salute

In the Debbie Wasserman anim thread Rcommal said...

Because, y'know, in these days those skills are the best of all for both being admired and also for just ducking. 

It's a perfect storm for the best strategy *evah*.

I honestly do not know what that means.

If ducking means what I think it means, allow me to explain why a careless salute is so deeply offensive. I can say it in a few terse words but the anim is terse too and that is ducking,  

How to properly greet an officer and what can be expected from a superior officer are among the first things a recruit learns. They ALL learn how to greet one another uniformly. Someone teaches them, it is not something left for chance to have absorbed by osmosis via t.v., although you could, recruits are still taught.

Most boys learn this earlier than that probably in Boy Scouts and the like and they'd be in Boy Scouts because their fathers made them but that was then and this is now. Now boys can have two daddies and neither one know anything about Boy Scouts or saluting or military. Or more likely have no daddy around at all to urge them along any disciplined or organizational lines. 

It speaks to degradation. It announces collapse. It says, as a nation, man, have you ever climbed down. It has reached the point that a coddled and feckless boy with no noticeable observable discipline whatsoever but still very willing to accept guidance and counseling and apprenticeship, accept a kind of indentured servitude, can parlay the interests of activist churches, radical academia with their own agenda, publishing, and political party at local, state, and national levels by being what each one needs and taking what they are willing to give. 

I am explaining why this is offensive.

Dads also teach their boys how to shake hands. That's another thing like saluting. No dad around, then no sure teacher for proper handshaking or saluting. It's left to chance. It mostly works but sometimes does not.

I realized this by meeting so many people who shake hands poorly. 

Ever have a guy shake your hand like a woman? It freaks me out. It is offensive.

Same with saluting. 

It shows the CIC has no business being around military men disciplined in their ways far less being in charge of them all. Them all! Not when he got his salute from Captain Binghamton on McHales Navy or possibly Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes. That is why it is offensive.

The young corporals display a crisp discipline that is now a part of their nature. It is apparent in their postures and will be apparent in their postures forevermore. The discipline goes beyond salutes and handshakes, it speaks to rigid internalized discipline regarding language, respect, grooming, hygiene, keeping schedules, meals. exercise, the whole nine yards. 

A salute with a coffee cup is offensive because it shows the organizations from which Obama drew his power are so far in opposition to the military cultures he now heads. Yes, a simple stupid clumsy coffee sloshing Urkel-salute says all that when the other hand is busy and the mind engaged in buttoning a coat. Something's gotta give for a salute. But nothing does give, not coffee, not button, for a proper salute that acknowledges the rigid and overlapping organization concerns that delivered him and that is why it is offensive.

Coffee mugs, buttons, umbrellas, it's always the dumbest things.

It takes incalculable organization, attention and discipline to get him to and fro and in that moment of disembarking right where the weather of a new place hits the face and body and there is still the unfinished coffee but also reluctance to relinquish it, and why should he? He's president, take the coffee with him. Have somebody scramble for the mug if they must or leave a souvenir. And you have a million things on you mind. Everyone wants a piece of you, everyone has demands, and in that moment it gets down to a button. 

In the moment it is more important to close the button than it is to acknowledge properly the massive disciplined effort it took transporting his sorry ass, in the manner every corporal across a far flung globe in their various activities that he was given control over does automatically, And that is why it is offensive.