Comments on: “She was the ‘wrong’ kind of victim, and therefore didn’t exist”

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Thu, 10 Jun 2021 20:26:27 +0000

WRT Viet Nam and volunteers: The question is the definition–when ever is it not?)–of “volunteer”,
One might volunteer for the Army as a way to avoid the draft and get a choice as to branch assignment. Whether or not that worked out, volunteering for the Army to avoid drafting isn’t, you know, completely volitional when it comes to service. But would that be a volunteer?
If you volunteered for the Marines instead of the Army–drafted or not–is that materially different when you end up in Viet Nam? But how can you tell that from a guy who just flat wants to be a Marine, accepting that Viet Nam is on the schedule?
The helicopter guys saw a lot of action and a lot got killed. If you “volunteer”, or apply for, aviation, you’ve volunteered for something. Is that the same as volunteering for Viet Nam?
Things got so complicated that we used to joke about if you go vol indef (voluntarily indefinite term of service which we never figured out), can you get an early out?
If you re-up and your next short tour is Viet Nam, you volunteered for something, right, by re-enlisting?
Point is that the number of volunteers is a contentious item, one way or another, and in situations like that, the definition is important.
I didn’t deploy, so I have no first-hand knowledge, but it seemed to me that most of the young guys I met who were going, or who had gone, had not volunteered in the sense of SEND ME!

By: Zaphod

Zaphod — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 00:13:00 +0000

Art+Deco:

Must you be so obtuse?

Bush the Utility Man? Use your head.

This guy was as mobbed up as it was possible for a WASP to be. Phillips Andover, Yale, Skull and Bones, and never looked back. Bush the Mister Fixit Man. Bush the Machine Man. Bush the Finger in Every Pie It’s a Big Club and We Ain’t in It Man.

Simpler, happier times, though. At least back in those days the Elites had to send their youngsters off to the wars they started to risk their skins.

Read the man’s Wiki Page. This fellow had Gonnections. Even if he didn’t fix the World Series 🙂

By: Art+Deco

Art+Deco — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 20:24:20 +0000

(IIRC Bush the elder was also CIA chief for a stint, but I assume he’d prefer we’d all forget about that episode…though that experience most likely would have helped him navigate his presidency…to the extent that he was able to do so.)

Which he?

Bush the Elder was used as a utility man by Nixon and Ford, placed in four quite different jobs over a six year period.

By: Art+Deco

Art+Deco — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 20:22:43 +0000

Now I don’t know how true this is.

Yes you do.

One brother was in the insurance business, one in the investment management / private banking business, and one ran a modest local bank before going into the investment management business. The father was employed in investment banking; he retired from that business in 1952 and died in 1972.

By: Barry Meislin

Barry Meislin — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 20:08:13 +0000

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 19:55:37 +0000

Neo – thanks for the statistical historic update. (I forgot my own “check twice, post once” rule.)

I was speaking from the zeitgeist of the sixties and seventies (we are all about lived experiences now), when the prevailing view of most college students was that of the potential draftees doing their best to avoid being sent over to ‘Nam. I knew there were volunteers, of course, but a lot of those (per AesopSpouse’s AF dad) were low-lottery-number men signing up for the Air Force or Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army.

My personal friends in graduate school included several intelligent, very personable veterans who did their hitch, although I never asked if they were voluntary or forced.

By: Ray

Ray — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 14:13:00 +0000

One of my friends was a officer and Vietnam volunteer and he said the draftees don’t want to be here and we don’t want them here. He was rather contemptous of the draftees. Considered them a bunch of pot smoking slackers.

By: Zaphod

Zaphod — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 13:50:00 +0000

The quiet word when I first started paying attention to who was who in China Grift game back in early 90s when the world was young (for naive bushy-tailed me) was that George Bush took advantage of his time in Beijing

https://bushchinafoundation.org/u-s-china-relations-legacy/

as de-facto Ambassador in 74/5 to get the Bush Family Office / Private Equity Arm / Whatever they called it back in those days firmly wedged into the meatiest bits of whatever trade was being lined up.

Now I don’t know how true this is. I *do* know an individual whose father was a member of the first post-Nixon visit PRC Trade Mission to the USA around the same time. That family did so well from that chance at grabbing first dibs that they’ll never go hungry for abalone and Patek Grand Complications this side of the Year 3000. And that’s who gave me the Bush tip, FWIW.

By: Art+Deco

Art+Deco — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 13:37:05 +0000

So we can safely conclude that 98% of university professors are moral cowards.

Don’t know about ‘98%’, but the vast majority of them are other-directed, status-conscious, self-centered, and far more adept at formulating excuses and sophistries than actual principles. It makes institutions vulnerable to fanatics and wire-pullers. If a critical mass of them were actually serious about their vocation, higher education would look quite different.

Note, the actual purpose of higher education is to provide agreeable salaried employment for people who want to work as professors. Everything else is by-product.

By: Art+Deco

Art+Deco — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 13:30:33 +0000

It’s a truism that moral cowardice is the sire of physical cowardice.

George Bush the Elder was a decorated combat veteran who demonstrated his moxie in the business world as well. He also fathered six children, not something an anxiety-ridden man does, and his contemporary correspondence reveals that after his 5th child was born they were still hoping for one more.

In public life, he gave no evidence of a clear set of principles and programmatic objectives apart from his shtick in re the capital gains tax, and his public peregrinations made it appear his opinion was that of the last person to whom he’d spoken. (Recall the confidential meetings he attended during the Iran-Contra scheme in 1985 and 1986. Reviewing the minutes, the Tower Commission couldn’t discern just what his views were on any aspect of it. Alexander Haig amused himself during the 1988 Republican primary debates sticking a stiletto in him; it seemed to be the reason Haig elected to run).