Trump Disrespects Military... again

[_honorentheos]

honorentheos then muddles two separate sources separated by at least 13 years, and assumes a correlation ratio close enough to 1:1 to suggests it is proof that EA has been operating from confirmation bias.

Kevin, the stat on the number of serial killers who had military backgrounds included all known serial killers from a wide period of US history largely beginning with WWI. Most of them were dead in 2001 including all of the high profile cases later mentioned in the overall study dated to 2012 that Cam shared. OTOH EA made a sweeping, unsupported claim about there being a severe over-representation of people with military backgrounds among the pool of mass killers that you seem to be cool with at face value even though he side-stepped from "severe over-representation" to saying he remembered a number off the top of his head that was 1.5x base population. So either EA considers that "severe over-representation" or he...well, you might be able to figure that one out for yourself.

Either way, your complaint above is unfounded. If you wanted to be exact, you could have claimed I should have used how many people were vets in the 20th Century compared to base population and that would be the closest parallel ratio. But whatever, Kev. Keep thinking you have crap figured out.

He also refers to "baby killing" multiple times for no apparent reason other than to beat a straw man.

You mean you don't see the wildly unsupported claim made by EA as being a step or two from calling members of the military baby-killers? and his response to being challenged as it was both objectively true and this should be intuitively obvious like he said isn't derived from just so thinking? Huh.

EA and DOC get into a bit more about who properly understood the first study, and after EA's last response Morley said:

"That's what I got from the article, too. However, Mass murderer does not equal psychopath in any of the literature. It's ridiculous that we've even gone there."

Well, no kidding. And that is why I asked the question. Who started equating psychopaths with murderers? It wasn't EA.

Your question was who brought up serial/mass murderers. And it was EA who, and I quote, said, "Mass killers are severely over-represented by ex-military, if I recall.". He specifically uses the phrase in response to Cam saying, "If they possess murderous tendencies rather than a desire to control others they'd be better off being a truck driver who can kill with much more impunity than going through the hundred steps the military imposes before putting you into a combat environment."

In your hatchet job of providing other peoples quotes above, you seem to think EA did this because others used phrases that included "killer" as non sequiturs to his original point about what was meant by a person being a psychopath. But this is what he originally said -

Go to a gathering of Republicans and suggest that the US military attracts psychopaths who get off on authority and hurting people and shouldn't be thought of heroes merely because of their service.

He didn't bring it up as the military attracts psychopaths in the way business attracts them to become CEOs who will climb the ladder and ruin your family so long as they get what they want. His claim is that it attracts people who get off on authority and hurting people. The idea that it was about sadists came with the original statement.

The study, if you bother to read it, makes a few points. It shows the percentage of US serial killers who had military backgrounds was 11.8% of all serial killers in the database they used for their research. They looked into what it meant that they had military backgrounds and found on average they did very poorly and left the military at low ranks, often with a history of disciplinary action.

In short, as a group they tended to make bad soldiers and didn't make careers out of the military. The ratio EA corrected to of 1.5x the ratio of serial killers compared to the general populace is again challenged by the fact we are looking at serial killers as a group over an entire period of record keeping covering at least a century and using that ratio to try and tease ANYTHING out about how it compares to the general population at a point in time. It's apples to bananas.

Anyway, Kev, you're all over the place here, getting things wrong and misrepresenting the discussion.

And for what? Because conservatives support baby-killers AND Trump? ;)

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service.

No, this doesn't seem right at all.

26.7% of the country is minority.

I should've clarified that it's racial and ethnic minority groups that made up 40% of Defense Department active-duty military in 2015, up from 25% in 1990. (In 2015, 44% of all Americans ages 18 to 44 were racial or ethnic minorities.)

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... ographics/

So, I feel comfortable with my prior assertion. Also, it's probably a good thing that racial and ethnic minority groups are represented well, since the military is a great opportunity for everyone to get ahead in many ways. If they weren't represented well I'd guess Leftists would be crying about discrimination or something.

