US Military never really trained for these types of dog and pony shows
US Military never really trained for these types of dog and pony shows
291 comments
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Didn't North Korean military slap US military with their dick on their faces for years? Isn't that the reason a North Korea exists at all?
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if by "defend our nation" he means "destabilizing foreign nations" then yeah, he is correct.
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There is an argument to be made that they are defending American hegemony though Trump is fast eroding that in favor of the Chinese.
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inshallah 🙏
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No one will ever match North Korea's marching game.
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I personally enjoy their "Jumbotron" where everyone holds a pixel and they change in unison.
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Lol they're pro military just to make Trump's joint celebration with the military look bad
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I despised drill and ceremony. Standing in the heat and humidity, waiting to move and watching soldiers drop because of heat stroke. Never lock your damn knees.
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Made more sense back in the day when you didnt have TV or anything to do for most of every day.
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I did the last sentence and got punished when I was in school ☠️
Did they even know locking knees feel painful already?
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Eeehh, so yes, after basic i did not march anywhere really. And you do need to brush up on it to keep in the swing of things…. But honestly, you know your unit is going to march in a parade months in advance, and for better or worse are going to represent the armed forces, you schedule mandatory training time.
Is it wasteful? Arguably under normal circumstances, definitely under this circumstance.
So i can only conclude that either they did not care, or do care a lot, or someone who was supposed to plan this fucked up and they just grabbed people.
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If I was the commanding officer for this absolute sham, I'd teach them to match the goose step to make a point.
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to defend the interests of our nations elites.
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"Defend our nation" by starting wars to keep rich people rich?
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Unironically yes. You don't get to be the center of the universe without showing up on the periphery to kick someone else's nuts in from time to time.
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no sometimes they start wars to get rich people richer
but for reals its not the soldiers starting wars its the higher ups and the people who make weapons who start wars
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It's crazy that the people involved for the most noble (to them) reasons are the ones most likely to be pulling triggers and/or getting killed, while the ones starting the war for evil reasons typically come out ahead as long as they are willing to ignore the mountain of bodies in their wake. (cue narrator)
Or as a wise man once said:
Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor? Why don't presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the poor? Why do they always send the poor? Why do they always send the poor?
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It's very important for soldiers to focus on doing "important work to defend our nation" (murdering brown kids) and that they're "productive at their jobs" (bombing hospitals)
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I came here for this but found people already pointing it out.
DeFeNdInG as seen by everyone else: going to places 5k km away and murdering every living thing there.
VeTeRaNs as seen by everyone else: steroid micro-penis assholes murdering women & children
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The bravest and most honorable men in our nation are doing the hard, honest work of fucking all those military wives while their chud husbands are deployed abroad.
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This is just not accurate.
Here's an example proving it incorrect:
https://youtu.be/aeFltEjzR2Y?t=1212
That's just a unit. Not a ceremonial one.
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I mean the honest truth is the military hates Trump just like the rest of us
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It is genuinely, such a hilariously piss-poor excuse.
My wife is in the Canadian Forces. She is ridiculously good at her job, and everyone in the CAF is trained to a ridiculously high standard. By the time she exited occupational training she was already qualified on more weapon systems than most US soldiers ever touch in their entire careers. Her unit shoots sub-MOA groupings for fun. They meet and often exceed the physical standards for Ranger school. And this is just reg-force infantry.
And despite all that, she is also so completely capable of keeping a tight march that she actually has to stop herself from automatically falling in perfect step next to me when we're walking down the street. And no, the excuse of "Oh, you can't march to Fortunate Son" doesn't count for shit. My wife can mark perfect time with no music at all. Christ, one time in training her MCpl made her unit all put on their gas masks and mark time while singing Oh Canada, and they didn't get to stop until it was perfect. And no, they did not have a fucking drum or backing music. She's not on a drill team; Canada doesn't have drill teams. This is just something they do because it's part of the basic standard of being a soldier.
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The key difference is you can actually march to that music. Fortunate son is slightly too fast for a proper pace which is why the front of the one group was wavy and people were out of step. Also if anyone was actually calling cadence, the people on the left side probably wouldn't have been able to hear it over the music.
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Marching can be done to no music.
Side ranks keep sideeye on the element leader to the side, everyone else keeps side eye to the person on their right.
There are also the marshall with the whips. If all else fails, you keep cadence to that.
