It never fails. Whenever I think I have a good post developing in my drafts folder, along comes a reader’s comment that abruptly halts that process and demands my full attention. Rational Reader, Eric had one such comment today:
Rollo,
Military men ought to be a targeted audience for your red-pill teachings.
As an Army veteran, I can attest that being socialized as a soldier is to learn positive masculinity in terms of a man among men. While not immune from political correctness, there is a stand-off distance from civilian society that preserves within the military perhaps our last best repository of traditional masculine values and culture.
Before I joined the Army, the military seemed alien and threatening. What I found, instead, is the nature of soldiering just made sense to me on a basic level as a man that I had not experienced before the Army. Soldiering opened my eyes to the intrinsic higher value of manhood. I have not found the same masculine fit since returning to civilian society. (Granted, I didn’t become a cop.)
However, the Army does not cure Beta. The military – as you imply – does not teach soldiers how to handle women and deal with feminism. When soldiers apply the 7 Army values (loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, personal courage) to women, they simply don’t receive the same positive feedback they get from applying the Army values on the job among soldiers. If anything, their heightened engagement with masculinity in male terms obscures their understanding of women. Editorially, I believe the disjunction between the masculine culture of the military and the feminized culture of civilian society is an unacknowledged reason why many seemingly capable veterans are tripped up in their transition from military life to the civilian world.
The masculine values that soldiers learn are invaluable, and our society would be made healthier and stronger if veterans could spread those values upon their return to civilian society. However, in their current condition, military-sourced masculine values are fragile in the context of feminized civilian society.
I believe the solution is adding formative red-pill teachings to the traditional masculine lessons received by impressionable young soldiers. Doing so will empower and protect the soldiers in their immediate personal lives, especially important for the soldiers who are anxiously distant (Dear John, Jody) from their love objects. And, by the time they are mature veterans returning to civilian society, their traditional masculine values hybridized with red-pill awareness should be robust enough to thrive in feminized civilian society. From their success, the combination of red pill and traditional masculine values can spread.
I attempted to address this in Casualties.
For whatever reason I seem to be held in high respect with military guys. It’s kind of strange thinking about this post-red pill, but a majority of my male friends have been soldiers and marines, and the common theme with every one of them has been their ‘get it done’ attitude and the conflicts it has with a beta relationship they all had with women.
I’ve got a guy in another dept. who was a former Marine who served 3 tours in Iraq and is an amazingly organized and responsible guy. Alpha as fuck in all respects but one; he too is saddled with an overweight fianceé (soon to be his 2nd wife I might add) who barks at him via cell phone while he takes his smoke breaks. I hear them bickering occasionally and all the guy does is attempt to appease her – this former Marine, who had live ammunition fired at him, is crushed mentally and emotionally by a woman who should never have a position to question him. Why? because he subscribes to the societal fem-centric default mentality when entreating with women.
At the risk of encouraging some ecumenical debate in the comment thread, the great failing of most military guys is the expectation of relational equity with regards to their commitment to the 7 Army values. In a military sense, in a sportsmanship sense, in a business sense men believe that the personal investments of sacrifice, loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, personal courage, etc. will be appreciated, considered and rewarded with respect, value and/or status. Whether or not this is the actual case on an individual basis, the expectation from amongst a man’s peers is one of an appreciable equity he can build upon and have his eminence increase upon.
The rude awakening for most soliders is that Hypergamy doesn’t care about relational equity. All of the social value he should be able to accrue through his steadfast commitment (actual or imagined) to principle isn’t recognized by feminine hypergamy. Hypergamy doesn’t care about his belief in the 7 Army values, it only cares about its own imperative. It’s not that women can’t learn to appreciate these virtues in a man, it’s that her natural state of hypergamy (and solipsism) doesn’t facilitate it.
I have no doubt I’ll get female commenters explaining to me how they in fact do recognize and appreciate men’s commitment to duty, but I’d argue that this appreciation came from learned necessity, not a natural appeal to her hypergamy. When hypergamy is satisfied for a woman, mitigated by her capacity to attract better male prospects, only then is a woman in a position to consider men’s integrity and character.
This is naturally frustrating for a young soldier wondering why his sacrifice and commitment to duty doesn’t make him any more attractive, more arousing, more deserving of his girlfriend or wife’s monogamous commitment. He’s done everything ‘right’ yet there is no advancement, no appreciation, and in fact sometimes outright abandonment of him and his ‘principles’. The reflex of course is to amplify that sacrifice to levels above and beyond what he’s previously committed himself to, or to rationalize disqualifying a woman lacking the capacity to appreciate that sacrifice.
