Be All That You Can Be Pt. 1
In [spite of] The Army
With recruiting and retention in the toilet, the Army has brought back one of their great recruiting slogans: Be All You Can Be. Under quality leadership, the Army can provide purpose, motivation, and direction to cultivate virtue and achieve excellence. Without quality leadership, it can’t. I stand by my analysis outlined in one of my first articles indicating that Army leaders fall into one of three camps, the delusional, the psychopathic, and the jaded.
After reading Lorezo Warby’s work over on Helen Dale’s substack I’ve come to believe that the most effective Army leaders historically have been delusional in very particular ways. In other words, they employed an efficient level of self-deception to get the job done. They were able to believe that the Army is an effective means of supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States and protecting the American people from foreign adversaries that mean to do us harm. As the country descends into late stage bureaucracy, however, the share of leaders that are able to delude themselves of such is steadily shifting into the jaded category while psychopaths are also selected at higher rates above their peers.
These jaded leaders will often stay until retirement if they make the transition late in the game due to the incentives of our current retirement system. What my non-military readers will probably not know is that this retirement system is changing. I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say that leaders who become jaded will not have any incentive to stay in any longer than their respective service obligation demands. Furthermore, many leaders who are subconsciously motivated by financial security (essentially all of them) will have less motivation to maintain the delusion that they’re able to have a meaningful positive impact on an Army that is being inescapably run into the ground by bureaucrats focused on maximizing their high 3 before transitioning into a another high-paying government sponsored sinecure after ‘retirement’.
In this environment, there is no efficient level of self-deception.1 To believe that this organization does anything that has any nexus whatsoever to national defense is so far removed from direct experience over the last 20 years that I can’t imagine believing it while being a generally competent strategic thinker at the same time. As Brad Miller indicated to me in a discussion about support for military covax mandates, these leaders lack discernment. The reasoning employed to justify everything at every echelon is nonsensical. The divide between perception and reality has widened to proportions that are maddening to anyone left with a working brain. It is this environment that leaves an open door for social activists to completely destroy whatever functioning vestiges remain of the institution.
What Now Oxygen Thief?
If you want to maximize your potential, it behooves you to stay out of the Army and any other large bureaucratic institution. If you’re already in, then you can still be all you can be, it’ll just be a lot more difficult. In this series I’ll explain how I’ve been jaded since just before I commissioned in 2010 and what I’ve done in order to try to stay healthy and fit in spite of the Army. It will be broadly applicable for anyone navigating the challenges imposed by late stage bureaucracy in all large Western institutions. First up on the docket will be an examination of locus of control and how large sclerotic institutions impact this psychological variable and what you can do about it.
To use Warby’s terminology
That summary of the leadership that you give is at the core of a lot of people's confusion over how to interpret the U.S. military.
I remember this campaign from when I was a boy. It could be a Mandela effect, but I recall there were two alternate tag lines: "You can do it..." and "Find your future..." ("...in the ARRRRMY").
I was only truly tempted to join up once, in the direct aftermath of 9/11. I sometimes wonder how that alternate-universe Mark's life would have branched out, what "future" we would've found.
But this zombie retread of the ad leaves me cold. Feels like just another skinwalker, wearing the pelt of what it killed. The ad about the girl with two moms is revolting, but feels more genuine to me.