In a silent march, you keep in step with the "Clomp clomp clomp", which also, is quite easy to do, and is done often.
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It's not hard to march
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It's what you learn on your very first day of basic training in Canada. You're expected to march in time everywhere you go throughout your training. You only get to stop once you reach your unit. Even clerks have to do this, it's just basic discipline.
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Hell, even our AIT D&C was crispy AF. Every fiber of our being was purely focused on immaculate execution. I do miss that. The intensity of
notthat natural motivation and not the manufactured stuff that gets you through daily morning formation.###"SOUND OFF"
😈👏 ooooh, Jodie you done did it now. I hope you like getting your tits blown off because you bout to get your tits blown off.
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When has the US military defended the nation? I got the impression that they're mostly used for invading foreign countries for financial gain, cf Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Yugoslavia, Sudan, Panama, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Guatemala, Korea.
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Not saying you're wrong in general but we didn't invade Kuwait.
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Fair, taking it off the list. It just comes up naturally when I list the horrible things the US has done bc of the highway of death. Still an example of the US military not defending the US, but definitely not an invasion of Kuwait. Thanks for the correction, I was sloppy!
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This is what Americans call "defending the nation"; making war in other countries than their own, believing themselves to be the world police.
I think America has only ever been attacked... Twice... In all of history (Pearl Harbour and 9/11), and both times the defense was pretty piss poor.
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Japan also invaded the aleutian islands.
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America was attacked hundreds of times. The native people lost.
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I'm not sure either of these events can even be counted as an attack. Pearl Harbour is roughly 3800km from the mainland. It's basically an overseas territory. An attack there is like saying the Falkland War was an attack on the UK.
And 9/11 was a terrorist attack, not a war. While it was a big attack, it was still only carried out by a handful of non-state-actors. That's quite a different thing than an actual military attack by a country.
Afaik, the last war on US soil was the civil war.
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Yeah. That's kind of America's whole thing. Making money. Exploiting everything. Americans are the Ferengi.
Defending America = defending capitalism = doing whatever they can to make American, capitalist companies more profitable.
I don't hate capitalism. Don't get me wrong, but I generally don't like capitalists.
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Invasion is the defense.
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This is a false dichotomy, as though you can either be productive or learn to march. Obviously you could do both.
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Broadly speaking, yeah. We send every member of the US Army through "Basic Training" even though 95% of them will never actually fire a gun or climb over a fence or jog ten miles in the rain for the rest of their careers.
Parade March is a thing we don't bother to drill into units (except specifically tasked "Parade Units" that exist to do little circus acts for the high command's amusement). But we could do it instead of the GI Joe training for the private class janitorial staff if we felt like it.
The bigger picture is that the US Military is a fountain of economic waste, social abuse, and pointless bloodshed in the name of machismo. Trump's parade is just the cherry on a seven layer cake of squandered national wealth.
But it's the thing liberals will fixate on, because we can't ever actually say "The Pentagon sucks ass and makes the world an objectively worse place to live in". It always has to be about this one Great Man Of History doing things wrong in a way his hypothetical liberal alternative would not.
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Parade March is a thing we don’t bother to drill into units (except specifically tasked “Parade Units” that exist to do little circus acts for the high command’s amusement).
That is not accurate.
https://youtu.be/aeFltEjzR2Y?t=1212
Soldiers utilize D&C every day, by and large. Even when running. Its how soldiers are moved, as a group, from point A to point B.
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You can. And they do.
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This is a false dichotomy, but also, maybe if all the others have been doing it for millennia there is a reason. For instance, having large groups that walk fast while not taking too much space, but also many other things : Marching into battle, study
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No, you can NOT learn to march like they do in North Korea or China and have any time left in your day to do an actual job or even train to fight. That crap takes time.
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I am surprised at how many people do not get it. In military you cannot not comply with the orders, especially whan there is clearly nothing criminal with it. The guys doing sloppy marching is pretty much the only agency they have and the only way to protest and boycot that ridiculous parade.
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This. NATO has us troops stationed all over europe. They marched just fine during european parades.
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Malicious compliance
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In military you cannot not comply with the orders
What i find surprising is that even after making this claim you still believe these people are down to protest and boycot their superiors.
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There was a brass band that was resposabal for playing to state visits. if a foreign visitor came who was not popular they would play the national anthem out of tune and out of time. The visitor would have to stand or salute while seeing there song be murdered infront of them.
