Quotulatiousness

May 10, 2016

Twelfth blogiversary

Filed under: Administrivia, Personal — Tags: — Nicholas @ 03:00

From blogs being “teh new hotness” in the early 2000s they’ve evolved (or devolved, if you prefer) into a much quieter backwater of the internet — still relevant (at least to some), but no longer the big thing online. I’ve been forced to reduce the pace of postings since my health issues right before the new year, and I doubt it’ll return to those heady days of 5-6 new entries every weekday. In spite of that, I still get a fair bit of regular traffic here (yesterday was an unexpectedly busy day with 9,525 recorded visits), but overall traffic to the blog looks to have peaked in 2014, when 1,766,068 visits were logged (last year was down only a bit at 1,741,859, but it was the first decline in traffic year-over-year since I started blogging in 2004).

Earlier anniversary postings:

The US Army makes provision for modern-day recruits

Filed under: Humour, Military, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

If you want to know what’s happening in the American military, you need to check in with Duffelblog for the straight dope:

The US Army’s ongoing efforts to be more open and accepting has expanded this week to include another historically marginalized group: Furries. According to sources close to acting Army Secretary John McHugh, the Army will soon announce a set of uniform accommodations for these soldiers, who fetishize animal costumes.

“We are committed to allowing these people to follow their religion or their hearts or the voices in their fillings, or whatever the hell it is that drives them to dress and act this way,” said the source, who requested anonymity on the grounds that he didn’t want his name to show up in Google searches for Furries. “I mean, where the hell does it end?”

[…]

Sgt. Maj. of the Army Dan Dailey says changes won’t stop with Furries.

“We are considering rules to allow female soldiers who are dominatrixes in their off hours to carry riding crops on duty,” Dailey said. “Shoe fetishists could actually get a new MOS, polishing shoes for other soldiers, as well as super high heeled, platform combat boots.”

“And we’ve already decided uniform tunics for MILFs will now come without top buttons.”

Dailey denied however that Bronies will soon be able to serve openly.

“You have to draw a line somewhere,” he said.

QotD: A misleading half-truth in the movie Glory

Filed under: Cancon, History, Media, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[The movie] Glory, concerning the raising, training, and early combat actions of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, one of the state’s two free – that’s important – black regiments raised for the Civil War. It’s a good movie, in most respects. But it fosters a couple of half truths which, like most half truths, are wholly misleading.

In the first place, the 54th was not a regiment of runaway slaves. Oh, there are some; men who escaped – self-selecting, like William Carney, as they did – at a time when escape was quite difficult and very dangerous. Most of the men of the 54th, however, were born free. Some, indeed, were born free in Canada. Company G, for example, was recruited in Toronto and came south to fight.

What difference does that make? It makes a vast difference. If one were to peruse the accomplishments of the black regiments in the Civil War, one wouldn’t find much to commend or condemn among the regiments composed of freedmen. Oh, they were important to the war effort, but not for fighting so much as for labor, and to guard behind the lines. The couple of occasions they were given the chance to shine, notably at the Petersburg Crater, circumstances, to include some incredibly stupid decisions, tended to screw them.

So the best we can say of the freedmen regiments is that we don’t know. That said, it would be a very surprising thing – an unconscionable defense of slavery, really – to suggest that having been enslaved didn’t do bad things to one’s character, didn’t set one in the mind of being inferior, didn’t strike at one’s self confidence and morale at the very core.

The good regiments, conversely, 54th and 55th Massachusetts, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Louisiana Native Guard, 1st and 2nd Kansas Colored, 20th USCT … some few others … were by and large free born. They did well, fought well, and, in disproportionately large numbers, died well. But they had never, in the main, been subjected to the literal degradation and decay of slavery while, for that fraction which had, they had either self-selected for sheer obstinate courage or could draw considerable moral support from those who had or who had been born free.

And then there’s the other thing that annoyed me about the movie, that scene where the men of the 54th – explicitly, if wrongly, portrayed as runaway slaves – are issued their first uniforms and everything changes in an instant from disorder, indiscipline, and general raggedness to precision, as if the mere symbol could change the reality.

The very idea is nonsense. One doesn’t overcome a lifetime’s conditioning with a symbol. No, not even if you desperately want to. No, not even if you can convince a court and legislature that your fantasy must be given wing. It just doesn’t work like that.

Tom Kratman, “The Amazon’s Right Breast”, Baen Books, 2011.

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