This is My Shit: Why Army Language Makes Sense

While I was in Iraq, I wrote about the word Shit as a pronoun. The post is here. Earlier today I was reading a book called The Zone by Sergei Dovlatov about life in Russian prison camps. Dovlatov wrote about a prisoner correcting a new camp guard about the guard's improper use of the word fuck.

When I wrote in 2009, it was about the difference in how soldiers use shit and bitch as a pronoun.  In that post, I noted that anything that will fit on a bunk is shit.  Anything larger is a bitch.

But I neglected the reason for the use of these pronouns.  From the moment a young soldier begins the process of enlisting, he is showered with acronyms and awash in the Latin-derived words of government bureaucracy.  Normal human beings cannot hear and retain hundreds of opaque new words and terms, so each soldier remembers a few new terms and for the rest says, "The sergeant told me some shit I was supposed to remember."

Then the soldier actually goes to basic training.  On the first day, soldiers file through supply and receive uniforms, boots, underwear, belts, packs, duffel bags, insignia, name tags, a helmet, and hundreds more bits of gear, large and small. These items could be identified by the nouns in the last sentence, but they are not.  The camouflage uniform is ACU: Army Combat Uniform.  The helmet is ACH: Advanced Combat Helmet. The belt and pouches for ammo and other equipment is our LBE: Load Bearing Equipment.  Our dress uniform is the ASU: Army Service Uniform.

When we were training for Iraq, our first sergeant would yell, "Line up outside in five minutes! ACH, LBE and weapon! Move!" My sleep-fogged brain would rebel and I would think as I pulled on my ACU pants, 'Why not call it a fucking helmet!'

The 18-year-old I was when I first enlisted and the 56-year-old I was when I deployed to Iraq was hit with a blizzard of opaque terms. My response to this brain storm was to identify ownership first.  So I pointed to a pile of gear and said, "This is my shit." or  "That's your shit."

Later when the soldier is assigned a vehicle, a large-caliber weapon, or other piece of equipment that won't fit on a bunk or in a duffel bag, he will say, "That bitch is mine."

I said that of my first Jeep in the Cold War Army.  A Jeep in the army could not be just a Jeep. It was a Truck, 1/4th Ton, Cargo, M151A1, a number and nomenclature I can still recite from memory.  Four decades later the Jeep's replacement was a Humvee or High Mobility, Multipurpose, Wheeled Vehicle,  M998.

Either way, when I had a vehicle I could say, "That bitch is mine, I'm throwing my shit in it.

Obama Will Take Our Guns

The 28th Combat Aviation Brigade mobilized for Iraq in January of 2009.  My battalion flew to Fort Sill for training at the end of the month, just a week after the Inauguration of President Barack Obama.  From the time we mobilized in Oklahoma to our demobilization in 2010 in Fort Dix, New Jersey, I heard earnest soldiers who were sure that "Obama will take our guns while we are deployed."

These devotees of Glenn Beck, Alex Jones and other batshit purveyors of lies on the right had emails from the NRA proving confiscation was imminent.

And now just 2,850 days later, President Obama has just 70 days left to send thousands of United Nations black helicopters swooping down from Canada to the homes of gun owners across America and begin the tyranny he planned all along.  Because as a Kenyan socialist, Barack Obama's plan all along was to turn America into a socialist state.

It is sadly funny in retrospect.  Among Obama's failures are his years of thinking he could work with Republicans and believing he could bring together a nation simmering with with race hatred.  And now one of the chief racists of the right has an office in the White House.  Steve Bannon of Brietbart.com brought the views of the Alt-Right into the mainstream and now he has an office next to the Oval Office. It's not like Bannon's views conflict with the President Elect.  Trump brought the Birther movement into prominence in 2011 and rode that cancerous horse to the White House.  Every Birther is a racist.  Denying the legitimacy of the Presidency based on made-up bullshit can have no basis but racism.

The Republicans fought President Obama from Day One of his presidency and the conservative media spread endless lies about him, like the one that is the subject of this post.  I am going to mark Sunday, November 13, 2016, as the first day of the end of American democracy.  Steve Bannon has an office in the White House and an agenda of hate, and I plan to fight it in every way I can.