Richard Jernigan -> RE: Taxes, Corruption (Jun. 4 2011 8:09:05)
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This causes me seriously to consider my manliness. In high school, I was on our state champion basketball team. But I was a second stringer, and basketball is not nearly as manly as American football. Our school didn't have an American football team, so: Wimp. I lettered in soccer (football), but we were only runner up in state tournament: Wimp At university, I joined the cave exploring society, exploring caves in Texas and northeastern Mexico. In Mexico we set a depth record that held for a few years. A couple of buddies and I did scuba dives in some caves. But there were girl spelunkers. Bought a BSA 650 cc Super Rocket bike,rode from Austin to Acapulco and back a couple times. Girls do it now: Wimp In 1961 I got drafted into the U.S. Army. I come from a family with a long military tradition. Four of my ancestors served as officers under General Washington. My ancestors participated in every U.S. war since. I had a father and 8 uncles in the military in World War II. My father was a military officer. So once in the Army I went for jump school (airborne infantry) and Ranger training. We did build some bridges in Company C, 4th Engineer Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, but we didn't drill any oil wells or do any bullfighting. Women do the same nowadays. Kara Hultgreen worked for me as an engineer before she became the first female U.S. Navy fighter pilot. Makes me a Wimp. After the Army I was recruited to paramilitary work for an Agency of the U.S. Government. Seemed like the thing for a 24-year old son of a long military tradition to do, fighting communism and all that. Ranger Instructor School, Infantry Officer School, Special Forces training. I was assigned to Nicaragua in the early 1960s, to train and then to lead a company--103 men--of a Special Operations Force. The FSLN was just getting started, they weren't the Sandinistas yet. After a year's training we operated in northeastern Nicaragua. After about another year, a friend from Infantry Officer School and I figured out that we were not so much fighting communism as continuing the 400-year old war of the whites against the Indians while the Somozas blew smoke up Uncle Sam's ass. Next time we rotated back to Managua, we resigned. The Somozas' continued repression. That and their theft of most of the aid money that flowed in after the 1972 Managua earthquake soon made the Sandinistas into a real opposition force. Some of the guys I trained went over to the Sandinistas ten years later, in outrage against the Somozas. Two years of Agency training, a year training the Nicaraguans to jump out of planes and kill Indians, a year in combat in the jungle, some guys went over to the Sandinistas ten years later: Me, a Wimp. After getting back to Texas I bought a Harley, hung with my cousin Tommy in San Antonio. He built engines for the Bandidos motorcylce gang. Most people would say the Bandidos are as bad as the Hell's Angles. Some people would say, worse. But Tommy and I weren't real gangsters. A few bar fights, but no murders, serious beatings, dope deals, pimping or other manly activities. Score me a Wimp. Calmed down a little, went back to University, got degrees in math and physics. Bought another Harley. Among other trips rode from Austin to Seattle to Tapachula via San Antonio, back to Austin one summer--but girls do it now. Settled down, got married, raised two kids, put them both through University, one through law school--like millions of other schmucks when I should have been out riding my motorcycle and drilling oil wells. Wimp. Got a job in the defense business. First job, keep the Soviet missile defense radars from working if the balloon went up and the end of the world came. One thing led to another. By the time the end of the Cold War came, I was in on several black projects, had a drawer full of Intelligence tickets. By 1989 all my clients had the word Secretary in their job titles, except for one Senior Vice President of Lockheed Missiles and Space Company and another from Boeing. Things got a bit dicey a few times during the Cold War, but in the end neither we nor the Soviets were up for bringing on the end of the world. In the end, the Soviets caved. They would have caved without me, but I did my part. However, it was indoor work, no heavy lifting, so: Wimp Cold war over, I went to the big U.S. Base on Kwajalein in the Central Pacific. Was the boss of a billion bucks worth of the USA's biggest most sophisticated radars. Two-hundred-fifty employees ranged from M.I.T. and Stanford Phd's to semiliterate mechanical helpers. Again, mostly indoor work for me. A little climbing on 200 ft towers, but not really to work, the boss just looked at stuff and bossed the sub-bosses around: Wimp Got back into scuba diving, 5,000 dives all over the Pacific. But there are plenty of women divers and underwater photographers as good as I am: Wimp But there is one area where I may qualify for manliness. Alatriste, you object to the intellectual content of my posts. Intellectual stuff is un-manly. Fortunately, I can assure you I have done dumb stuff. Scuba diving in caves in the late 1950s was definitely dumb. No specialized equipment or training had been developed at that time. We were just lucky we didn't get into trouble and kill ourselves. I nearly killed myself once on the BSA Super Rocket, and more than a few people driving cars took a shot at doing it for me. In the jungle I jumped a full company into an area where people were on the ground shooting up at us. Very few people on the ground, but still, a few. It is really hard to hit a paratrooper with small arms fire from the ground, while the jumpers are fairly high. When we hit the ground, the Indians just faded away. Nobody got hurt. But if there are people on the ground shooting at you when you jump, chances are your landing zone (LZ) is going to be pretty hot. Jumping into a hot LZ seriously violates a basic principle of airborne infantry tactics. I heard about it. In fact, I got my ass chewed all the way up to my earlobes. Dumb. North of Monterrey on the Harley, we decided to take the old twisty road up to the summit and watch the sunset. Coming down the other side of the pass in the dark, zooming right along, we rounded a turn into a herd of cattle on the road. We got through them, kicking cows, beating them on the snout with our fists, but when we got out the other side, we were surprised we hadn't gotten hooked, kicked or stomped. Going that fast on that road, in the dark: Dumb. My buddies and I dove every weekend, and often a day or two during the week the whole 18 years I was at Kwaj. We were used to handling a variety of conditions. As divemaster on a club trip I put 40 divers into current that was stronger than most of them knew how to handle. If the water is shallow, you just go to the the bottom, grab on to the rocks, and work hand over hand. But 25 or 30 of the 40 divers tried to swim against the current, used up all their air, didn't have any fun, and came near getting in trouble. During my years as divemaster I rescued maybe four or five panicked divers. Nothing serious, people just got into situations that scared them and lost it. But that current situation could easily have turned into real trouble and overwhelmed me and my two rescue divers. Dumb move for divemaster. So, i've done dumb stuff. But this raises an important question, Alatriste. Since you are an expert on manliness, and intellectual stuff is un-manly, just how dumb do you have to be, to be considered manly? Do I qualify? Gosh, I hope so... RNJ
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