai massacre to you. That’s the image Hegseth wants. A “soldier” at least has rules.
Baud
@JoyceH:
It’s also why they hug the flag. Because they’re traitors in their hearts.
mappy!
I’d postulate that 75% of self identified upholders are alcoholics. Another 7% have done step 10, but only step 10…. On the media side, it’s 100%… Cheers.
JoyceH
@Matt McIrvin: To me, “warrior” calls up an image of a man on a horse. The man has a scimitar and the horse has tassels on its harness, and they sweep out of the wilds to hack down peaceful farmers in the settled lowlands. “Warrior” just doesn’t sound American to me – not that it’s UNAmerican, it’s just not a word Americans apply to themselves and their armed forces. I can’t summon up the notion of Washington or Eisenhower talking about “American warriors”.
Gloria DryGarden
Maybe today is when I’ll watch Harriet with cynthia erizo, on Hulu. Not sure if I can handle it. Will I be inspired, or just enraged and frightened?
I’m pretty shaken by the alligator Alcatraz, and the plane to Sudan, and Kilmer Abrego garcias report. Who is making money off these stupid concentration camps? And prisons in other countries?
I still want more time with andor, but it’s left my streaming service, and I’m making do with Diego Luna movies. Sometimes in very fast spanish in quite odd dialects, and strange sequences of swear words. That the captions don’t translate all that accurately. It was really his character in Andor that moved me, though.
thank you for covering important history, even if my need for more respite keeps me from learning it more deeply.
Baud
A good media headline, for once.
Suzanne
My problem with the terms warriors and warfighters has always been about the relative elevation and esteem of that pursuit over everything else. It’s considered more praiseworthy than teaching, or medicine, or parenting, or construction, or maintenance, or nonprofit work, or driving a bus, or anything else that keeps society moving. It’s constructed around the idea of giving some people — mostly men — the fantasy that they’re more noble, more self-sacrificing, more American than the rest of us.
Baud
@Suzanne:
The only real warrior is Xena: Warrior Princess.
Duke of Clay
The Founding Fathers ideal was the citizen soldier. Hence, they idolized the Roman Cincinnatus who was called from ploughing his field to lead the army. Upon victory he returned to ploughing his field. I grew up surrounded by men who had fought in World War II. They weren’t warriors or warfighters. They were truckdrivers, clerks, and salesmen. I think the Founding Fathers would have been appalled by the use of those two terms.
Professor Bigfoot
“It takes a lifetime to make a warrior. But you can make a soldier in 8 weeks.”
This modern age calls for soldiers, those cold, tired, dirty bastards who soldier on though adversity and get the damn job done.
Kegsbreath and the rest of this administration live in a fantasy world with wizards, clerics and “warriors.”
Geminid
Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu was reposting video from Hegseth’s June 29 press conference about the Iran strikes, the one where he berated Pentagon correspondent Jennifer Griffin. At one point Soylu asked, “Is he on something? I mean, is this really a normal facial expression?”
Some guy came back with:
Betty
@Suzanne: Excellent point. It is also reflected in the massive amount of defense spending for which there continues to be little accountability. There always seems to be more money available for “the warriors” but not for health care and food assistance.
TONYG
Incompetent, alcoholic, ignorant, stupid, racist misogynist. He prances around bloviating about “warrior ethos”, but then he wastes time and resources renaming ships and removing non-white people and women from historical websites. Hegseth might be the worst person in Trump’s cabinet, but there are so many other competitors for that title.
Nukular Biskits
Good mornin’, y’all.
BellyCat
@Baud: More gaslighting about the BBB (Big Bupkis Bill).
Am actually glad to see that this bill *actually* gives a temporary $6,000 deduction to SS recipients (but until when?). This is much like Dems pushing for a larger child tax credit. Real benefit for those who could use it. Taxing SS income is and has always been facially absurd.
So, credit where it’s due. My beef is why not trumpet the fucking *actual* benefit instead of gaslighting everyone into believing it goes exponentially further? (Rhetorical question, as the goal always is to create simple if entirely false impressions among low info voters about complex topics). JFC.
Matt McIrvin
@TONYG: I go back and forth between him, Kristi Noem and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. RFK Jr. is the one with the greatest potential to kill a billion people or more, unless Hegseth launches all missiles.
mayim
@Suzanne:
I shudder every time I hear warfighters and your comment explains exactly why.
TONYG
@Betty: I’m betting that not much of that money is spent on the human “warriors”. Mostly military hardware that is purchased without much competition, and that quickly becomes obsolete and has to be replaced.
satby
“Warrior” and “war fighter” also code as masculine (Xena excepted Baud 😉).
Which is another way to dismiss and disrespect the women and transgender people who serve.
TONYG
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, so many horrible people to choose from.
Nukular Biskits
@Suzanne:
THIS. A thousand times over. This.
And I say this with the disclosure what Ms. Biskits is retired USAF. She has NEVER described herself or any other service member as a “warrior”.
Suzanne
@Betty: So I read Tyler Cowen’s comment a few years ago about how all of our terrible politics are about relative social status, and I think he absolutely hit the nail on the head here. (He’s wrong about many other things, but correct about this in a way that others didn’t identify.)
The social order has changed a lot in recent years. I’m younger than most jackals — born in 1980 — and the U.S. population has increased in my lifetime by over 50%. The economy is now dominated by services rather than agriculture or manufacturing. Urbanization is rapid. Relations between men and women are a lot different. The country is far more racially mixed than it used to be, and the younger generations are not majority white people. To say nothing about the massive concentrations of wealth that have occurred.
All of these changes have led to social status changes. Rewards are different. I don’t think we’ve managed these changes particularly well as a society so far. I see a lot of well-intentioned liberals advocate for a return to FDR-style-coalition politics, and I have doubts about that effectiveness. Because, to get people to buy into that stuff, there was still that implicit promise that some people (whites, men, Christians) would be more respected, seen as more important, in their communities. That they could still be the pillars. That’s not what the future is going to be about.
TONYG
@satby: Hegseth’s rhetoric reflects an eight-year-old boy’s concept of the world. My (limited) understanding of World War Two (for example) is that it was won largely because of logistics (the Merchant Marine, and then air and land transport of war material). The American and allied “warriors” in that war were successful because they were reliably supplied with what they needed.
p.a.
When I hear “warrior” I think cosplay Klingon. When I hear “soldier” I think Willie and Joe. I know which I want defending me.
satby
@Duke of Clay: reminds me of an ex- boyfriend’s short, chubby, mild-mannered dad; who I think was in sales. But before the US entered WW2, he volunteered with the Free French foreign legion in Africa.