- Doc

[_Morley]

delete

I see Honor and Cam have already addressed these issues better than I did.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

delete

I see Honor and Cam have already addressed these issues better than I did.

I hope you really don't feel that way. Your comments are incredibly valuable, as are discussions like these for people, lurkers specifically, who don't understand military culture and why it's not conducive to psychopathology.

From literally the moment you stand on the yellow footprints at either Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island or M.C.R.D. San Diego, you are explicitly told the core values that every Marine must adhere to: honor, courage, and commitment.

You are also explicitly taught the 14 characteristics of leadership in a neat little acrostic, JJ DID TIE BUCKLE:

JUSTICE

JUDGEMENT

DEPENDABILITY

INITIATIVE

DECISIVENESS

TACT

INTEGRITY

ENTHUSIASM

BEARING

UNSELFISHNESS

COURAGE

KNOWLEDGE

LOYALTY

ENDURANCE

For the enlisted, these traits are drilled into you every single day of the 13 weeks you spend in boot camp, and they continue to be referenced and expanded upon throughout your entire Marine Corps career. The United States Marine Corps is essentially one giant leadership school. In one way or another, subtly or loudly, the people who have done are constantly teaching the people who will do the next time how to be better men, Marines, and leaders.

Back to the topic at hand, Trump does not OBJECTIVELY meet a single one of these criteria BY ANY STANDARD. He fails with an absolute zero in every single category. Trump is the polar opposite of everything a Marine, and by extension, a "real man" is suppose to be.

And for the Army we have LDRSHIP:

https://www.army.mil/values/

This is no joke. At Fort Huachuca, for example, the main physical training running route, has each of those values firmly attached to power poles and you see them every time you run past them. Those standards are routinely driven home in school houses, Officer speeches, and everything in between.

Regardless of how much eye-rolling enlisted folks experience when faced with this type of training, the fact of the matter those traits are the standard. It's what's taught and is what's expected from military personnel. Sure bad apples get through and some find themselves in positions to abuse the responsibility entrusted to them, but as mentioned before they're typically not long for service.

- Doc

[_DrW]

Thanks, Doc. Good point.

Further comment on USMC Standards:

When I was at the Vietnam era MCRD, the Drill Instructors were dead serious about instilling Marine Corps culture, goals and aspirations in the new recruits.

Those unfortunate recruits (mostly draftees) unable to quickly develop the proper attitudes toward their training regimen were taken out of the general recruit population, housed in special barracks under 24 hour guard, issued sledge hammers, and put to work for 12 hours a day "breaking rocks" (in this case concrete structures that were being demolished and hauled away).

If their attitudes were not properly adjusted by this experience, they were housed in the brig, and administratively dealt with, many given an other than honorable administrative discharge, or administrative medical discharge.

If the recruit had committed a crime, then the discharge could have been dishonorable and awarded after a clear explanation of what a dishonorable discharge on their record would mean in terms of limiting the opportunities they would be afforded for the remainder of their lives.

Oddly enough, the majority of recruits sent to the "rock breaking" brigade eventually found their way back into a later class of recruits and left MCRD as Marines.

On the subject of qualifications for service in the USMC, this passage from an article in the Marine Corps Gazette a few years back seems relevant.

The all-volunteer force is entering a challenging new era: lower unemployment, the drawing down of 13 years of sustained combat operations, and a rising cohort of military-aged youth with no personal memory of 11 September 2001 are eroding our youths’ propensity to serve in uniform.

These environmental factors are compounded by an alarmingly high percentage of military-aged youths (ages 16 to 21) who are not physically, mentally, or morally qualified for enlistment.

One can only imagine that the situation in this regard is much worse now (in no small measure due to spiraling drug use). And our Pussygrabber in Chief is certainly contributing to the problem.

[_Res Ipsa]

I really appreciate those of you who have posted about your experiences serving in the military. Thank you.

[_Morley]

I hope you really don't feel that way.

You're too kind, Cam.

I agree that it's an important topic. There have been some really significant ideas expressed here.