What a good idea, piss off and fire a large number of men with military training.
What could go wrong?
It is, for some reason, classic rookie mistake #1 in the aspiring dictator’s playbook. It makes perfect sense. After all, it’s crucial that all the troops be loyal to me, so just get rid of any of them that I don’t like. Problem solved! The rest of them won’t care, and they just evaporate when we fire them, right?
Rather than a rookie mistake it’s the least bad option. Would you rather have a large number of pissed off men with military training, or a large number of well-armed pissed off men with military training?
I would rather have a large number of well-armed pissed off men with military training still in a hierarchy which I semi-control who all just got raises and credible assurances that the dictator will actually be looking after them from now on (which the US government tends not to do for them in any respect, historically). I feel like then any of them that have little questions about their new orders will face at least some level of headwinds from their colleagues.
I get that it’s frustrating if your military keeps talking back to you about “illegal orders” or “but I don’t want to shoot protestors” or “you deported my auntie and her US-born kids” but that problem doesn’t really get easier if you start a fight with them. They’re accustomed to fighting, they understand it, they’ll be fine.
I feel like logically most dictators should at least understand about loyalty and how people operate (maybe better than the big bureaucratic systems they’re trying to overthrow). I don’t really know if that is a pattern, but I definitely do know that the most maniacal of them tend not to, which makes them extra-notable in the history books but also limits their shelf life.
There are smart solutions to this.
Well, in America one can become well armed with a credit card.
some transgendered people said they were forced out recently too. posts on reddit.
Transgender ed ? When? How? Was there a witch? Does she do parties? Was it just seeing the wrong porn, or learning to read in school, like normal?
My understanding was that shaving was good for wearing gasmasks
Thats a sentiment from World War fucking One. It’s 2025, almost 2026, and there are full-beard Sikh soldiers capable of having a 100% seal wearing a modern protective gas mask.
Thats good to know. I wouldn’t know what military masks are like. I have to shave for my 3m masks to seal correctly though.
Having lumps and pustules on your face inhibits the seal of the gasmask as badly as a bit of stubble. Tightly coiling Black facial hair is prone to ingrowing and becoming infected (pseudofolliculitis barbae ) if shaved too closely too often.
I feel like it would be trivial to produce a gas mask that can seal around an unshaved face. I mean, it’s not like the US military is short on money to R&D such a device.
The M50 can do that now, no R&D needed.
There are implications for fitting over hair that mostly manifest as speed and number of uses before needing to replace parts.
Its possible but there are so many hygiene related reasoning to have soldiers shave that there is no point.
But also the real reason soldiers shave is conformity and indoctrination. Same as the approved haircut list.
To elaborate /clarify. Engineer the capability. The guy just back from leave deserves to survive a gas attack. But still mandate shaving/nair.
The most charitable interpretation is that he’s still holding a grudge about having to shave because it doesn’t obliterate his face to do so. Pretty sure he’s just a bigoted assclown though (with all appropriate apologies to non-bigoted assclowns).