We were surrounded by just average dads growing up, who had done incredible, heroic things during that war and never talked about it. They “did their bit” as the British say.
catclub
@Matt McIrvin: Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire…
Thor Heyerdahl
@TONYG: land-based logistics like the Red Ball Express
Suzanne
@Nukular Biskits: I come from a six-generation military family. Some generations had multiple soldiers, sailors, and airmen. I have never heard a single one of them describe themselves as a “warrior”.
no body no name
Yes she’s a war hero but she (as far as I know) was not in uniform.
If these fuckers had a single shred of integrity or consistency (I know, I know, absurd on the face of it) they’d just say they are going to name ships after uniformed service members. The trap there is Harvey Milk was a Navy veteran from the Korean war which obviously does pass the criteria of getting a ship named after you. Navy combat vet meet Navy ship.
I don’t give a shit about SCOTUS and I don’t think they should have military honors unless they served. Yet there is a better solution for Tubman. Tubman was a spy and that whole thing evolved into OSS and now CIA for HUMINT. Let CIA claim her! Let them add her to their public museum and create Tubman acts. Let them name an airport after her. It will piss off all the right people and be far more lasting than a supply ship. She was a spy not a sailor spy her up!
satby
@TONYG: it was won by the troops who waded through their dead companions to keep fighting the Nazis on the beaches of Normandy, the thousands of Ukrainian and Russian dead on the eastern front who kept fighting, and the troops in the Pacific battling island to island.
Logistics helped. But logistics don’t fight wars.
Hunter Gathers
@BellyCat: 64% of SS recipients don’t pay any tax on it right now. All that deduction does is reduce taxes on recipients with FAT Social Security payouts. My mother’s SS payments would have to increase a bit for her to be able to take the deduction. And it expires in two years.
That deduction won’t count for jack squat once sequestration starts cutting Medicare.
Scout211
Most of the articles use “misleading” or “confusing.”
Forbes goes a little further and more to the point:
satby
@no body no name: weird. The people at the time called her “General” Tubman, though she was only officially promoted to the rank in 2024.
Harriet Tubman was posthumously commissioned as a Brigadier General in the Maryland National Guard.
And we should always defend the belated recognition earned by those who contributed so much to our nation’s defense.
Baud
@BellyCat:
Harrison Wesley
Aren’t warriors those people who would destroy a village in order to save it?
no body no name
@Suzanne:
I served. I have fought at sea and on land in many places. Combat arms level at times. In uniform and as a civilian. I have also done non profit work and other things. I am not a war fighter. It is a thing I did. It does not define me. Where I am now I find it highly offensive that my service branch logo is displayed on my name plate outside my office. At times I want to throttle people because my being a vet colors interaction I have with people.
I did not want my service branch displayed. Yet it was made clear to me that this is a thing one does so our director can brag about having vets. I feel used. Fuck thank you for your service I’m a citizen same as the rest of you. What I did is not a bullet point on your status of hiring veterans. It’s outright offensive. I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me and my family as I am an immigrants child that was saved by Americans. I don’t give a shit about you.
no body no name
@satby:
Didn’t know that. As such lets name an Army base after her!
Nukular Biskits
What to name US Navy ships has usually depended on the class of ship but there are exceptions.
All the Aegis cruisers with the exception of CG 51, for example, were all named for major battles. All the Aegis destroyers are named after veterans or active duty personnel who died in the line of duty.
And if Hegseth wants to rename ships to reflect some “warrior ethos”, he could start by renaming CVN 76, USS Ronald Reagan who definitely was no “warrior”.
JML
All of the warrior culture crap is incredibly destructive in society. It’s glorification of killing and violence, and patriarchal BS. These people pretend it’s necessary to defend the nation as if we’re facing imminent invasion on our own soil (which of course is how these racist shitbags want people to view immigration) but it’s not even good for what we should want from a professional military.
What’s worse is how it’s devolved down to police departments along with military weapons and technology. While some departments have banned “warrior training” options, many still do it or their corrupt unions arrange it too. It’s all part of how you get away from “serve and protect” to “do it to them before they do it to you”.
In conclusion, eff Pete Hegseth, a racist SOB that needs to be banished from public life.
H.E.Wolf
Susan Griffin wrote a phenomenal poem: “I Like to Think of Harriet Tubman”. It was published in 1970 – ten years before little Hegseth was born – and mentions Tubman’s military actions.
I have loved this poem for years. It makes my hair stand on end. It reminds me that
“there is always a time
to make right what is wrong”
https://ashlynnfenton.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/i-like-to-think-of-harriet-tubman-by-susan-griffin/
artem1s
@JoyceH:
I hear ‘weekend warrior’. you know those glory daze assholes who couldn’t quite make it to the big time because they spent more time boozing it up in HS and college than practicing. The ones who rely/relied on steroids to bulk up because it’s too hard and takes too long to do the right way. Also,too those assholes who knock around the kids and the little woman when they (or worse their kids) don’t win their softball tournament.
no body no name
@Nukular Biskits:
He wasn’t in the Navy either. But these are the petty fuckers who got upset about the USS John McCain who despite all his flaws was in the Navy and was a war hero.
Glory b
@Gloria DryGarden: I recommend the PBS documentary about her, “Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom.”
As a teen, she was hit in the head with a metal weight thrown by a white shopkeeper and almost died.
She claimed the head injury gave her Visions which she used to guide her actions in life.
She was so strong that her owner hired her out as a dockworker, which gave her a fair measure of freedom of movement and where she learned about boats, navigation and traveling at night by moonlight.
Professor Bigfoot
@p.a.: Exactly so.
“Citizen soldiers.”
I know what should be defending a free people.
Edited to add:
Worf would SPIT on these honorless cretins. A warrior has, first of all, honor. Loyalty to his people, the people he’s spent his life training to defend.
THEY HAVE NO HONOR. Kegsbreath and his minions are the very opposite of “warriors.”
BellyCat
Yep. In fact, those on SS with Medicaid will be hit doubly (or more) hard. Of course, this will take place AFTER midterm elections. Devious fuckers…
Betty Cracker
I have a MAGA shirt-tail relative who never saw a nanosecond of combat and was discharged from the US Army on partial disability after getting hit in the face with a softball in Doha. He has a great thirst to be thanked for his service and sports “disabled service member” vehicle tags. He has probably taken up the “warfighter” thing, but I’m not sure because I generally leave the room when the sumbitch starts talking.
Gloria DryGarden
@Glory b: the thing about having visions is definitely in my wheelhouse. Thanks. I’ll have a look.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Why do they always fit the stereotype?
no body no name
@JML:
I served and then did a bunch of stints for various firms that contracted out to the government. On paper non profits but they were anything but. The first public sector job I got offered was from the police department because of that history. I ran from public service and turned into a tech guru. You really don’t want to hire me for a public service job like that.
