Sluggish Soldiers

~ Clarissa

Turns out, my colleague was right, there was a parade.

People routinely get upset when I say that the US army is pathetic but look at this. These soldiers are sluggish, slouched, low-energy. Many of them are overweight. They look like prisoners of war marching towards captivity.

If you watch this and feel that the soldiers project strength and confidence, then you probably need eyeglasses.

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Published by Clarissa

52 thoughts on “Sluggish Soldiers”

  1. That’s not marching, that’s walking. This was a PR disaster for Trump; and I imagine Hegseth as well is not very well liked or respected.

    I’m very happy about the No King protests too. MAGAs, Tech bros, and anyone else who wants a corporate dictator/king can go pound sand. Bunch of boot licking sheep.

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    1. Where were these “no kings” people when I was forced against my will to inject an experimental substance and now my doctor says my heart looks like I had a heart attack?

      A bunch of hypocrites and wusses. They protest in support of authoritarian power.

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      2. Other than an unlimited right to abortion and an extremist take on LGBTQ rights, the Left are very authoritarian. They were all for the lockdowns, mandating the vaccine, and censorship of anything they deemed “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

        —PMan—

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  2. there was a very insightful post on X about the No Kings protests (which were funded by Democrat groups), which was this – it was a data collection drive for people to target for Democrat marketing and fundraising efforts. To find out the location of the events one had to sign up first which then allows the organizers to harvest all the contact info.

    Amanda

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    2. Social media, especially BlueSky, had the locations widely posted. If people wanted to go, they could find the locations without signing up.

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    3. That’s ridiculous – the protest locations (at least near me) were widely known and freely available without any sort of signing up. Having said that, I’m sure anyone signing up for anything did have their data collected – that’s true for groups/events across the political spectrum and in life in general these days.

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    1. True. That was not an army we saw. That was something very embarrassing.

      This shouldn’t be an occasion for political partisanship. Something is not OK with this army, and it needs to be investigated.

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      1. The occasion was Trump’s birthday. The soldiers were obviously deliberately marching out of step. Clearly, they didn’t want to be extras in Dear Leader’s birthday party.

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        1. Are you suggesting that these soldiers conspired to walk this way?? All of them?

          This is too much of a conspiracy theory for me.

          And it was a parade commemorating the anniversary of the US army.

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            1. Honestly, I’d rather suspect physical dysfunction than mental illness. Because what you describe is collective psychosis of some sort. In soldiers, in particular, an incapacity to follow a simple order because they are so overcome with emotion that they can’t control themselves is very disturbing. What if they are asked to go into battle and they just don’t feel like it? A soldier is a person who doesn’t give in to whims and doesn’t throw tantrums. These are people are are supposed to be willing to sacrifice their lives if they are ordered to do so. There’s no space for pouting in there.

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              2. I’m in regular touch with soldiers who are actually winning battles right now, and the importance of dissolving your individual will in that of the command comes up constantly. I even took a training on tactics and strategy of warfare.

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              3. Sure, but they are fighting battles not being ordered to parade for someone’s birthday party.

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              4. The very first steps of a military training are aimed at teaching the soldiers to annul their will. They are given bizarre orders – like the famous cleaning the toilet with a toothbrush – to habituate them to the idea that their whims are no longer of interest to anybody.

                It’s actually really interesting.

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              5. Yes, soldiers always follow orders. This doesn’t mean they have to do a good job if they’re not motivated.

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            2. “most likely explanation is that they didn’t want to”

              This “explanation” comes from a man pretending to be a woman so I’m not sure about their interpretive skills…

              Trump is not a leader (he’s a prima donna who wants to be coddled) and AFAICT the military respects him probably even less than they respected Obama, who for all his flaws at least didn’t expect them to perform for his pleasure.

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              1. The military that has feelings is not going to win any wars. Soldiers need to have a sense of obedience that is so strong it will override the most powerful instinct available to humans. How are they going to go into battle? Will they base that decision on whether they like the commander in chief? Where’s the patriotism? The pride for the unit? Where’s the respect for the flag?

                I’m not in the military but if I indulged in this sort of pouty, childish behavior at work because I don’t like the Dean, I wouldn’t be able to respect myself.

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          2. “these soldiers conspired to walk this way?”

            I wouldn’t say ‘conspired’ but the most likely explanation I’ve read for them looking like crap on a stick was ‘malicious compliance’ (I think I’ve seen the terms ‘white rebellion’ or ‘white mutiny’ used for that phenomenon as well).