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"They did in protest" is the funniest cope I have heard, ever I think.
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It's the entire discourse online, mostly stemming from veterans on social media. Literally saying the same as comment above you.
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i don't give a shit either way but it makes far more sense that it was in protest than that all of those soldiers are too incompetent to march properly. insisting it must be incompetence because you want to think bad things about the us military is the real cope.
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They probably did.
For better or worse, the people in uniform are good people, who believe they are doing something honorable, right or wrong that may be. GIs have a very strict honor code amongst themselves. Loyalty, Duty, Honor, Integrity, Selfless Service. Respect. Personal Courage.
Are there sometimes faults? Of course. We are humans, after all, and no human is faultless. And there are bad people, too.
Yes, this was quite obviously done in protest. Its a silent protest. "Malicious Compliance".
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From what I'm hearing from coordinators and people inside its not that they can't march. It's that nobody wanted to. They had to be there. So they phoned it in. Malicious compliance.
Like the squeaky tanks. That was a choice made in the motor pool. They could have greased them up and tested to make sure they were smooth. But they made a different call.
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Lmao I didn't think about that. Probably didn't think it would be quiet enough to hear it squeak either.
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Same, considering its age that thing is in mint condition and barely made any noise, really highlighted how much crowd noise wasn’t there
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100%. I'm the most uncoordinated guy I know and even I learned (French army but the cadence/the mere act of marching is similar enough), like not even that far into basic either. Maybe not everything is lost for the common American!
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I'm not saying you're wrong, but i do find it hard to believe. I think most people that take pride in their jobs won't half ass it.
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Lol, half assing it is the default setting. Most people in the military are 18-22 year olds doing one enlistment contract and mostly hate it and want to get out as soon as they can.
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Soldiers don't take pride in being used as political pawns.
Here is another event they hate doing, yet they seem to know how to march:
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Given that Fortunate Son was playing as one of the songs...
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Fucking of course it was.
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I wouldn't be surprised if they also played Born in the USA and Little Pink Houses to complete the missing the point trifecta.
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Or they did it as protest instead of not caring. Some might have cared a lot.
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Glad he owned up to the mistake.
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I think the way they marched says more about trump than it does their ability to march. I very much doubt they forgot how to do it.
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They deliberately half-assed the parade because they don't like the way Trump treats them. Trump calls them "suckers and losers." He cuts their benefits Why would you show any loyalty (or enthusiasm) to someone who treats you like that?
More Trump quotes: "You fucking generals. Why can't you be more like Hitler's generals?" 2017
On the burial of US Army private Vanessa Guillén: "It doesn't cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!" December 4, 2020. Trump has denied having made the remark.
"We're not going to support that loser's funeral." August, 2018. Trump has denied having made this remark.
re: John McCain, who was captured and tortured for five years: "He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured, okay? I hate to tell you." July 18, 2015.
"But, you know, during the Vietnam War, I got very lucky. I had a very high lottery number." November 9, 1995.
On the 1,800 US Marines who died at Belleau Wood in France during World War I "Suckers." November 11, 2018. Trump denies having made this remark.
On US soldiers in World War I "Who were the good guys in this war?" November 11, 2018. Trump denies having asked this question.
"I don't get it. What was in it for them?" November 11, 2018. Trump denies having made this remark.
On disabled veterans "Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded." September 30, 2019.
"Look, I don't want any wounded guys in the parade. This doesn't look good for me." Summer 2017.
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I can understand why someone would ask who the good guys were in WW1.
It's a question that shows a childlike understanding of war in general, but that's how war is often sold. A team sport with body bags.
That said, WW1 is hard to pick a "good" side. It was a mess of a war, but no side was particularly vile when compared to the others...
But for a US president, there's only one valid answer.
A US president can admit that Vietnam was not a shining moment is US history, but the world wars? No.
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I had a very high lottery number
ah yes. that's how lottery works
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During the Vietnam War there was a draft, so you could end up being conscripted and shipped halfway around the world to fight it. One way to avoid getting drafted was a lottery where, if you picked a high enough random number, you could avoid being drafted.
The thing is, Trump never picked a lottery number. Instead, he got five draft deferments, 1 medical and 4 educational. A lot of rich people at the time were able to avoid military service alltogether by getting a doctor to sign off that you had a sketchy illness. In Trump's case, it was bone spurs, which apparently healed right up after the Vietnam War ended. Trump kept his 1-Y deferments until after 1972, when he was reclassified 4-F (permanently ineligible for service). By claiming he got a "high lottery number" Trump makes it sound like staying out of Vietnam was an amazing stroke of luck. That was just another lie. Trump had powerful friends and family intervene for him. Luck had nothing to do with it.