Your local PD recruits veterans. As policing is now a combat job. It’s also one of the few jobs that doesn’t require a degree to crack six figures and thus be ok. The civilian six figure crowd does not get this. The only solution to six figure income assholes is to be an even worse six figure income asshole. Our party will not recognize this and keep bleeding the lower income people until something is done about it.
H.E.Wolf
@p.a.:
Thank you for the shout-out to Bill Mauldin. Our public library has his complete Willie and Joe cartoons: equal parts humorous and not funny at all. Mauldin was one of the greats.
BellyCat
@Baud: Of course, wealthy SS are the only recipients to benefit. But, The narrative they are peddling makes ALL SS recipients get to feel good about the way the change is falsely being pedaled.
Gaslighting. Yet again.
Gloria DryGarden
@H.E.Wolf: link not working. Great image of a vast breathtaking library of books, but no poem
TONYG
@p.a.: Yeah, those “Willie and Joe” cartoons were great. My older relatives (all long since deceased) who had been ww2 veterans reminded me of “Willie and Joe”. None of them bragged, and if they talked about the war at all it was with sarcastic jokes. (One of my uncles had been a teenage private in the Battle of the Bulge and the Battle of Hurtgen Forest. He used to tell us that he’d spent the war peeling potatoes in a mess hall.). Those guys would have laughed at an officer like Hegseth. (My uncle, who left the Army right after the war ended, had a low opinion of military lifers in general. He referred to them as guys who want to be told when to eat and when to shit.)
H.E.Wolf
My dad was too young for WWII. He squeaked into Air Force officer training in the early 1950s. He never saw combat, not even close. He did serve once as an attaché on a diplomatic mission, but he only ever mentioned the police motorcycles that loudly escorted the diplomatic vehicle.
After his death, I was going through papers in his file cabinet and came across a letter of commendation from Field Marshal Montgomery (yes, that Montgomery), related to his non-combat service. I just sat there with my mouth ajar.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
H.E.Wolf
@Gloria DryGarden: ”link not working. Great image of a vast breathtaking library of books, but no poem”
Dang! Thanks for the heads-up. Does this other one work?
https://www.angelfire.com/ca/iloveDave/mysg.html
Torrey
Just checking the Oxford English Dictionary, I find warfighter first attested in 1915 in the Manchester Guardian: “These refreshment depots are needed as much for our war-workers at home as they are for our war-fighters at the front.” So the initial use seems to have been intended simply to clarify what kind of job people were doing in support of the war effort, and in this case to argue specifically for support for all those contributing to the effort.
H.E.Wolf
Also trying the original link again – can you please let me know if it works? I’m about to be offline, but will check back later. Many thanks!
https://ashlynnfenton.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/i-like-to-think-of-harriet-tubman-by-susan-griffin/
Scamp Dog
@Gloria DryGarden: For me, the link brought up an error page with a search, and typing “Susan Griffin” brought up her poems. The second one on the page was the one on Tubman.
Update: @H.E.Wolf: the second try works!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: That’s the reason I have always opposed the homegrown Indian variety of fascists, the RSS, even though they tell lies that my people like to hear
Harriet Tubman is an American hero. There needs to be like a Netflix (or some other streaming platform) miniseries about her. The last movie about her didn’t do her justice IMHO.
New Deal democrat
Of course the 4th is already past, but this morning I came across the following thread (lightly abridged below) by a user who goes by the nym “pwnallthethings” on Bluesky, that is an excellent counterpoint to the typical jingoism, explaining what it is that Independence Day *actually* commemorates, and why the corruption of the judiciary in what was in form a system of Parliamentary supremacy was so crucial to the rupture:
——-
I think [it is] a more useful thing [ ] to explain why Independence Day isn’t just worth celebrating /despite/ the current, well, everything. But also specifically /because/ of it
Independence Day is an odd holiday in some respects for what it actually *isn’t*. For example, it *isn’t* a celebration of a military victory.…
Independence Day also *isn’t* directly the anniversary of the nation’s founding either. That’s September 17. We have Constitution Day for that.
…. It’s not the anniversary of *achieving* independence over the tyrant King. That came later, and at cost. But that was the date that America formally *aspired* to become an independent nation.
In 1776, the British Empire was colossal in power. It was a monarchy, yes, but also not despotic, at least not in a trivial way. Britain had Parliamentary supremacy; its MPs elected by general election. At home and abroad, the Empire maintained a professional advanced judiciary with full-time judges
it also, at least on paper, asserted a series of public and private rights for citizens and subjects across the Empire. One of the central grievances in the Declaration of Independence, and throughout the Founders’ writings is not the /lack/ of those promises, but how those promises were /betrayed/
The Revolutionaries believed for a time that the real tyranny emanated from Parliament; that perhaps the King would constrain them on their behalf. Seems strange to modern eyes, but that’s also why lots of early-fretting about if Congress became too powerful, odd concern as it seems these days
The colonial judges routinely broke the social contract, and denied those rights promised to the colonial British subjects. That’s where you get so many of the specific grievances in that text from. Hell, it’s where we get most of the Bill of Rights itself from
It turns out that paper rights are not real rights, and a collapse inward of the separation of powers into the shadow of a man can and do form a constructive tyranny. [my emphasis]
They loved their country not for what it was, but for the hope of what it could yet become. Believed in it not for the government it had, but the government they hoped would replace it….
That is what Independence Day is. Not the celebration of a country already fully formed, already perfect and unchangable, or grand for its strength, but for those people who rejected tyranny; and their resolute and steely determination that a government hostile to liberty would be defeated.
——-
– End
https://bsky.app/profile/pwnallthethings.bsky.social/post/3lt6k2rb2lc2t
As a side note, my neighborhood was unusually quiet last night. I didn’t hear any private fireworks being exploded. I wonder how widespread that phenomenon was, and whether municipal displays were noticeably more sparsely attended.
Dorothy A. Winsor
To me, “warrior” sounds like an individual fighter, while “soldier” sounds like a member of a fighting force. It doesn’t surprise me that Rs think in individualistic rather than team terms.
Booger
@TONYG: Yes indeed. I remember reading that the third most important invention that led to Allies Victory in WW2 was…the pallet.
Moving stuff ain’t trivial and it ain’t glamorous.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
No One of Consequence
@no body no name: Hell yeah!
-NOoC
Booger
@Dorothy A. Winsor: “Warrior” “Warfighter” and “Tip of the Spear” are used to comprise the mercs we employ who are not officially in a branch of the armed forces, along with those who are.
