So you accuse me personally of being biased because I supposedly "reaped great benefits" as a United States government employee, yet you not only know nothing about federal service in the United States but aren't even a citizen or resident! And now you have the gall to say "But don t worry captain, next time I'll ask u for permission before getting involved." once your ignorance and complete lack of standing is pointed out! And you have to throw in the " which in your world should be enough to believe it.", where the heck does that come from? Do you have any actual point here, or are you just being an a-hole for the sake of being an a-hole? Just amazing.
As I said, I'm happy to defend you if you thank me or spit on me, I pretty pointedly never asked anyone's thanks, hopefully I made that crystal clear. We have an all volunteer military in the United States, and the decision to serve is a deeply personal one with a variety of aspects, none of which involved personal gain for me. I'm old enough that when I joined there were a number of split countries like Germany and Korea (still) that it would be naive to think wouldn't have been "unified" absent a strong military force given that this was the stated objective of the other side, so while I'm no U.S. apologist and certainly feel the war in Iraq was a debacle, I reject the idea that the U.S. doesn't defend anything worthwhile. For someone from another country to baselessly accuse me of being biased simply because I put my life on the line for my country is beyond ridiculous, as I pointed out with a number of examples. Do you disagree?
Sure thing, I graduated with high honors with an electrical engineering degree and went to work 80 hour weeks making $25,000 a year in a pretty dangerous job so I could go to the whorehouses next to military bases. And subsequently started two successful businesses because I like not having to show initiative (not how the U.S. military works, btw, a key difference between volunteer and conscript militaries). And was too stupid to realize I could buy airline tickets to travel extensively (which I have, probably a good chance I've spend a couple weeks in your country wherever that is). Obviously we can go down the philosophical rabbit hole of if even altruistic behavior is at its root selfish, certainly makes for interesting philosophy class mental masturbation. But completely fails to address the central issue here: someone not even in the U.S. pontificating on a thread about U.S. regulation and baselessly accusing me of being biased on how the U.S. government works solely because of my military service. Despite the fact that they themselves have no experience and demonstrate that they haven't the faintest clue of how the U.S. government operates.
Actually among U.S. military officers I'm a pretty typical story, absent the entrepreneur part. I realized as I thought about our conversation that this is probably a case of a big difference in how the military is perceived in an involuntary service country vs a voluntary service one. Your comments are similar to those who come from my parents generation when they had the draft here. If you have to attract high quality volunteers you have to change the entire brand of the military, which the U.S. has been by and large successful in doing. If you can just conscript it becomes the crappy job that everyone has to do and in that case volunteering for such a job would indeed make you seem desperate or a bit crazy. Anyway, nothing personal taken from you, good learning experience on my part about differences in perception.