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I'm a PATRIOTIC Republican who PROUDLY wears the American Flag on my Shorts and Truck and TRUMPS RIGHT! Our Soldiers are LOSERS AND SUCKERS!
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Ok, but 1. fuck John McCain that ghoulish piece of shit is in hell lmao. 2. Trump's point about soldiers who die on the other side of the planet, fighting for the profits of people like Trump, is absolutely valid. I have no idea what that thought is even doing in an imperialist's brain.
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I have no idea what that thought is even doing in an imperialist’s brain.
Making occasional anti-war gestures and comments muddies the water enough for Libertarian-minded types to support him. It's the same reason Biden occasionally criticized Netanyahu, it's all theater.
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“A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine.”
– Soviet observation during the Cold War -
The band played "Fortunate Son". They all knew exactly what they were doing.
If shit ever does hit the fan full send (I very much doubt it) he doesn't have the army.
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Got a video link? Sounds amazing.
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Imperial March would have been dope
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The way the marines, in particular, marched… no. That was sloppy and looked intentional.
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Saw a short video of an ex drill instructor saying your first week in boot besides getting oriented and shit was learning to march. You dont ever forget it. That if it starts getting sloppy, the seargent or whatever starts saying left, right, left to coordinate again. The guy said it was very intentional .
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I learned to march in basic in '96, I promise you it stays w you.
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Yeah, I did basic training decades ago, and could probably do it right with maybe an hour-long refresher course. Even without that I'd probably be be fine just marching, it's more the "eyes left", "present arms", handling turns, etc. that would need work.
That said, you tend to follow someone's lead. From what I remember, they declare it like "by the left, quick march" and that means you're marching at a standard "quick" pace and you're lining up with whoever's to your left, and the left column follows the person in front of them, so basically led by whoever's in the front-left position of the formation. That means if people to your left, or people on the left-most column are out of step, it will have a cascading effect through the ranks.
But yeah, it's pretty standard to call out the march, and they'd definitely do that if they cared.
What's also funny is that at one point as the soldiers were marching past, they were playing "Fortunate Son" on the PA system. Now, that's massively ironic given that the song is basically about Vietnam-era draft dodgers who used their family's wealth to get out of Vietnam service like Trump.
But, making it worse is that the song has a slightly faster pace than your typical rock song at 135ish BPM. The US military generally marches at 120 BPM. It's actually really hard to hear a song at 135 BPM and march at 120 BPM. That's why generally marching music is at 120 BPM so you march to the beat. The result is that some soldiers kept marching at 120 BPM, others adjusted to match the song, and it all generally looked like shit.
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They didn't want to attract the worm.
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No need, trump was already there.
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Trump physically resembles Baron Harkonen from the old film.
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"The Spice must flow"
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We're there soldiers in WW2 cosplay? I'd be so embarrassed.
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I was only in marching band. 25 years later, I promise I could still do it with zero practice. This was on purpose.
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If you were in marching band, there's a good possibility that you had more thorough training in marching than what's given in basic training, especially if you went to competitions. Marching makes up like half the activity of marching band (it's in the name). Marching is only one of a plethora of things that are taught during the few months of basic training, and once you're out of basic, you may never have to march again.
I also think your expectations on how rhythmically-inclined the average person (or soldier) is might be on the high side based on your experience in an activity with a bunch of highly rhythmically-inclined people.
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I was in army cadets for like 2 years about 17 years ago and could still do this with 0 effort and I have a very poor sense of rhythm.
Trust me, anyone that's spent more than like an hour learning to march could still do it with ease decades later.
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Marching makes up like half the activity of marching band
Marching makes up about 25% of daily life for a solider. We had PT formations, morning formation, weekend safety briefing formations, formations for training sessions, etc etc. If you have an element of troops, of any size, and they need to move from Point A to Point B, you're marching there.
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This isn't true at all. Marching is really easy, especially when there's music to March to. I did a bit of drill in basic, and we would get a bit of practice before something a lot smaller than this, and we would be ace in 20 minutes of practice. They are doing this on purpose.
