Zapped! - Issue #12 - 2022
The subscriber-only newsletter for the week of March 19th, 2022.
Housekeeping
The Reddit Battalion
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" - Mike Tyson
Floating around Twitter this week were the posts of fleeing members of the foreign volunteer 'Reddit Battalion,' after their barracks in Ukraine were attacked by Russian missiles, in a strike that reportedly killed more than thirty people and injured over one hundred. [Read the Details]
The recruits seem mostly to be volunteers from America, Britain, or the pozzed west at large, drawn into the war by some type of pro-democracy sentiment, with an aura of Star Wars and Marvel Comics fandom floating about their barely-reasoned but passionate ideological position that Russian Man Bad / Ukrainian Man Good.
It seems like some of the more insufferable 'troops' – or perhaps more accurately, activists – expected the war effort to be something of a freelance gig where they'd be using their giant, Westernized, /r/atheism, gigabrains in a consulting capacity to aid the helpless Ukrainians in their game of Stratego against the menacing Russian fash.
The obvious reality is, of course, that Ukraine is a country close to buckling under Russian invasion, it's cold outside, supplies are scarce, the situation is chaotic, there's a tremendous fog of war, and there's a looming risk of sudden death from an enemy firing missiles and artillery at you from over the horizon. It's truly egg on the face of America that a Russian missile smashing into a barracks can teach these guys in 2 seconds what the education system failed to teach them in 12-16 years.
Andrew Milburn
Military units don't just form out of the ether. Standing up an effective multinational ground force of expats, rejects, weirdos, mercenaries, idealogues, and Redditors is not something that can be done by a cadre of Ukrainian drill sergeants with limited supplies and a 10-day training window.
It takes the US Army or Marine Corps a few months to produce even the lowest-tier 'new guy' infantryman. And then, from there, it takes another (at least) few months of training at the unit-level just to have a low-ranking enlisted private who is qualified to lug around a rifle or machine gun and follow basic orders.
The idea that you could travel to a foreign country, meet a gaggle of strangers who may or may not even speak the same language as you, and who may or may not have any level of physical fitness, and who may or may not have any ability even to handle firearms, and start conducting patrolling operations or movement to contact, is the type of entitlement thinking that is unique to the scumbag Global Zoomer who grew up on diversity programming and electronic cigarette boxes.
We have created a morally corrupt hyperreality where young people glean a simulated understanding of values like grit, courage, sacrifice, or perseverance from gay action movies and social justice slacktivism. We teach young men that "real courage" means being soft and vulnerable, that it's "toxic" to be stubborn, that it's good to quit if a situation is "unfair."
Well, the above approach probably works fine if you're trying to "queer up and decolonize this English department" at whatever State school your DEI-themed college entrance essay lands you at. But if it's important – and I think it is – to have young men who can move to the sound of the guns if necessary, then this situation in Ukraine should probably serve as a wakeup call.
