On the one hand, I think the military is a joke.  On the other hand, I think everybody should spend time in one or the other.  It teaches young people about the crap of hierarchy, ego and institutional arrogance.  It teaches us how to lie — and how not to get into the situation where we have to.  It teaches us manners — and when to drop them completely.

I’m not going to admit that a handful of people I knew in the army were not the salt of the earth — but the very structure of the military provides for making the worst monkeys work together.  It’s highly politicized and closed.  Politics are of course the choice other than war for apes, but there’s a gray line where politics can be lethal and war can be — well, there’s no way war can be good.

Yeah, yeah, we hear the drooling about how war brings out comradeship and bravery, but we should all be brave and true anyway, and the payoff for these advantages with war is just not worth it; it’s like rubbing ourselves with pork and getting in a cage with a tiger because we hope those whiskers will tickle.