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Every System Has Its Parasites
In his book, Up Front, WWII Stars and Stripes cartoonist Bill Mauldin recounted an incident that describes today’s United States all too well. The army had shipped just enough new combat boots and jackets to Italy for the frontline troops. Unfortunately, soldiers in the rear echelon pilfered many of the clothes before they could reach the men in the foxholes.
“I suppose,” said Mauldin, “these fellows in the rear just looked at the mountainous heap of warm combat jackets piled in a supply dump and didn’t see anything wrong with swiping a couple for themselves. After several hundred thousand men had grabbed at the heap there weren’t many new boots and jackets left.”
None of the scroungers meant to hurt the frontline troops, and certainly none wanted to help the Nazis win the war. It was just that there were all those jackets, and surely no one would miss just one or two…
Today, too many Americans are a lot like the scroungers:
- Claiming disability insurance for a fake back injury isn’t going to break the government, so who’s to know?
- Corporations are rich, so suing them for a spurious claim won’t hurt anyone. What the heck?
- The government’s Medicare program is great at shoveling out money, but not so good at verifying claims. Why not get in on the gravy train?
- Sending vile, angry tweets to people who disagree with me gives me a little dopamine hit. And I’m safely hidden behind an alias. The jerk deserves it.
- Hey, one piece of litter isn’t going to wreck the environment.
- None of the crony capitalists, lobbyists, or trial lawyers who haunt K Street in Washington wants to hurt Americans, much less the United States. It’s just that the President and Congress insist on handing out all those goodies and, well, one or two billion isn’t going to hurt anyone.
- Teachers’ unions don’t want to hurt any schoolchildren, but protecting children isn’t their job, protecting teachers is – even teachers who are incompetent … or far worse.
Bit by bit, Americans are picking away at the human and social capital of trust and personal responsibility that keep our nation civil, strong, and free.
Published in General
Well, we won World War II despite the graft. What’s different now?
One of my favorite Bill Mauldin cartoons, from the same source:
One of my favorites:
My dad had several of Mauldin’s books, which I loved. When I asked him, all he would say about his experience in the war is to point to one of the books and say, “That’s exactly the way it was.”
There are so many great cartoons I can’t pick a favorite. The Texan talking on a field phone: “Ordnance? Ah’m havin’ trouble with mah shootin’ arn.” The guy in a foxhole under a tank: “Able Fox Five to Able Fox. I gotta target but you gotta be patient.” The six guys in a pup tent in the pouring rain, with a shivering puppy at the door: “Let him in, Joe. I want to see a critter I can feel sorry fer.”
Humor with an edge. Priceless.
Ernie Pyle was always a good read, too.
A wider sense of entitlement and a narrower sense of shame.
When we go to war, it is against the military of other governments so it all evens out. Mostly.
I gave my dad a book with the full collection of Mauldin cartoons (“Bill Maulden’s Army”).
Keeping in mind that the war ended before my dad could be sent overseas, the one I saw him laugh at the hardest was a pre-war cartoon, showing a convoy of trucks pulled to the side of the road, with a huge crowd of men lined up at the fence as far as the eye can see, while in the foreground one of the soldiers is talking to a pretty farm girl holding a bucket, and she’s saying something like “So you only get one ten minute break every few hours? Why this is just fascinating. I could stand here and talk to you all day”.
Those guys in the rear were called REMFs Rear Echelon MFs. You can fill in the missing words. They existed in the years I served in the Navy, and we had our own special species when I worked in Seattle Public Schools. They weren’t much different from each other. They all had a certain sense of entitlement, and saw their positions as being at least as important as those on the line.
In today’s military they are most notable for such acts of genius as the Rules of Engagement (ROE) that make life on the front so much more hazardous, and cause incidents like those detailed in Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell. I often thought that it would be wonderful if some of those REMFs were sent out on the line with specific missions (keep in mind that the mission is the priority) and had to operate under the ROE that they had written. The Hawaiians call that Mai Tai, poetic justice.
When I listen to the excuses being offered by BLM apologists for the looting and theft, I hear the same lame garbage we heard when some REMF got caught with his hands in the cookie jar. It takes a certain kind of person to act that way. It isn’t a characteristic common to all people. I think that most people actually possess a conscience and have integrity. It is amazing, though, how many of the REMFs end up in the Democrat party.
