Death wears bunny slippers:
https://media.wired.com/photos/5932c01d95879f6d0c009e10/mast...
Politically incorrect:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/bLwAAOSwaEhZHz9u/s-l300.jpg
Satisfaction guaranteed:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTiB52Y...
Central heating:
https://www.airforcecollectables.com/images/USAF%20Patch%20S...
It's always a bit reassuring to know that dark humor is allowed to exist somewhere within these faceless organizations. They're still allowed to be human. Being a secret agency and protected from the Twitter brigades always helps!
Are they, and are they, by extension, allowed to see "the enemy" as humans, too, or are these stickers part of the rituals of compensation?
> [Hobbes] foresaw the necessary idolatry of power itself by this new human type, that he would be flattered at being called a power-thirsty animal, although actually society would force him to surrender all his natural forces, his virtues and his vices, and would make him the poor meek little fellow who has not even the right to rise against tyranny, and who, far from striving for power, submits to any existing government and does not stir even when his best friend falls an innocent victim to an incomprehensible raison d'etat.
-- Hannah Arendt
In light of that, "tough and mischievous", variations of which 99% of these patches seem to be, doesn't have quite the luster. On the extreme end we have stuff like calling children "fun-sized terrorists", which is clearly not dark humor that expresses humanity, but cartoonish dehumanization.
> protected from the Twitter brigades
Covering one's ears further removes any semblance of luster.
Clay Shirky said something really smart about teenager's usage of public social media: They're talking to each other, not you. So stop listening. You wouldn't eavesdrop on teenager's at the local food court, would you?
I'd only start worrying once the inside jokes become agitprop, bumper stickers, or campaign slogans.
False dichotomies are a sophistry mechanism.
I'm noting what Hannah Arendt said also applies to a lot of people with money, or people in the military, plenty of positions of supposed power.
> So stop listening. You wouldn't eavesdrop on teenager's at the local food court, would you?
Did you seriously compare talking in a less than fawning way about insignia of soldiers in a military conducting wars of aggression, that were posted here as "cool and interesting", with snooping on minors? Wow.
We're both "snooping" in that sense, I just am not fawning over their conversation, that is all. Why can't the people who disagree with, but neither want to refute nore expand on my comment, simply ignore it? They are not the target audience, after all.
> I'd only start worrying once the inside jokes become agitprop, bumper stickers, or campaign slogans.
I'm not "worrying", I'm simply totally unimpressed, have been for ages, by anything in that bucket, and the Arendt quote is a good summary of why. I would guess that the worst things are regularly perpetrated by the utterly bland, not by those who call themselves deathlords of hellfire or whatever, but nonetheless, I think it's the opposite of "cool", it's unintentionally derpy.
I'm just trying to avoid immediately judging any group by their inside jokes. Also, my inner ethnographer is fascinated by how group culture is formed. Probably because, like Groucho Marx, I've never been part of a group.
Are weird-looking caricatures of dangerous animals "rituals of compensation" for US sports teams?
No. In both cases, they're about threatening the enemy and bonding the group. A lot of things in militaries, both modern and historic, were about that. If you look at the patches of various military units across time and nations, you'll see plenty of things that are meant to signal dominance.
And that's why I pointed out that it's usually done by meek little fellows in the larger scheme of things. Asserting dominance over others is coupled with being dominated in turn, the dichotomy isn't so much "dominant vs dominated", but rather "dominated and dominating vs. free".
Seeing plenty of that all throughout history is a great reason to call it out for what it is, so we can have something worthwile.
yes, i suppose when you bring up something totally unrelated to the subject at hand spoken in a different context by unconnected people, it does seem pretty bad