School Daze

--Loitering at the Doors of Perception,
B. Kliban

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell
--Aldous Huxley

As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
--The Times They Are a Changin',
Bob Dylan

Is it that hard to make us look cool?
--Almost Famous (2000)

I'm just trying to be honest
about being a misanthrope
--Dazed and Confused (2003)
_____________________

Knocking around in the far recesses of Ranger's mind is the minor indignity suffered at his alma mater this summer.

While in Bowling Green, Ohio, we decided to contact the school paper just for grins, to volunteer for an interview as the RangerAgainstWar, a Distinguished Military Grad of the BGSU ROTC Program, award-winning Progressive blog writer extraordinaire. Well, the offer went over like a led zeppelin -- the editorial staff had no time for his anti-war stance. What a difference a day makes.

In 1968, the Bowling Green campus was a hotbed of anti-war sentiment, and the ROTC cadets were taunted as ROTZ Nazis. Ranger and his ROTC buddies tried never to wear uniforms to class as we were ridiculed by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) instructors. We would schedule our classes so as to allow an hour before ROTC classes to change into uniform. People would throw trash at us when we would hold our annual review.

Fast-forward to 2011, and the last commencement speaker was a Staff Sergeant E-6 Air Force Active Duty type. Back in June '68 when Ranger was commissioned, Medal of Honor recipient Lew Millet conducted the ceremony, and nobody besides us cadets were even aware of his presence on campus. Now the campus reveres an E-6 AF dude.

How did we get here from there? Why do we not object to our Phony Wars on Terror (PWOTs ©)? Why is a low-ranking enlisted man elevated to commencement speaker and an anti-war advocate ignored? It seems Ranger is out of time, out of place, a stranger in a strange land.

When a formerly liberal college is not even interested in "fair and balanced", we are traversing strange terrain.

In the Pocket

Pointless careerism? Putting on a man-tailored suit
with shoulder pads
and imitating all the worst behavior of men?
This is the noblest thing that women can think of?
--Feminism, George Carlin

"Listen son, you're wasting your time;
there's a future for you in the fire escape trade.
Come up to town!"
--I Know What I Like, Genesis

There's no time for trivialities
when you're forging you career
--Irina Builova
___________________

Ranger couldn't avoid overhearing two female ROTC cadets from the local university loudly discussing their careers recently. Careers -- and they are only cadets.

They have not done their first soldiering, and it is that which careers are built upon; careers are not items of issue for military cadets. But so sure are they of the military as a growth industry that they simply take for granted the fact that their next 20+ years are laid out for them. A job it is, like any other.

This observation sums up the problem with the new U.S. military: Careerism is more important than soldiering. It is obvious from this conversation that careerism is inculcated from day one.

Apparently they have forgotten that the "R" in ROTC stands for "Reserve". There was a time when ROTC was a balance to the regular Army Officers produced by the professional West Point Academy sphere of influence. However, recent developments have swept away this distinction, and now Reserve Officers are every bit as inured as the Academy grads to lock-step career-mindedness.

Careerism alone has never won a war.