UncleEbeneezer
@Gloria DryGarden: Harriet was okay but in my opinion a bit of a let down. Season 2 of the tv series Underground is much better and there is a stand-alone episode titled Minty that is much better if you are looking for a Tubman fix. The whole series is incredible but that episode in particular is just riveting and should have won all the Emmys.
topclimber
@H.E.Wolf: Good link. Great poem.
TONYG
What gets me is the way that clowns like Hegseth try to rewrite history. The Waffen SS were fanatical “warriors”. (How did that work out for them?). The American soldiers, Marines, airmen, naval personnel and Merchant Marine crews were ordinary U.S. citizens who did what they had to do for a few years and then (for the most part) left the military and lived their lives. They were citizens who did their duty, not “warriors”.
p.a.
@TONYG: My late uncle (thru marriage) has a modest memorial on an Army base in Georgia: he fired the official last (American) shot in the European theater, at a sniper in Czechoslovakia. His take on it, “I was so happy when I heard the war was over I shot a round.”
He went AWOL twice. When the MPs came to his house his father gave him up immediately, “he’s in the attic.” Father was an Italian citizen, told my uncle “I no wanna go internment for hiding you.”
I don’t know the official procedure, but he suffered no punishment that I know: they needed bodies.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@H.E.Wolf:
Everyone should read Maudlin. For the Bicentennial he did a series set during the American Revolution which was equally funny, insightful with the same eye towards the *soldiers* perspective.
UncleEbeneezer
@schrodingers_cat: Season 2 of Underground is probably the best thing out there. It’s fictionalized but Tubman is a main character and much of her story is based on her real life. The whole series is amazing and should’ve never been cancelled but it was also incredibly expensive to produce and had a bunch of streaming rights issues that made it impossible for even someone like Oprah to save it (though she tried). It’s also probably the best and most unflinching depiction of Antebellum America while also being almost entirely from the perspective of the enslaved people. It really celebrates their resolve, fight, ingenuity, culture etc. in a way most films/series’ haven’t before.
Gloria DryGarden
@H.E.Wolf: I got in .thx.
@Scamp Dog: first time I got that error message. Just tried again and it opened. But now I need to reserve that whole library for an afternoon of quiet, sunlight, and reading. Introvert friends and book lovers are invited to join me.
oh, if only…
p.a.
@TONYG: WW2 Demobilization in the Pacific was so slow that soldiers, marines, sailors adopted the slogan “no boats no votes” to pressure the USG to get them home to civilian life.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@New Deal democrat:
Our area was gloriously lit last night. We spent two hours biking around a 30 block square area watching tons of splodeys . It’s actually more extensive than some municipal shows from childhood.
Related to that, Coors Field always has a big display that we can see from a rise 3 blocks from our house. Massive.
The two worst teams in baseball played there last night, Rockies and White Sox.
The game was sold out because of the fireworks.
Princess
@satby: you suggest here an excellent point which is that we raise up soldiers for praise and admiration not because they are tough guy warrior killing machines but because of their willingness to sacrifice for the greater good. Something Trump Kegbreath et al could never understand.
zhena gogolia
So my husband knows to throw out all of the NYT except the Arts section before it gets to me. But I just had to rip it up, because they include an article about Dana Carvey’s Joe Biden impression.
WHY? WHY? WHY?
RevRick
@Matt McIrvin: While MrsRev and I vacationed for several days in Cape May, NJ, we visited a newly opened museum dedicated to Harriet Tubman. It turns out that the Cape May Lighthouse served as a beacon for an escape route on the Underground Railroad across the Delaware Bay. There was built up, as a result, a solid black community in Cape May.
O. Felix Culpa
@zhena gogolia:
Because cheap easy targets are the best targets when you’re the NYT?
lowtechcyclist
@Gloria DryGarden:
There was some cyberhash at the end of the link that messed it up. Knocking that off fixed it. This should work: I like to think of Harriet Tubman
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Same reason Trump does performative acts: to own the libs.
ETA: Unfortunately, the NYT understands that there is a market of libs who want to be owned.
RevRick
@JoyceH: Hegseth’s “warrior culture” is based in the supposed strength exhibited by the Russian army. It’s the illusion of buffed up manly men fighting hand-to-hand combat. This may have been true for Sparta and Rome, but nowadays a skinny, wan teenager adept at operating a controller, operating a drone is far more valuable. Most deaths in war are due to artillery and drone strikes.
The modern military is 85% tail — the supply train, the analysis, the equipment maintenance, none of which requires a dick and much of which doesn’t require upper body strength. Instead, emotional intelligence is often of greater importance.
kalakal
@Booger: I’ve always thought that Operational Research* was one of the most significant war winning inventions the Western Allies had in WW2.
*it predates WW2 but didn’t really kick off in the modern sense until around 1937 when Rowe and Watson-Watt applied it to the Chain-Home radar system
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker:
Forgive me, but could you hear me snickering?
RevRick
@p.a.: That, and rip roaring inflation, got Truman a GOP Congress, which enacted the notorious Taft-Hartley anti labor law. Over Truman’s veto.
Professor Bigfoot
@Betty Cracker: Did y’all arrange to send him a link to that Southern Man video?
He sounds like someone who needed it. ;)
kindness
I grew up in an era where racism was hidden more. Trump’s people where racism is an honored chip on their shoulders. I am very disappointed in normie Republicans. They aren’t any different from the ‘good’ Germans under Hitler in the 30’s.
Splitting Image
@RevRick:
I think the idea of “warrior culture” is also based on the myth of the minuteman and the role of militias in the Revolution. They have the idea that a strong army ought to be made of manly men willing and able to be called up for service at a moment’s notice, not career soldiers committing to public service. This also affects their idea of how civilians ought to behave, because obviously any women out there who aren’t bringing their sons up to be Rambo aren’t pulling their weight.
As you say, however, modern military might is based on the strength of a country’s military toys, and that means that the U.S. advantage over the rest of the world has been in research, development, logistics, and maintenance, none of which requires an overly-buffed Rambo. Actual soldiers remain necessary of course, but they are not the most important part of the operation any more.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: A little bird told me that the DoD has had a stated emphasis on the “warfighter” for quite a while. And that can make sense – people working on defense issues should always keep the people actually doing the work in the trenches, doing the fighting, doing the bleeding and the dying, near the front of their mind when they’re doing their jobs.
E.g. DARPA.mil/about:
And when one remembers folks being sent to fight in W’s wars without their needed equipment like body armor, then a stated emphasis now on the importance of the “warfighter” is welcome. If it’s more than just words…
Of course, like any language, it can be twisted.
