I despised drill and ceremony. Standing in the heat and humidity, waiting to move and watching soldiers drop because of heat stroke. Never lock your damn knees.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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I did the last sentence and got punished when I was in school ☠️
Did they even know locking knees feel painful already?
to defend the interests of our nations elites.
Eeehh, so yes, after basic i did not march anywhere really. And you do need to brush up on it to keep in the swing of things…. But honestly, you know your unit is going to march in a parade months in advance, and for better or worse are going to represent the armed forces, you schedule mandatory training time.
Is it wasteful? Arguably under normal circumstances, definitely under this circumstance.
So i can only conclude that either they did not care, or do care a lot, or someone who was supposed to plan this fucked up and they just grabbed people.
"Defend our nation" by starting wars to keep rich people rich?
Unironically yes. You don't get to be the center of the universe without showing up on the periphery to kick someone else's nuts in from time to time.
no sometimes they start wars to get rich people richer
but for reals its not the soldiers starting wars its the higher ups and the people who make weapons who start wars
It's crazy that the people involved for the most noble (to them) reasons are the ones most likely to be pulling triggers and/or getting killed, while the ones starting the war for evil reasons typically come out ahead as long as they are willing to ignore the mountain of bodies in their wake. (cue narrator)
Or as a wise man once said:
Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor? Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor? Why do they always send the poor? Why do they always send the poor?
We're there soldiers in WW2 cosplay? I'd be so embarrassed.
This is just not accurate.
Here's an example proving it incorrect:
https://youtu.be/aeFltEjzR2Y?t=1212
That's just a unit. Not a ceremonial one.
I mean the honest truth is the military hates Trump just like the rest of us
It is genuinely, such a hilariously piss-poor excuse.
My wife is in the Canadian Forces. She is ridiculously good at her job, and everyone in the CAF is trained to a ridiculously high standard. By the time she exited occupational training she was already qualified on more weapon systems than most US soldiers ever touch in their entire careers. Her unit shoots sub-MOA groupings for fun. They meet and often exceed the physical standards for Ranger school. And this is just reg-force infantry.
And despite all that, she is also so completely capable of keeping a tight march that she actually has to stop herself from automatically falling in perfect step next to me when we're walking down the street. And no, the excuse of "Oh, you can't march to Fortunate Son" doesn't count for shit. My wife can mark perfect time with no music at all. Christ, one time in training her MCpl made her unit all put on their gas masks and mark time while singing Oh Canada, and they didn't get to stop until it was perfect. And no, they did not have a fucking drum or backing music. She's not on a drill team; Canada doesn't have drill teams. This is just something they do because it's part of the basic standard of being a soldier.
The key difference is you can actually march to that music. Fortunate son is slightly too fast for a proper pace which is why the front of the one group was wavy and people were out of step. Also if anyone was actually calling cadence, the people on the left side probably wouldn't have been able to hear it over the music.
Marching can be done to no music.
Side ranks keep sideeye on the element leader to the side, everyone else keeps side eye to the person on their right.
There are also the marshall with the whips. If all else fails, you keep cadence to that.
In a silent march, you keep in step with the "Clomp clomp clomp", which also, is quite easy to do, and is done often.
Yeah, you literally just keep the beat in your head. Anyone can do it.
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It's not hard to march
It's what you learn on your very first day of basic training in Canada. You're expected to march in time everywhere you go throughout your training. You only get to stop once you reach your unit. Even clerks have to do this, it's just basic discipline.
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It's very important for soldiers to focus on doing "important work to defend our nation" (murdering brown kids) and that they're "productive at their jobs" (bombing hospitals)
I came here for this but found people already pointing it out.
DeFeNdInG as seen by everyone else: going to places 5k km away and murdering every living thing there.
VeTeRaNs as seen by everyone else: steroid micro-penis assholes murdering women & children
The bravest and most honorable men in our nation are doing the hard, honest work of fucking all those military wives while their chud husbands are deployed abroad.
This is a false dichotomy, as though you can either be productive or learn to march. Obviously you could do both.
Broadly speaking, yeah. We send every member of the US Army through "Basic Training" even though 95% of them will never actually fire a gun or climb over a fence or jog ten miles in the rain for the rest of their careers.
Parade March is a thing we don't bother to drill into units (except specifically tasked "Parade Units" that exist to do little circus acts for the high command's amusement). But we could do it instead of the GI Joe training for the private class janitorial staff if we felt like it.
The bigger picture is that the US Military is a fountain of economic waste, social abuse, and pointless bloodshed in the name of machismo. Trump's parade is just the cherry on a seven layer cake of squandered national wealth.
But it's the thing liberals will fixate on, because we can't ever actually say "The Pentagon sucks ass and makes the world an objectively worse place to live in". It always has to be about this one Great Man Of History doing things wrong in a way his hypothetical liberal alternative would not.
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When has the US military defended the nation? I got the impression that they're mostly used for invading foreign countries for financial gain, cf Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Panama, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Guatemala, Korea.
Not saying you're wrong in general but we didn't invade Kuwait.
Fair, taking it off the list. It just comes up naturally when I list the horrible things the US has done bc of the highway of death. Still an example of the US military not defending the US, but definitely not an invasion of Kuwait. Thanks for the correction, I was sloppy!
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