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            1. Yes, exactly. They are following orders. Just as badly as possibly. This is the military equivalent of a union go slow.

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      1. I doubt that any of them were laughing. Skill at parading has absolutely nothing to do with skill at actual fighting, of which the U.S. is pretty world-class at, and far superior to the likes of North Korea or Russia’s (which has consistently made itself look incredibly moronic in Ukraine).

        —PMan—

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  6. Reckon they’d’ve done better if they’d just let the drill guys do their regular calls, instead of bad loud music.

    Still. Even the food service ladies at Fiestas Patrias try harder. And they’ve got way better things to do with their time than drill.

    They’re at about 1:26:44 here:

    Peruanos really dig their military parades though. I think they practice more 😉

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  7. I agree about recruiting standards being lowered, my brother used to be a Navy recruiter before he became a Naval instructor. It depressed him to see how many wanted to sign up just to get out of impoverished small towns and get paid to shoot stuff or travel to Japan, he signed up after 9/11 for patriotic reasons.

    One side effect of lowered standards he saw were recruits who knew very little of American history, kids who attended a Thomas Jefferson or George Washington high school but didn’t know who they were. These kids were native born Americans of average intelligence, they had a vague idea their school was named after someone important but didn’t know who. So he ended up dealing with young people who wanted out of their little poor country towns and knew very little of American history, he’s much happier as an instructor

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  9. Look at the fucking state of these Navy “Master Chiefs.” Reminds me of that iconic line from Jaws: “We’re going to need a bigger boat”

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    1. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the military have …. I don’t recall what its called, but its basically every year or so you have to show you are still in the same weight category, can still run X miles, do X sit ups, etc.

      So if that is the case, how in the heck is the girl on the our right still in the military? Heck, even the guy on our left looks like he might not make it.

      I know there has been such lackluster recruiting ever since Obama, but did the fitness maintenance requirements go out the door at a certain point in order to maintain numbers?

      • – W

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      1. Every dude I know in the military: they cheat on the standards to keep women in the ranks, because it’s not politically cool to admit that even at vastly reduced fitness standards, most women wouldn’t make the cut.

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      2. There was this famous case about women pilots being pushed into flying F-14s because some politician watched top gun and wanted women representation. Two pilots were chosen. One woman quit because she said they were giving her passing grades when she wasn’t passing and she said that would endanger her life. The other woman turned into paste on a carrier deck a month later.

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    2. Yeah, but physical fitness is not all that important in the Navy. It probably should be more emphasized but the main thing with the Navy are your technical skills. For example, you might not be very fit but you may be able to absolutely devastate the crap out of the enemy’s electronics via electronic warfare.

      —PMan—

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      1. I have zero confidence that the manatee in that picture has “devastating technical skills.”

        Yeah, but physical fitness is not all that important in the Navy. 

        lol ok.

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    1. I was a lot happier when I didn’t know about the parade.

      We are pissing away a historic chance to turn things around. For absolutely no reason.

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      1. Clarisaa

        Perhaps the new PTB’s needed to publicly demonstrate why a thorough cleansing of the existing military is necessary. There is bound to be considerable resistence.

        By the way, Canada has similar problems. Kid, because you are familar with Montreal, I originally immediately thought of what is historically our finest oatmeal savage regiment, Canada’s Black Watch as the example. But no, no bloody way, it has been emasculated, gutted, and reduced to a reserve (militia) unit. There is nothing more I can say that is acceptable in mixed company ;-D

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        1. I really hope that is the case. Lord knows it has needed cleaning out for decades at this point.

          • – W

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  11. “The military that has feelings is not going to win any wars”

    Why I hope the US doesn’t get involved in Iran…..

    The thing is the military can’t be totally separate from everything else in a society because that’s where soldiers come from.

    If people are used to structure they can adapt that to fit the structure of a new setting (whether another country, or a university or workplace or the military)

    An increasingly chaotic, atomized and self-absorbed society will produce soldiers that are chaotic, atomized and self-absorbed.

    In this case the order to not march probably came from their commanders….

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    1. The order not to march obviously came from the commanders. They clearly don’t want to look like goose stepping fascists on dear leaders’ birthday given all the Trump the dictator rhetoric or anything that would make them look like Russia or NK.

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  12. “how are you disagreeing with this position?”

    the article (I just skimmed) seemed to suggest this feeling was coming from the soldiers and I’m assuming it’s from their commanders who don’t respect Trump as a military leader.

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    1. I agree, it must have been just as much from the commanders. That was just one source I read. But there must have been significant buy in from the troops for them to actually do it.

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