Similarly, when new administrations come in, they typically have new favorite buzzwords and emphasis. And that’s fine, in normal times…
We should remember that “language was invented to hide men’s thoughts” so cannot be taken at face value. And “show me your budget and I’ll tell you your values” is also good to remember. All of these things fit together.
Grr…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: At at first I read that as, “he was hit in the Doha with a softball” and I thought, that must have hurt!
Tim C
@TONYG: Not only that, the SS has been wildly overestimated in it’s fighting ability. They were cruel monsters who were endlessly propagandized but the Nazi state. Executing prisoners and civilians doesn’t mean you are an elite military unity.
rikyrah
@satby:
Uh huh 🧐 🧐
jimmiraybob
The heroic life journey of Frederick Douglass is certainly worth knowing too.
That being said, I suppose that the door is closed on developing Idiocracy II: The Trumpening.
Sure Lurkalot
The Hegseth warrior ethos is tied to so many of the right wing pathologies…the “I’m your daddy” protector image that Trump laughably thinks he projects, the DEI antipathy, the party of law and order (bullshit) meme, the Joe Rogan and his many copycats schtick, the “problem with (white) boys” industry, the military parade “honoring” a draft dodger president, the plan to have the 250th anniversary of the war for independence feted by the UFC…
There was a video going around last week of a young man explaining why he and his friends voted Trump and it was basically “guys like fighting”. I may not be male but Trump and his cosplay cabinet project the most superficial masculinity of a grade school playground.
oldgold
Hegseth’s warrior culture is not the present and certainly not the future.
The tech savvy (nerds) are our most effective military personnel and in the future will be more so.
schrodingers_cat
@UncleEbeneezer: Thanks for the recommendation
no body no name
@Booger:
I’ve been uniformed and a merc we don’t call ourselves that. Most people do not understand what a merc is. This is not Blackwater. Ukraine to this day offers citizenship and passports if you go to Poland. You can probably find an NGO or non profit that will give you bullshit pay on top of t hat. You don’t pay taxes when doing this. You can get citizenship there after and you are treated well.
It’s tip of the spear shit as you put it. But there are real ways to uniform up as a merc and still be a merc that are not questionable. In many ways the extra support and money is to keep your home alive and your loved ones well fed.
Not all contractors are out there for the wrong reasons.
Dorothy A. Winsor
While we’re talking about propagandistic terms, can I also protest against “Homeland”? It puts my teeth on edge, though I have a hard time articulating why
Glory b
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Same.
I hated the term from the first time I heard it.
I always thought it was too close to “Fatherland.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Glory b: Why not just say “country”? The deliberate difference feels pretentious and aimed at people’s emotions.
stinger
The vast majority of the Army (and probably all branches), about 85%, is service and support. To take a Navy example, an aircraft carrier is crewed by 5,000 personnel, who support the approx. 150-200 pilots on board. When Kegsbreath and his ilk talk about “warriors”, they don’t mean mechanics and computer programmers and cooks and medics* and supply sergeants.
And then, of course, although women can now enlist in infantry, tanks, and other combat arms specialties, the number actually assigned to in-theater units is vanishingly small. And Kegsbreath would like to do away with all of them. Keep all that “warfighter” glory for persons he imagines to be like himself.
ETA: “Medic! This guy got hit in the face with a softball!”
Elizabelle
Does anybody know the name of that library illustrating the Harriet Tubman poem?
It looks very old, and very flammable. You can just about smell the dust and ancient leather.
stinger
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
@Glory b:
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Yep. All this.
Another Scott
@Elizabelle: It seems to be the library at Trinity College in Dublin
HTH!
Best wishes,
Scott.
narya
@no body no name: Like Rick in Casablanca? (complimentary)
Elizabelle
@Another Scott: Aha. Home of the Book of Kells (1,200 years old).
Thank you. I wondered if it might be the British Library. Obviously, have never seen either.
Dublin is definitely on the 2 to 3 year bucket list.
David Collier-Brown
Off topic: courtesy of a list by Neil DeGrasse Tyson:
8) The Prince by Machiavelli — “to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.”
Duke of Clay
@satby: “We were surrounded by just average dads growing up, who had done incredible, heroic things during that war and never talked about it. They “did their bit” as the British say.”
Exactly my experience. I never knew my Uncle Weaver (actually a first cousin once removed), who lived just down the street, was even a veteran. He never mentioned it. But a couple of years ago, I learned he had been wounded twice in Europe, once on Utah Beach.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you to everyone who checked my links for the Harriet Tubman poem by Susan Griffin!
I love how Griffin so vividly connects cruel decisions (and immoral indifference) in the current day (1970 and 2025) to Tubman’s past actions – and to the actions we take in the present and future.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@stinger: The term assumes I’ll respond well to it, meaning it assumes I’m a certain kind of person. I’m insulted. Same thing with “warrior” really.
cope
“Not All War Heroes Wear
FlashyFashy Tattoos”. Fixed it for you.Steve LaBonne
Courage is inversely proportional to how loudly someone boasts of being courageous.
Liminal Owl
@Baud: Thanks. I received the email, read it, and said wtf?
Soprano2
My husband is a Vietnam combat veteran. The only visible thing that tells you he’s a veteran is his license plate, which is a CIB badge. He told me once to look for the ones with a rifle; he said those are people who actually saw combat. He doesn’t wear anything that says he’s a veteran, or that he was in the Army. I asked him why; he said he just didn’t care for it. He doesn’t have anything against people who do wear that stuff, he just doesn’t like it’s for himself. He never brags about his service, although he will talk about it some if you ask. He thinks Kegsbreath is a ding dong.
Liminal Owl
@Professor Bigfoot: Fantasy world derived from Plato’s Republic? (And a bastardization of Tolkien, of course. But Tolkien, for all his faults, valued farmers more than wizards and warriors, at least theoretically—a more Jeffersonian Republic, maybe?)* Hegseth’s varation is from low-rent D&D fantasy imitations.)
*Now, if only Tolkien had seen fit to valorize “women’s” roles: mothers, healers, caretakers…
Wapiti
@BellyCat: Taxing SS income is and has always been facially absurd.
Income is income in my view. I’m a military retiree. Some military retirees think that their retirement should be tax free. Some military retirees go on to have an additional middle class or high middle class income and still think their retirement should be tax free. Likewise some social security earners.
With our progressive income tax structure, considering all income taxable and setting zero or low rates for low income folk seems the most equitable. Making certain classes of income special seems less equitable.