The real tragedy is that young soldiers (and sometimes old) are easy marks for the feminine imperative looking to consolidate on a security derived from those sacrifices without ever appreciating them. I have a friend back in Reno who after 16 years, and 4 children, had his wife leave him after a military marriage. In her unhaaaaapiness she decided to go to back to school (funded by him) to be a dental assistant and promptly divorced him just 3 months prior to his discharge. They share custody now, but she ended up getting with a dental surgeon soon after the divorce. His disappointment and depression didn’t come from her abandoning him and the kids as much as it came from his bewilderment that she’d leave everything he’d built for them as a family, and himself personally. He couldn’t imagine that his investments had been less valuable to her than a life with a more resource rich man.
Parting Shot: Military Suicides exceeded combat deaths this year. While this is sobering, what most media covering the story fail to illuminate is the overwhelmingly disproportionate number of men who take their lives in comparison to women.
Tom says the military’s suicide problem is a complex one. “Most of those committing suicide are young men, 18-24,” he says, who are worried that asking for help will undermine their career.
While some of the deaths can be linked to the stresses of being deployed in a war zone, a third or more of those who killed themselves were never deployed, Tom says. They seem to have been made desperate by financial or personal problems.
Personal problems, yeah, personal problems.
January 28th, 2013 at 2:06 pm
@Ton
RLTW
@Rollo
I’m not sure how to fix that issue. The FI created the problem. Relaxed standards in the military to accommodate splitails has allowed the weak-minded into the ranks as if the military is some sort of sociological petri dish. Naturally, suicides will increase when you add stress like actually going to combat. In my mind it is just thinning the herd… and it ought to be accelerated.
Eventually the strong will put down the yolk of society and say “Fuck you pussy! Get your own shit.” Until then it’s just game bitches and look out for yourself and your friends. I’ve given trying to affect the things I have almost no control over and only focus on the things I do.
January 28th, 2013 at 6:21 pm
Just the reply I was hoping for
RLTW
January 28th, 2013 at 8:27 pm
well rollo they pretty much wait for you to commit suicid it takes a while to get help
but if anyone has an award for combat you are entitled to a check
January 28th, 2013 at 8:33 pm
And I know men with more time down range then me who still want more.”””’
i think it is subconsciously or concsiously wanting to die either a hero or yea not wanting to deal with anymore bullshit
January 28th, 2013 at 8:43 pm
and have hear fobits bitch about ptsd when the worse thing the saw was the occasional,
and ineffectual IDF attacks.”””””
lol ton well after a 100 of those or so ya kind of are waiting for it to punch your ticket i did 5 years straight 2 weeks off a year
even the slaves got a day off a week building the white house he he he
January 29th, 2013 at 6:39 am
CG: “I’m not sure how to fix that issue.”
While the problem does focus the discussion, we’re (at least I’m) not talking about a task/conditions/standard direct solution to military suicides. We’re talking about the especial need for the red pill to spread among military men and the good that would come from that. I see the red pill as needed help for soldiers in their women relations, personal and at work. The red pill should also help in the transition to civilian society. This may (or may not) lead to a downturn in military suicides by corralling two major sources of stress.
I figure, if you get NCOs Army-wide to buy into the red pill, then you get the Specialists, and when you get them, you get the privates. Then you have the Army. The question is how to inject the red pill into the NCO grapevine.
From the pogue side of the house, here’s an anecdote from my co-ed Basic Training. As long as we were mixed, which was almost all the time, the language was PC. One time, though, all the female privates and drill sergeants were away due to a female-specific medical check, so it was just us male privates with our male drill sergeant. He used the window of opportunity to give us a speech about “this man’s Army” and some old-school Jodys. You could tell he had switched off the professional drill sergeant and his message was personal. When the females returned, he was a professional drill sergeant again.
The audience is there and ready for it, and not just in combat arms. They just need to be reached.
February 1st, 2013 at 7:33 pm
“At the risk of encouraging some ecumenical debate in the comment thread, the great failing of most military guys is the expectation of relational equity with regards to their commitment to the 7 Army values.”
Fucking spot on. Former marine here, and one of the, if not the most significant, pitfalls of veterans exiting the service is that women(esp. in the west) don’t reciprocate these values. It took a severely broken heart, a slew of random college bangs, and a year of intense research to find a palatable red pill. Everything that builds rapport with men is like white noise to women, or worse.
I used to refer to the two modes of operation for me as a switch. When switched on, I was no-bullshit, get shit done, and it’s how I landed the girl I did while I was still in. When I got out, I switched that off, beta’d up hard, and watched the relationship crumble in slow motion.
