When Not to Obey Orders (2019)

They've been clearing out people who might resist before they get a chance to, and have made it clear that your life's gonna be messed up (your career's over, if nothing else, which is a pretty big deal for normal non-billionaires) if you rock the boat.

The only major, public resistance has been over dropping the prosecution of NY's mayor, and the first of the prosecutors to resign received a letter promising retaliation against other members of her office and that she'd have an investigation launched against her, which, even if it goes nowhere, is basically promising to make someone's life hell for the next year or so. They're looking to hurt people who don't play along, so others just shut up and do what they're told.

We haven't seen them going after political opponents (Democrats or Republicans who don't nod along to every single thing—and business leaders, this isn't limited to politicians) but nearly everyone in DC and in big business is a bit dirty and I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing very selective investigations and prosecutions of things that everyone had kinda agreed to overlook up until now (and that may be far from the most-severe corruption going on), that they don't even pretend aren't aimed at getting everyone else to stay in line and go along with the agenda, legality be damned. They've got the access to do it and there are some indications DOGE and pals are starting to poke around in things like tax records.

In the military it is a privilege to be given responsibility over a group of men and women. At least for me, I was very aware of these issues. I was a believer in the “God” camp. There is a noticeable contingent of US military who wear their religious beliefs on their sleeves. It is complicated but at least for me, morality occupied my mind all the time.

Even in peacetime, the Navy will launch 25 jets off an aircraft carrier off the coast of San Diego. They will be expected to go practice an opposed strike on a target in a range complex east of Reno, including multiple aerial refuelings and navigating the civilian airspace system. They will be expected to hit their target within seconds of the planned time. And they will be expected to come back and land on an aircraft carrier, at night, on the first pass.

And all the details of this kind of operation, from weapons planning to fuel planning to "who talks to whom on what radio net for what purposes" to flat-out "how do we simulate combat without anyone being killed in a midair collision" take place under the aegis of a bunch of twentysomething and thirtysomething junior officers led by a few thirtysomething (or maybe fortysomething) middle managers.

Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief. Like a Scrum shop, except the iterations are 24 hours long and the penalty for sloppiness could potentially involve flames, wreckage, and death.

In a total of 5 military coups if I'm not forgetting any...

I have a theory, that the military are only interested enough on democracy after they come back from fighting against some dictatorship. Otherwise they are bad news.

> "I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

Note that the enlisted soldiers' oath includes "I will obey the orders of the President of the United States" which the officers' oath doesn't.

Do you know what the current path is on Germany? (I don’t, honest question!)

(Edited typo)

And sadly he failed the test.

Not at all, on a societal level the US has been increasingly constructed as a huge, intricate, Prisoner's Dilemma where everyone, allegedly, has all to lose and noone, allegedly, has a say in the matter, therefore everyone complies with whatever the system, or media, asks of them.

Everyone thinks they're the victim, everyone thinks civic duty is something the oppressor is responsible for, not them personally, therefore everyone is free to be an oppressor themselves.

This problem will be intensified whenever, as we've seen elsewhere, the military starts being transformed from within and sycophants are put in positions of power.

In democracy government is for the country/people and not the other way round.

That's the thing, everyone who disobeys thinks they're doing the right thing.

https://theoutline.com/post/7984/rambo-last-blood-vietnam-bo...

The other tiny detail I liked was the real life POW-rescuing Rambo-type figure was used as the basis of the Hannibal character in the A-team show.

If the US and Russia negotiate a treaty in Ukraine without Ukraine or the EUs agreement, we could end up in a situation with US troops squaring off against EU/Ukraine military in order to enforce the treaty. Feels like everyone loses except maybe Russia.

Which explains why the tech bros are currently trying to install what's effectively a monarchy in the US federal government. Companies are inherently non democratic, so it's kind of bad that they're trying to install the same thing federally.

You cannot capture all possible scenarios with full nuance in a rule-book. And even if you somehow could, you cannot expect people to memorize all of it. The world is just too complex.

By nature it has to be vague because reality is vague.