Liminal Owl
@satby: THIS.
lowtechcyclist
@Professor Bigfoot:
I don’t do role-playing games, but ‘warrior’ sounds to me like a word from that environment, where you find out how your warrior fares by rolling a 20-sided die.
lowtechcyclist
@Steve LaBonne:
Reminds me of this song:
I’m not a coward, I’ve just never been tested
I’d like to think that if I was, I would pass
Look at the tested, and think “there but for the grace, go I”
Might be a coward, I’m afraid of what I might find out
no body no name
@lowtechcyclist:
I do RPG there are not warriors. There is a monk and fighter class. Maybe paladin. Bigfoot constantly lies and twists shit.
dnfree
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Yes, “Homeland” sounded vaguely Nazi-ish to me when I first heard it—unAmerican. “Warrior” has a similar effect, as many here have expressed well.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Wapiti: Exactly. Mr DAW and I should pay taxes on our social security. We’re lucky enough to be able to afford to do it
dnfree
@BellyCat: We pay income tax on 85% of our social security income, and I think we should. People below a certain income already don’t pay income tax on it, and some don’t pay income tax at all.
Social Security was intended as an insurance program that we all pay into. Some people pay in their whole lives and never get a dime. People who live beyond age 85 or so get more than they paid in. It’s income that should be taxed, in my thinking, for those who can afford to pay tax on it.
MagdaInBlack
@no body no name: None? In any RPG anywhere?
Another Scott
@Wapiti: +1
Reaganomics started the process of breaking the government by saying that some investment income was better and should be taxed less than wages and similar normal income…
Earlier I argued that anyone earning up to the national average income (appropriately defined – e.g. maybe per-capita GDP) should not pay federal income taxes.
Made me look … WARNING – TaxFoundation.org:
Of course, it can be argued that someone who doesn’t pay taxes or has a $0 (or negative) obligation is not a taxpayer, so one has to carefully look at how they define those categories…
But, it looks like it wouldn’t be a huge change to the money raised to explicitly say the bottom 50% have no federal income tax obligation (and scale things in the top 50% more progressively, if necessary).
It would be a huge change, though, for the US Congress to give up the power and inclination to tweak the tax code every year…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
BellyCat
While not an unreasonable position mathematically, the cultural interpretation is often misunderstood at best and, at worst, easily weaponized. I would argue that SS is the only class of income that should be exempt given its role as a social safety net.
I can’t knowledgeably speak to the military benefit issue. If military are exempt from paying SS tax while serving, then this would seemingly be the same as SS and both incomes should be exempt from a “cultural values” point of view.
I suspect “the maths” would not be too dissimilar, while the perception would be greatly improved.
Eunicecycle
@dnfree: my understanding is, the taxes paid on SS go into the SS fund, not the general fund, helping to extend the time SS can pay benefits.
no body no name
@MagdaInBlack:
No the combat class breaks into fighter (generic shit fuck who tanks damage), monk (no armor does hand to hand), and Paladin (cross a fighter with a cleric).
Everyone is a warrior. Even your bard and rogue who don’t really fight. Fighting classes are specific. You could toss ranger in there but this is details. Barbarian is a class but has issues.
In role playing defacto you are a warrior. It’s just the tools and kits you bring to solve the problem. Most of them are not blunt force.
MagdaInBlack
@no body no name: Thank you. I am somewhat more knowledgeable about something I know nothing about beyond the name =-)
I think they use “warrior” because they think it sounds cool and aggressive. Because they’re all children.
Sure Lurkalot
There was a Star Trek TNG episode about a world that modified men to be most excellent combatants in a war and instead of working to unmodify and reintegrate them back into peaceful society, they imprisoned them on a separate planet. The warriors just wanted their humanity back.
My fathers and uncles fought in WW2 (and beyond for my career military FIL), yes they were silent heroes, some from unspeakable horrors plus the ethos that “real men” don’t succumb to the damage they suffered.
Trump and his band paint a picture of the world in terms of violent conflict: real war, their political opposition, immigration as invasion, strict gender, race and ethnicity demarcation, lazy binaries that are easy to sell.
Some of us would like a world with no war or warriors, live in a country that doesn’t spend trillions on the military as opposed to real life necessities and have the largest prison population in the world.
no body no name
@MagdaInBlack:
A rogue with backstab or a ranger who can control animals is every bit the warrior as that fighter in full plate and also has other skills you might want. Fighters tank hits, they don’t solve problems.
You have a lot more fun not being the tank.
NotMax
@oldgold
Hegseth has Sparta envy.
Miss Bianca
@Baud:
Can’t fault you there.
planetjanet
I need to have a little mini-rant, if you will humor me. The Social Security Administration sent me a regular email that my statement was ready to view. Simple enough. Okay, let’s check it. So they don’t accept old username and password and need either Login.gov or ID.me. Understood. It’s fine to use one of these super secure special password programs. I had to go through lots of extra steps to get it. I have a Login.gov account for TSA/Global Entry. Login.gov info accepted. Two-Factor Authentication accepted. Well, now I get a page that that is just not enough. They want a photo of my driver’s license, my SSN, my phone number and to log in with Login.gov AGAIN. Sheesh. They send a link to my phone to take a picture of my license. The “take photo” button is inactive. So its not possible to get in. I don’t think this is your normal IT mess. All I want to do is look at my statement. Thank goodness, I am not dependent on income from them …yet.
MagdaInBlack
@NotMax: Ya know…… I was just thinking that too: warrior to them = the movies “300” and Troy.”
NotMax
@MagdaInBlack
“The Pentagon is spending how much on body oil?”
//
dnfree
@BellyCat: Social security is part of the safety net, for sure. So those of us with sufficient other income besides social security mostly can afford to pay income tax on the social security. That helps those who don’t have much other income who are more dependent on the social security. (Don’t get me wrong—social security is a significant part of our retirement income and I don’t want the amount I’m “entitled” to receive reduced—but I have other income as well and can afford to pay taxes on part of the social security.)
Booger
@no body no name: I stand corrected. Thank you.
Hungry Joe
A fun argument/discussion: The $20 bill — Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglass? I used to lean Douglass, but the more I learn about Tubman …
MagdaInBlack
@NotMax: 🤭
Baud
@NotMax:
Not enough.
Steve LaBonne
@dnfree: I feel exactly the same way. But we all know that too many well-off old people of the Villages type are terminally self-centered and entitled.
kalakal
@Elizabelle:
Fun story. A friend of mine studied Libray and Information Science at Trinity College and was one of the students who got to Turn The Page*. After a lot of practice and with special gloves** she had her moment of sheer terror and turned a page of The Book of Kells in its super environment controlled display case. She said she nearly fainted.