This may only be slightly relevant here but, my dad, who never really talked about his WWII service in the South Pacific, did share this with me: he went swimming one day on some beach (New Guinea? The Philippines?) and when he came out of the water he found that someone had stolen his boots. This was a coral beach so going barefoot evidently could be an injurious and painful proposition. So, he went to a supply depot or quartermaster or some such place for replacements. My dad said there were plenty of boots to be had but the soldier on duty decided to be a hard-ass and refused to give Pop boots. Now, my dad was a sweet guy, mostly, but could really assert himself when he felt the need. Pop didn’t have boots, but he did have an M-1 Garand loaded with a clip of .30-06 which he stuck in the man’s face and, well, he got his boots.
Many possess a conscience, but it is affected by consensus; no one wants to be the last person to demi-steal because that makes you a sucker.
I’d rather be a sucker than a thief.
It’s very difficult to hold the line against a panic as we saw just a few months back in the toilet paper panic. A few people start and unless it’s stopped there is a tippling point. This is always the problem in communities that are supposed to be ‘equal’ , everyone is looking at everyone else’s belongings to make sure.
I don’t need any help to reach a tippling point.
I assume you have figured out that “The Deep State” is made up of all those REMFs.
I love the cartoon but I don’t get the caption. Is the soldier a prince because he has cutlery? Both people are weary tattered clothing and there is not a scrap of food in sight.
Same.
But if there’s no actual ‘owner’, and everyone is taking, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to talk yourself into ‘it’s not really stealing’.
He’s got more, and he knows he’s going to get fed. She doesn’t.
My favorite showed Willie and Joe, looking more tired than usual( if that were possible) as a clean-shaven soldier with an angry look on his face is walking down the street. Willie says to Joe( or Joe to Willie, I forget) the best line I ever read in a cartoon: “He’s looking for a fight. Must not be a combat man.”
Unc’s driver in Italy took him to the village which the driver’s parents had come from to meet his extended family. The family put on a big feast for the driver and the important 1st lieutenant. It was clear that the family was sharing food that they could ill afford to be lavishing on them.
Somehow when they drove off, a bunch of cartons of K-rations fell off of the back of the jeep. An unfortunate loss to the war effort, but stuff like that happens in wartime.
(Unc’s conscience bothered him. He figured that powdered eggs were probably a war crime, and that spam definitely was.)
This is one of my favorites
And this one:
RW – slap
RFTS – Thanks I needed that
In 2003, in the earliest days of establishing the central U.S. military logistics hub in Iraq, Corps Distribution Center and bulk fuel and water, the colonel in tactical/operational command of the logistics operation laid down in inviolable terms that not one logistics soldier would get one pair of underwear or new uniform until all infantry and armor companies received their resupply orders. Not one pair. It was understood that the consequences of violating this order would be dire, career ending dire. That is the level of discipline the punk commanders and sergeants in the WWII rear failed to enforce.
Of course, if Bradley and Patton were actually all that grunt and tanker focussed, they would have
shotimmediately courtmartialed a lieutenant colonel or major, and a senior sergeant or two, ordering the results to be published and read to every rear echelon unit. That is how you enforce military discipline.Actually, in WWII, our Congress was sufficiently engaged and sufficiently concerned to at least posture, appointing a supposedly safely obscure congressman, veteran of the Great War, to head a committee investigating corporations ripping off the nation in a time of war. Harry Truman gave them a very nasty surprise by being fiercely competent, compelling those business leaders who thought they were going to enrich themselves and their business partners or shareholders to quickly see the light of patriotic duty. He was sort of kicked upstairs into the vice presidency eventually.
The Daddy Warbucks character in Little Orphan Annie had some pretty satirical moments on that subject.
Putting Truman in as VP so he could stop causing trouble to the PTB was exactly what they did to Theodore Roosevelt in 1900. TR was upsetting too many applecarts in New York so he was shunted into running for VP; I narrated a book several years ago about his whistle-stop campaign. Then, just as the poobahs were sighing with relief that TR was stuck in a powerless, harmless position, he became President.
This is one I still think about from time to time. In fact I’ve used that line on more than one occasion.
I also remember reading (or hearing-it may have been a lecture) that Truman was also very upset with what appeared to be some VERY wasteful spending going on in a little place called Los Alamos, New Mexico. He supposedly was told to leave that issue alone.