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100% and I can't imagine the effect of basic training and what you learned there being forgotten until long afterwards.
In the British army, even regular non-guardsman, infantry will usually parade into towns. They love a bit on pomp and ceremony. For example, even now regiments like the black watch regiment would be bagpipes bearing, marching in perfect unison into some place and then roll off to war.
They didn't want to be there and their imo their COs didn't want to kick off at them in front of the cameras.
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I think it was probably in protest. However they can, I guess.
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I’ve been trying to explain to people for many years that China’s military is mostly just for show, but it isn’t the US if we’re not demonizing China for no reason.
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If I could march in a brass band after very limited practice, these guys can. They just didn’t want to.
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And marching in band is even harder, since you are playing an instrument at the same time.
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These soldiers spend their days doing important work to defend our nation.
The U.S. military has done nothing to defend their "nation" for over 100 years. They ONLY defend the corporate oligarchs' ability to steal resources and use slave labor in third world countries.
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Lmao yet Ukraine still stands thanks to American intelligence and military apparatus.
I'm not even an American but this kindergarten sentiment on Lemmy is so exhausting.
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And then promptly fucked right out of peace negotiations immediately after signing the resources deal. Fits perfectly well with
They ONLY defend the corporate oligarchs’ ability to steal resources and use slave labor in third world countries.
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Yeah you get a lot of these 'moral purity absolutists' with all the nuance of an edgy teen. Some of them, or course, are edgy teens, but 100 years is a super odd choice even so. You'd think by the time they were 13 they'd have heard of at least one war that came pretty close to defense against a malign hegemonic power with ambitions of global domination....
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Are you suggesting that kindergarten political thought is somehow less valid? You must hate children!
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Lmao yet Ukraine still stands thanks to American intelligence and military apparatus.
Which they provide exactly as long as they profit exponentially from it. Dont pretend like the US would provide foreign aid out of generosity.
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It's possible that you're overestimating the US contribution
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Looking at the conflicts they have been explictly or covertly involved in, it does seem like they are attempting to create a hegemony. That's not to say that some good doesn't get done along the way but it is more of a byproduct than the intent.
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Must have forgotten that Ukraine became a US state, these edgy kids
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The entire thing screamed humiliation display more than anything else. And the anything else was like a half assed shitty commercial for military equipment. They had actual soldiers playing dress up for no fucking reason while wasting a fuck ton of money the VA could’ve used. Just despicable all around.
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Story time, boys and girls.
When I joined the Army and went to basic training, one of the first things they did was show us how to stand at attention, at-ease, right face, left face, and about face. Then they turned the training unit and marched off.
And then stopped and screamed at us for marching like Nazis.
Turns out, you don't see US soldiers marching like that because it's stupid as hell, and you can't do it for twenty miles with a rucksack. The US military for all their many, many faults, is real good at war, and marching like a toy soldier doesn't help you do war.
So we learned how to march like Americans, which is much more casual. The only thing you've gotta do is make sure you match the stride length of the soldier in front of you, but even that is more of a suggestion than a hard rule. We got good, though, because we were assholes.
We would ease out behind someone who was walking somewhere and roughly the same height, and step slightly faster than the person in front of us, until we were close behind them. Then you perform a little skip at the last second to get back to the same stride and close the last few inches. The end result is that your chest is hovering about an inch from their back, your nose is an inch from the back of their head, and your hands are swinging right behind theirs. While walking at full speed.
You haven't had a jump scare until you've marched two blocks, turned your head, and glimpsed someone's face an inch from your own.
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The US military for all their many, many faults, is real good at war, and marching like a toy soldier doesn't help you do war.
The point of a uniformed service is to show your enemy that you have control and command over people who will follow your orders. Demonstrating this lowers your enemy's will to fight back. It gets soldiers on the other side to think "If these guys are so organized that they march in unison, we don't stand a chance."
These military parades are no longer valuable except to authoritarians. Normal functioning democracies don't use national military forces to project power. They do so using diplomacy and other political methods.
But Trump, Kim Jung Un, Modi, and Putin all use it to flex their authority to their base.
It will not surprise me if in the next year, a new division in the army is created for parade duty for the president's birthday where next year their marching will be perfect.
All so that Trump can get his dick hard.
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The USA absolutely uses military prowess to project power. It just happens to be that marching soldiers no longer does that anymore; that's what Air Force flybys at college football games are for.