*Every couple of months they turn a page of the book, go often enough you’ll get to see the whole thing
** Nobody touches the Book of Kells
Duane
Trollhatten around? Some genius has an editorial in the Sacremento Bee entitled, “I don’t like Trump much, but America could use some of his corrective evil.”
The guy’s a retired systems engineer from the Air Force.
Baud
@Duane:
Alternate title: “I like Donald Trump”
Elizabelle
@kalakal: That would be astonishing.
Duane
@Baud: It’s disturbing how many, ” he’s got a point” comments there are.
Also, s/b spelled Trollhattan.
Citizen Dave
@planetjanet: These kinds of things quickly raise me to infuriating rage. I have a LogIn as well for Global Entry, etc. Also have a SS account as activation is nearing in a couple of years.
Thanks for sharing!–will have to look into this.
Ruckus
@JoyceH:
That’s because real warriors live that, little dweebs play pretend war with their “friends.” Living and playing are two entirely different concepts in this vein.
Ruckus
@planetjanet:
I’ve been on SS for a while now. I’ve never had that level of presenting ID on the SS website. Now I use ID.me but I’ve never had that level of scrutiny. It’s possible that I’ve been using it for a couple of decades so I don’t need that level of scrutiny every time but I never remember seeing that level. They do have a couple extra steps but nothing out of the ordinary, all things considered.
I’d bet actual money that what you saw was not actually social security.
Ruckus
@Hungry Joe:
Go with Tubman. A woman who was tougher than nails, smarter than her opponents and likely even those on her side. Anyone should be wishful they had her humanity, brains and concepts.
surfk9
@Duane: In the nineties I worked with a guy at a state agency who was a retired Air Force Lt. Col. His office was festooned with American flags and he had a picture on the wall of him shaking hands with Reagan. He practically berated me for all of the evils of liberalism every time we interacted. Yet here he was double-dipping out of the federal and state trough, his wife was a high ranking state employee and his daughter was on SSI. Yet he hated the “Government”. The hypocrisy of this guy reeked.
Elizabelle
@surfk9: There is no Tea Partier like a person with a secure government income. Money for me, none for thee.
Professor Bigfoot
@lowtechcyclist: And everyone goes home safe and sound at the end of the game.
Unlike the real world where the “game” involves blood and pain.
Professor Bigfoot
@no body no name: Really? Care to identify any lies I’ve written here?
kalakal
@Elizabelle: It was, it also gave her nightmares as she imagined her ripping a page out/in half. Fortunately it’s made of vellum not paper so it’s tougher than you’d think but even so…
She now looks at it as an incredible privilage to have done it, and she’s right. I’m jealous.
JWR
@Baud:
Last night, I watched Washington Week with that Signal Guy, Goldberg?, and he was interviewing Kara Swisher. At one point she went on and on about how much she liked The Apprentice and how much she liked Donald Trump and it got really sickening, and I thought wow, this person doesn’t strike me as fair and balanced at all. I wonder how many journalists are fans of the phony baloney Trump brand?
Professor Bigfoot
@no body no name: Oh, excuse me. I didn’t mean to offend your RPG player sensibilities.
My point is that these sorry fuckers don’t live here in the real world, but real people in the real world will suffer for their stupidity and their fantasy thinking.
planetjanet
@Ruckus:
Guess I’ll try the login.gov help desk later when I have time to waste. It looks like it wants me to recreate my login.gov account. Honestly it probably a bug d.o.g e. created.
Elizabelle
@kalakal: To touch something a monk illustrated 1,200 years ago. That is rarified. I love that they gave students the opportunity.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud: And don’t forget Gabrielle!
She may have started as a simple farm girl with a gift for storytelling, but Xena trained her to be her successor.
WTFGhost
@dnfree: As Yoda put it well, “wars don’t make you great!”
@MagdaInBlack: Alas, correct. One thing I had heard, was, one of the reasons people didn’t like to talk too much about combat post WWII, was, well… it felt good. It feels good to get shot at, and missed. And I think enough of them had to face grim enough tasks that they also understood that OMG VICTORY feeling is dangerous, because, the next day, you’re picking up arms and legs to throw into a mass grave.
I never served; if I had, I probably would have died during a Code Red at Gitmo, and some young, good looking lawyer would try to defend the guys who didn’t intend to do nothing *harmful*, before lulling my former CO into screaming “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT I ORDERED THE CODE RED!”
(Seriously: it was bone-fucking *chilling* to watch the first part of that movie. That’s *exactly* what CFS in a Marine would look like. And OMG, the poor bastard can’t explain it himself, he PUSHES each and every run, he feels he’s pushing harder than anyone, and he probably is. Well, was.)
Where was I? Right, never served, but I got a bit of that, just from schoolyard fights. It feels good to be the victor in a neighborhood spat, and came to realize that, yes, indeed, that feeling is for *children*. Growing up, you learn to channel it. To be good sports – don’t mock the losers, without them, you wouldn’t have played a game worth your parents cheering you, and remember, this was just for FUN. Even though it’s a lot more fun to win.
Well… if you think combat, and victory, is fun, sooner or later, you’ll end up killing someone, and, well, read up on serial killers, there’s a reason they don’t decide “fuck this, I’m one and done.” It can be addictive. And you need to confront that, head on, if you don’t want to end up a murderous psychopath.
Don’t get me wrong, most people *do* confront it, head on, eventually – again, like the veterans after WWII, or, so the legend I heard went, they realized that good feeling was bought at too high a cost.
Those are the people who you want fighting your wars. Sure, some will become, I believe “overzealous” is the term, and hopefully, drawn away from combat leadership roles.
They are also the people who I warn rightwingers most about. “No, we don’t love military crap. But since we *have* to do military crap, I’m ready to shove this war straight up your ass, for forcing me to do all this crap I hate!”
Instead, I think we’ve been encouraging the bloodthirsty, who are exactly the people you don’t want fighting your wars, because they want to fight, not dick around with diplomacy.
NotMax
@planetjanet
Yellow warning sign reading “CAUTION. BIG BALLS AT WORK.” needed.
//
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@H.E.Wolf: wow. Thanks for posting this. Harriet Tubman was a great woman.
NotMax
@Sister Golden Bear
Didja ever notice how Gabrielle’s knit top kept losing one or more rows from its bottom edge at the beginning of each season?
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Gloria DryGarden: just type Harriet Tubman in the search box and it comes right up. Amazing photo of library!
TONYG
Ya know, for a guy who fancies himself to be a “macho war fighter”, Hegseth is spending a lot of time, energy and taxpayer money doing routine administrative tasks like renaming ships and removing information about women and non-white people from historical websites. Aside from the sheer stupidity of what he’s doing, it makes me wonder what productive work (if any) he’s doing for what the taxpayers are paying him.
