Coriolanus

There seems to be a war on, and I don't perceive that it's the same kind of war that most of us have trained for.  This isn't a war against an external threat that threatens the borders of this nation.  Nor am I referring to some shadow obviation of our fiat currency or technological security.

 

I am referring to the war that is currently being waged against the warriors who defend this nation. 

 

It is, without a doubt, the most subtle battle that I've ever experienced, but there is a battle there nonetheless.  I mean, I got the sense in February 1992, when the first edict out of the first Clinton administration was to "don't ask/don't tell" became a compromise to the wholesale legitimacy of homosexuality within the ranks of the military, that the actual ability of the military to suppress, close, and rip the throats out of our enemies was a secondary consideration in the upper-levels of the government. 

 

I thought, as a young Captain, that the Clintons wished to weaken the military culture that they had despised since the 1960s.

 

I was so wrong.  They didn't want to just "diversify" the military culture, they wanted to end it.  The military culture in the United States is perhaps the oldest.  It has hoary cultural traditions that are scary to this society, where any mode of behavior that is not closely supervised by some government bureaucrat is inherently dangerous and possibly suicidal.  The dichotomy is kinda big and deserves it's own section...

The Difference 

It's not dishonorable, just thoughtless.  All of us who have returned home face the inevitable... "Did you hafta kill anyone?" 

Unfortunately, the sheer numbers of those who choose to enlist/commission, against those who won't, will not sustain a sufficient number of people to allow us to maintain the culture that we've managed to sustain since the nation was born.   As a result, those who've had "skin in the game" become increasingly rare.  As with Rome, fewer and fewer understand what it means to bleed for one's oath, for one's nation.  As with Rome, once you've alienated those willing to bleed for you, you've lost the soul of the nation, since the willingness to do so is what binds us together as citizens.

Martius (AKA "Coriolanus") teaches us that we should fight for what we believe no matter what.   

 

 

 

[Brutus] There's no more to be said, but he is banish'd,
As enemy to the people and his country:
It shall be so.

 

[The people]  It shall be so, it shall be so.
 

[Coriolanus] You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize
As the dead carcasses of unburied men
That do corrupt my air, I banish you;
And here remain with your uncertainty!
Let every feeble rumor shake your hearts!
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes,
Fan you into despair! Have the power still
To banish your defenders; till at length
Your ignorance, which finds not till it feels,
Making not reservation of yourselves,
Still your own foes, deliver you as most
Abated captives to some nation
That won you without blows! Despising,
For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
There is a world elsewhere.

-Coriolanus, Act III, Scene II