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The point of a uniformed service is to show your enemy that you have control and command over people who will follow your orders. Demonstrating this lowers your enemy's will to fight back. It gets soldiers on the other side to think "If these guys are so organized that they march in unison, we don't stand a chance."
Fair enough.
It will not surprise me if in the next year, a new division in the army is created for parade duty for the president's birthday where next year their marching will be perfect.
That would just be the chefs kiss of silly bullshit on top of everything else.
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The British can all do it for things like the Queen's funeral.
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It Follows....
...him through the train turnstile
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At least Trump seemed not to enjoy any of it, so hopefully we can put this whole stupid episode behind us, and move on to the next stupid episode.
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- Trump wanted this for a decade
- They put on this ridiculous thing
- Trump isn't pleased; obviously uncomfortable
Why the hell did they do this then?
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The next episode will involve him using an Executive Order commanding the Mint to make a Presidential Crown or something.
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Fuck do I need to add this to my bingo board?
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Yeah! They need to do important stuff!
Like point guns at me while I'm going to the grocery store!
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Military doesn't do that, that's for cops after they get out of the military.
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Yeah, the military's job is to point guns at people when they're going to the grocery store in other countries, primarily.
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Oh, so who was the guy in digital camo standing next to the grey armored vehicle doing that?
Because im pretty sure that wasn't a cop; he looked like he might've actually know how to use his gun.
Edit: did not see crayons, but it was a few hours after lunch and there was a pretty nice art supply store nearby.
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Except when deployed when the police are "overran".
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On a fucking Saturday too. They wanted to be with their loved one probably.
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I woulda filed a chit for gastro or something.
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They can dEfEnD oUr NaTiOn against brown peasants, but can't march in step because they apparent forget how to do so after basic training? Shit, it's been over 20 years since my military service and I'm 100% sure I could still manage to march in step
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That may be; but how many of those people just didn't fucking care because of the dress and deportment of leadship?
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I just think it's odd that they're not wearing class A's or even B's
When I was in 20+ years ago they didn't even want us stopping for gas off-post in our BDU's on the way home from work
Wearing white parade gloves in that uniform also just looks weird
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It's been over 20 years since I was in marching band and I could absolutely do it. But not play a woodwind. That takes practice...
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Even the most drunk idiots at any of our small villages folk festivals can do that for hours, without any training. It's not hard ffs.
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Same, but whacking stuff with a stick is generally easier
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I can play a woodwind just as well as these guys were marching.
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I was only in JROTC 20+ years ago and I'm pretty sure I can march in step.
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Sounds like it was too loud to hear the cadence by the reviewing stand. I don't think it was an ability jssue or an apathy issue.
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Even then you'd expect them to be able to march in step with each other even if they can't hear some cadence.
Like I said in another comment, I think it's just more likely they did the bare minimum because they absolutely didn't give a fuck about being performing monkeys for King Trump
edit: I was in the military for years. I don't understand how some of y'all make marching in step and in formation sound like fucking quantum physics
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Who fucking cares?
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So, the tweet isn't entirely true; my experience in the army was that we very much did irregularly do marches together, even after basic training. Every few months or so the battallion or brigade leadership would get an idea about a 'fun run' or whatever, and the start of those is always a march together. It inevitably switched to running together, but there was definitely a quick refresher on walking in step together on a regular basis.
What the tweeter missed is that there's tricks that every leadership command knows to do if they want a formation to look good.
If you wanted to put a military parade on that actually looked good you'd do a couple things prior to running it. You'd tell your various units to have a competition for who does it best, and you'd put up a basic-ass award for the winners and runners up. This ensures that any ladder climbers go out and find all the people who are actually good at this to put together a small super squad of people who actually know what they're doing. You then have them compete, and you pick the units that did the best to lead your parade.
We actually did this in basic training; my drill sgts had a little demonstration where they put the people good at keeping time together and the people bad it together. It was damn impressive how much of a difference just doing that made. One or two bad marchers can ruin a whole formation with their lack of timing.
None of this was done; at best they practiced for pt for a couple weeks before the event, but even that is iffy. They likely didn't bother to filter the parade members who can't march out, and that'd be good enough to turn this into a herd instead of a formation.
This doesn't rule out malicious compliance at all though; again, one or two bad marchees doing their best (or worst) job can completely throw off the timing of everybody behind and next to them. Same way as counting wrongly out loud can throw off someone trying to count up to 50.