Betty Cracker
@Professor Bigfoot: Nah, I don’t even have that shithead’s contact info! But I did share the Southern man vid with my liberal sister, and we teamed up to send it to several Repub relatives we thought might be receptive to a message with that framing. So far, we’ve received one positive response and another that made us wonder if the recipient is cognitively impaired.
TONYG
… not to mention the fact that, given the invention of nuclear weapons 80 years ago, the U.S. military should be trying to prevent wars, not “fight wars”. What a fucking moron.
Kathleen
@Citizen Dave: i have been receiving SS for several years and migrated my login from Social Security to the new .gov login and did not have to provide any of that stuff. Maybe it because I was receiving benefits. I wonder if your requirements are due to DOGE antics.
Kathleen
@Elizabelle: Plus public facilities like libraries to hold their meetings!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Booger: my father spent WWII on a supply ship in the Pacific theatre. No glamour, no medals, just tedium, sweat, and crucial moving of supplies. Eloquently described in Mr. Roberts.
TONYG
@TONYG: And, yeah. I worked in software development and support for forty years. I can attest that a simple act like renaming an entity can be a logistical headache. All references in all databases have to be located and changed. What a goddamn waste of money for no reason.
TONYG
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): The supply ships won the war, and there was a lot of danger even though the guys were not “war fighters” per se. One of my relatives was on the crew of a Merchant Marine freighter that was torpedoed in 1942. He survived to spend a week in a lifeboat before reaching land. A few months later he was sent right back out again.
Ruckus
@surfk9:
@Elizabelle:
A lot of humans cannot see past their noses or understand that there will almost always be people that are faster, better, smarter, very likely actually productive in ways they cannot comprehend. The words pompous, arrogant, fucking jackass almost always apply to them. I’ve hired people that played the hiding their BS game very well in job interviews and they often lasted usually less than 2 weeks. They did not want or know how to interact with others in a business that required specific learned physical and mental skills and often required them to work well with others to accomplish the proper outcome of weeks/months of technical work. (We built specialty tools that our customers used to create very specific products, that often required rather extreme levels of technical skills to create. My last job required working to very few millionths of an inch tolerance.)
Lyrebird
Thank you Anne Laurie and thank you @Glory b: for all this
I had some familiarity with General Tubman’s record, but always glad to learn more. One other famous Civil War hero I only learned about recently was Robert Smalls (wiki link) who took a Confederate warship out from under their noses and delivered it to the Union, changing many Union leaders’ minds in the process and then winning a bunch more battles.
WTFGhost
Keep in mind, every worker “in the system” paying any taxes is paying Social Security and Medicare, which is funding current recipients, which is one of the governments largest obligations.
That they are also promised to receive social security, and medicare, someday, isn’t relevant.
It’s not right to conflate “federal income tax” obligations with whether someone is a “tax payer.”
Pappenheimer
@satby: That generation is pretty much gone. My astronomy professor talked about using stellar navigation to get his Avenger and crew back to their carrier; another professor came perilously close to being drafted into the Japanese suicide pilots even though he was Korean, and yet a third had served with the Chindits in his home country, Burma. None of them spoke much about their war experiences, even when asked.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Me too. The reason is clearer in the original German.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Glory b: exactly 💯
NotMax
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
Based on a previous comment, that job could be described as a pallet cleanser.
:)
Another Scott
@WTFGhost: Sorry, I was sloppy.
I was only talking about income taxes there.
I’m not an Rmoney fan!!
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
NotMax
@Pappenheimer
If you read it in a book you’d chalk it up to wildly imaginative fiction. But it really happened during WW2.
Amazing story (less than a 20 minute watch): The Ship Left for Dead… That Came Back.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@TONYG: Supplying the Pacific war was an immense undertaking (sharks!), but I am in awe of the folks who supplied the war effort in Europe ( and our Russian allies). Shipping all those tanks etc. across the freezing Atlantic (the Murmansk Run JFC).
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@NotMax: 😄
Ruckus
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
My father was in the USN during WWII, served in the Pacific and refused to talk about his service other than he was a machinist mate (which could mean any number of actual jobs. He did well and held a reasonable level of rank for his time in but even after I served he would not talk about it at all.) As I’m the only one left out of 5 in my family (youngest…) I will never know any more than that and I have the family picture album with several of him in uniform.
pieceofpeace
Looked over the many definitions for warriors, and this is the one most closely related to my childhood learning of the word, which has been revised by Hesketh, and many others:
https://www.pbs.org/wned/warrior-tradition/features/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-warrior
TONYG
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): Yes. The Merchant Marine guys were relatively defenseless. My relative’s (my grandmother’s brother’s) ship had a small deck gun, but that didn’t do much good unless a submarine happened to be surfaced during the day (which almost never happened). His ship was torpedoed in the Straits of Madagascar, and he did see men killed by sharks after the ship went down. A remarkable thing (to me) about this was the impersonality of the warfare. The men on the ship never saw the submarine. I’m pretty sure that Hegseth is unaware of any of this history, since there were no movies or TV shows made about it.
Mo MacArbie
Point of nerdy order: the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook says the following under the heading “Warrior”: “The Warrior group encompasses the character classes of heroes who make their way in the world primarily by skill at arms: fighters, paladins, and rangers.”
I’m more of a first edition guy myself, but the word was used there.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Mo MacArbie:
+100 for a reference to the 2nd Edition Players Handbook. I still have my original from all those years ago.
pieceofpeace
@Suzanne: Thanks for this thought-provoking item.
Kayla Rudbek
@Matt McIrvin: my Minnesotan ancestors are rolling in their graves at high speed over this (even though they were the rear echelon at Fort Snelling during the Civil War as far as I can tell). I am willing to bet some of my yarn fund that none of Kegsbreath’s ancestors were even living in Minnesota during the Civil War.
Kayla Rudbek
@Matt McIrvin: and “warfighter” is even worse and makes me twitch every time I see it.
Kayla Rudbek
@Another Scott: as a Cold War military brat, the term “warfighter” sets my teeth on edge. Soldier/sailor/Marine/airman are the proper terms, and none of this “Guardian” nonsense either (Space Force should be part of USAF in my arrogant hardened GenX opinion)
Kayla Rudbek
@Tim C: and they were also hopped up on methamphetamines and other drugs as well (https://www.amazon.com/Blitzed-Drugs-Third-Norman-Ohler/dp/1328663795)
Kayla Rudbek
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
@Glory b: yes, it is Nazi-reminiscent in my opinion. We could go old-school and change the current Department of Defense back to the War Department, and then reuse Department of Defense for internal affairs.