I think the military teaches you everything you need to know to be an alpha, and then fucks you by equating it with combat. In this way, you tend to shed all of that on leaving, the bad and the good, and the effect on your relationships just feeds into the contrast between the intense rapport of the military and the normal lack of reciprocity in wider society. Thus, disconnect; thus, depression.
February 12th, 2013 at 6:13 pm
[…] Reader Eric, again, made a revelatory observation in Soldiers: […]
February 23rd, 2013 at 11:25 pm
Two things…
1) The clowns calling military men betas, don’t know what they’re talking about. All military services, MOSs and men are not created equally. Guys that start a military career after high school ARE at a significant disadvantage because of the demographics of Army and Marine towns. That said, I crushed ass with my crew chiefs as an LT. And I saw single O-5s crush college ass. After I pinned on Major, I went home and banged my hot 21 yo gf.
There are plenty of tools in the service but generalizing about such a diverse population is silly. Trust me, you’re NOT more alpha for not serving in a demanding job that builds character and requires physical courage.
2) If I only had a nickel for every fucked up story about women ripping off Joe. Listen, life is hard for a lot of these troops. That have needs and failings like everyone else. I have no regard or mercy for these evil people that take advantage of them – especially while they are deployed. It happens to broke-ass Privates, it happens to ER docs and neuro-surgeons. Its very easy to take advantage of a loyal person who is willing to sacrifice and who tries to take care of people.
You only go around once. I’m sure your grandkids will want to hear all about your real estate deals or how you optimized widget production.
August 21st, 2013 at 10:19 pm
[…] Soldiers […]
August 26th, 2013 at 5:23 am
I’ve been around the military for about 20 years. I served for 10 years on active duty and now work for the Army as a civilian. I can tell you that young military men are overwhelmingly beta when it comes to women.
November 29th, 2013 at 8:11 am
Attn: All young men under 25.
Don’t do it! The whole alpha/ beta thing regarding women is not relevant here. You’re putting your whole life at the mercy of an uncaring institution that only wants to use you. Go to a military forum and look at how soldiers who seek comfort for PTSD are treated. The military eats its own. As a former army paratrooper, I know first hand.
This is not a military dictatorship- it’s a plutocratic oligarchy dominated by bankers and others in the finance industry. You want to be top dog, “alpha” in thus society, go to college, major in finance.
The mitary will want you to get married young- nothing demands you reenlist more than a wife a d child, with a tee Ty three year old father with no skills except how to pull security, clean an m-16, etc.
Take it from a former infantryman. Do t do it! Be truly alpha. Work for yourself. Look after yourself. Anto e who wants you to ” manup” whether that’s women, the military, ” conservatives,” etc.- they just want to use you.
Red pill means adapting to this broken society by putting yourself first. Killing thurd world era for the benefit of an I grateful elite is just you bring used.
July 23rd, 2014 at 9:52 am
This article seems to be blaming women instead of holding each person accountable for their actions. I read the 7 traits mentioned in the letter and that fits my husband perfectly. I love and respect him, but he also treats me with respect. He was never in the military.
To say women do not value the 7 traits is plain ignorant. Maybe CERTAIN women don’t value it. But I’m guessing a majority of them do value the 7 traits.
As to women who divorce their husbands (cheating or not) because they are away for a long time, I understand the divorce. I do not condone the cheating. I, for one, would not want my husband to be away for so long. Women need constant interaction to feel emotional closeness to our husbands. When that emotional connection is gone, so is the relationship.
My husband knows that even if his pay quadrupled and it required him to travel extensively, I would have a problem with it. I want him near me. Money is NO substitute for a human being.
I also do not understand how men want to be appreciated. In the example above, you say the friends would buy them beer. Is that what they want their wives to do? Buy them beer for helping out? Maybe their wives thank them in other ways and they don’t realize it. Certainly sounds like a communication or perception problem. Frankly, if a person wants to make a relationship work, they need to have good communication. Both people need to respect each other and treat them with respect.
There are many reasons for failed marriages. You simply cannot say men are fine, upstanding, wonderful, Alpha males and women don’t appreciate them. That sounds like BS to me. It also sounds like you are blaming women only without taking into consideration that some men are at fault for the failure in a relationship.
July 23rd, 2014 at 10:01 am
“The military – as you imply – does not teach soldiers how to handle women and deal with feminism.”
Feminism means that men are equal to women.
So the military teaches men that they are superior to women? Maybe that’s the problem with military men, not the 7 traits.
January 27th, 2015 at 3:09 pm
[…] know it’s been a long time since you posted your piece, “Soldiers”, but it struck a nerve with me. I’m not sure what kind of new insight (if any) you can get […]