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put together a small super squad of people who actually know what they're doing
From what I vaguely remember, you also want all the best marchers on the left most of the time, since you line up with the person on your left most of the time, and the very best at the front left. This was decades ago for me, but I know that there were tricks like that to make it look good.
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Huh? Don't you sort your ranks by size? Having good marchers somewhere then requires all the soldiers to be the same size.
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They could have also done mock patrol movements, uneven spread, looking in different directions, and carrying weapons. A lot harder to mess up when it’s intentionally offstep.
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My volunteer fire department was able to march in sync in parades despite having enjoyed a few adult beverages beforehand. What the Army did had to be deliberate.
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gotta stroke shitler's ego.
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probably one of the first things every soldier world wide learns is marching. Malicious compliance it is.
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Russians be like "they can't march, maybe they can't even clean a toilet bowl with their fork or fuck and tortue a child, we totally win"
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Decades of Hollywood Military propaganda ruined in one single day.
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It's like in Catch-22 when Lieutenant Scheisskopf thinks that it's in vogue to march with your arms barely moving, and no one knows any better.
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If my kids were Army and were participating at an event, i would go watch. It sucks that it could have been a nice, reasonable celebration of the Army's 250 years of service but instead it was hijacked by a dipshit charlatan and turned into something that no one wanted. I feel sad for the families of the participants.
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Actually, they do train for this. So nice try. They hate Trump.
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AD military here, Been in 5 years. Haven't marched since basic.
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I'm sure they felt very proud being brought on and ordered to march on display like trained monkeys.
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If they dislike Trump so much, they had like, you know, all their tanks there and stuff, they should have just removed him from office.
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They were mostly like WW2 tanks from what I saw. I'm sure their weapons systems were dismantled or decommissioned
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Those tanks were museum pieces.
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Somehow I doubt that someone in a professional armed forces can't fucking march. It's just left, left, left right left
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Anyone can march. Marching in perfect sync with 50 other soldiers in formation is another matter and takes quite a bit of practice and coordination like any other group dance routine.
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I've been out of the military for almost 20 years and I can still march to a cadence.
Active duty? They could march if they felt like it. They did not.
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Just gotta keep the bends outta those elbows, troop!
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You learn a lot about the speed of sound
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I thought it was in unison but it certainly didn't have the giant goose stepping.
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If they're all really so unhappy to do this, I'm not saying they should do a coup... but I'm not not saying that, either.
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Whole existence of the military is questionable (not only in the US, but everywhere else) together with the governments, borders, permissions, involuntarily taxation ("legal" theft).
People (not stupid NPCs) can live and peacefully coexist without that crap.
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given that they lost in Afghanistan, after 2 decades, to one of the military of one of the poorest countries in the world. proves that the US military is nothing but a scam to funnel tax payer money to the pockets of MIL shareholders.
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Seems like the kind of thing someone who's been the president before would know. It's like draft-dodging and believing everything you see on tv are qualities of a shitty president.
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They defend our nation? How, and in what ways? Bonus points if you can describe it in : current era facts, non-hegemonic, and without using the word “preemptive strike”, and with action on our soil.
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Deterrent?
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Listen, those golf courses ain't gonna upkeep themselves.
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You mean they spend zero time on showmanship training and thus twirling rifles serves a practical and essential combat purpose?
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Military is absurd. Ceremonial is the least destructive thing they can do I think.
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Trump just needs to up his dictator game and threaten everyone involved, especially the leadership, with jail time or dishonorable discharge if they don’t shape up and goose-step properly.
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defend our nation
From what?
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Intentional
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Shit excuse. It takes more effort not to march in unison.
It's also something that is taught in UK army, since the collapsing bridge incident.
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Wild first point but we'll ignore it.
What is the collapsing bridge incident?
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It's common knowledge that soldiers don't walk in unison on bridges. It dates back to 1831.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broughton_Suspension_Bridge
Same thing happened in France twenty years later:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angers_Bridge
It also postponed the opening of a bridge in London by two years in 2000:
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I think this is what they are referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broughton_Suspension_Bridge.
TL;DR: The bridge collapsed because soldiers marching on it created force they hadn't anticipated, soldiers breaking step supposedly don't have as much of an impact.
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London Bridge falling down, falling down, falling down?
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Didn’t it collapse because they walked in unison, causing resonance?
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Murica is just a puppet that rump has his arm up its ass
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