Archive for May 6, 2023

What’s worse than the military recruiting crisis?

Posted: May 6, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in Uncomfortable Truths, war
Tags: , ,

What if the best people in the military start asking “Who is John Galt?

Anyone who has read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” or like me used the audiobook because its too damn long to read on paper, knows what I’m talking about.

Spoilers ahead for those that haven’t read it.

The book is set in a future world, where American industry is slowly crumbling. Trains are a preferred method of transportation, but its becoming harder and harder to run the trains on time because of a crushing bureaucracy in government that is making it more painful for businesses to operate. Eventually one of the characters, John Galt, decides to destroy the bureaucracy by removing all the smart people from the system in what he calls a strike. He approaches the engineers, business owners and other hard workers and offers them a chance to leave to a hidden place where their efforts are appreciated instead of demonized. This causes the United States to delve into dictatorship, and eventually collapses, with John leading the strikers to now rejoin the world.

By HKDP – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6617195

It was a hit book. The first movie was good (although it wasn’t well received, go figure!), but movies 2 and 3 kinda sucked. The book teases out the interesting point that a small number of people tend to make the biggest impact on industry, and if they quit, the systems they run tend to collapse.

I’ve seen this hold true in the Navy. I’ve watched some leaders take difficult commands and turn them around, only to watch another lesser leader destroy the well-functioning command right after. It’s incredibly infuriating to spend two years building a team of people, only to watch a new person come in and squander your efforts.

When I think about military recruiting, I’m not as worried about the young people coming in. Every young generation gets looked down upon by the older ones. Every older generation thinks they were so much better at that age. Young people tend to do OK long term.

But what happens if the talented people decide the military isn’t worth joining? What happens if the budding young Nimitz, Marshall, or Billy Mitchell decides to leave, or never join in the first place? What happens if after they join and are greeted with an oppressive bureaucracy of our own making, they vote with their feet?

What happens if John Galt gets to them first?

Our military relies on a perilous few smart people to drive the strategic thinking of the organization. Not everyone is going to be a Nimitz. That’s fine if and only if we actually HAVE the Nimitz in our midst. But if the Nimitz decided he or she had enough beratement by lesser individuals, then we’re going to be left with more Richmond Turners, who might win in the short term through brute force, but lack the operational and tactical genius to win our long term conflicts.

Military recruitment scares me, but the ongoing brain drain as people ask “Who is John Galt” gives me nightmares.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. If you enjoyed this article, drop some coin in DaTechGuy’s wallet!

Five Interesting Things I Saw at Longhorn’s while Watching the Games Under My Fedora: Orders, Defense, Sale and the Clock, Bud Light and DeSantis

Posted: May 6, 2023 by datechguy in baseball, election 2024, elections, nba, politics
Tags: , , , , , ,

Yesterday with DaWife working and both the Celtics and Redsox playing in Philly I decided to go to Longhorn’s Restaurant to watch the game and have some of their spicy chicken bites (if you haven’t had them try them, they are the best value in terms of taste and quantity of any appetizer offered in any restaurant out there.

There were five things that jumped out at me while I sat at the bar:

First of all while the neither the restaurant nor the bar was very crowded (likely due to the games and the pending Mother’s day next week) the takeout business was very brisk. I observed the young lady running the takeout, she was doing well in a busy job. The phone was cranking and the orders were flowing. Before COVID the amount of takeout a place like this would do was minimal but even with COVID finished many people have really taken to getting their restaurant food at home without the restaurant. It’s one of the subtle ways the COVID stuff has changed us.

Second of all I was watching the Celtics Philly game and noticed that, at least for the first half Philly was contesting the initial inbounds passes after scoring even before the Celtics started pulling away. You don’t see a lot of teams doing that and it proved to be, at least in my opinion effective in giving the Celtics some grief. I think more teams should do this in the NBA, while it doesn’t allow a set defense it does and can disrupt a set offense.

Third of all I was watching the Redsox , Phillies game with great interest both because of Chris Sale for for five of the six innings he pitched looked like the Sale of 2018 constantly throwing over 95 and getting ahead of hitters but living on the edge of the pitch clock. Under the new rules the pitcher has to be in his leg kick by the time the clock hits zero or a ball is automatically called and the number of pitches he got off within a second of what would be a violation was considerable. This had some effect in his bad inning when he would get angry at himself and vent and then have to rush a pitch to keep a penalty. I’m curious how many other pitchers in baseball are living on the edge of the clock?

Of course being at the bar I naturally kept an eye on BudLight Sales. Longhorn offers two beers at a slight discount for a smaller glass, Bud Light and Miller Lite. In the two hours I was there I did not see a single Bud Light poured but in fairness I didn’t see any Miller Lite being ordered either. In fact what little there was of beer orders were of the local IPA’s but be that as it may Bud wasn’t moving. Perhaps they can start offering it at Tuppence a glass?

Finally I was REALLY caught by surprise by a political ad by a superpac during the Red Sox game. It was a powerful ad about freedom but the climax of the ad was a mother and child putting a DeSantis for president sign in their yard and a person with a Trump 2016 bumper sticker on his pickup putting a DeSantis 2024 bumper sticker over it.

I’ve not been able to find the Ad to embed it but let me tell you if Donald Trump already had his hair on fire over DeSantis as a candidate this will send him over the edge.

Frankly I’m torn between the two of them. Either would make a fine President and each has different plusses and minus.

Of course if Jay Valentine is right, it may all be moot anyways

To become president, Trump must win a bunch of swing states.  To win each state he needs more ballots in his pile than the other guy.  It’s baked into the data — which we look at every day — that Trump is not going to win those swing states.  None of them.

It’s not his fault.  He will probably get more votes, just not more ballots.

and he closes thus:

Unfortunately, the RNC is about raising dough and having elaborate meetings with mediocre minds.  The Trump campaign thinks rallies, flags, and red hats can overcome the Left’s complete control of election apparatus.

It’s like France in 1939. 

Trump is France. 

If that is correct there will be trouble and if DeSantis believes the left won’t use these tactics against him in a general then he’s a fool.