Fussing Over the Details

Oh, that naughty, naughty Navy:

Washington (CNN) -- As the Navy investigates how a series of raunchy videos, full of sexual innuendo and anti-gay remarks, were produced and shown to a crew while on deployment, some are at odds about whether the high-ranking Navy officer in question should keep his position.

Excerpts from the videos and descriptions of their content were first published Saturday by The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Virginia.

The videos on the paper's website, reviewed by CNN, feature a man identified by two Navy officials and The Virginian-Pilot as Capt. Owen Honors, who at the time was the executive officer, or second-in-command, of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. He recently took command of the carrier, winning one of the most coveted assignments in the U.S. Navy, which has only 11 aircraft carriers.

[ ... ]

Navy spokesman Cmdr. Chris Sims said the videos, which were shown to the crew of the Enterprise while on deployment supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, are "inappropriate."

Honors is shown cursing along with other members of his staff in an attempt to demonstrate humor, according to videos.

There are also anti-gay slurs, simulated sex acts, and what appear to be two female sailors in a shower together.

[ ... ]

But the Saturday statement was an about-face from the initial military statement to the newspaper. In that statement, the Navy said the videos were "not created with the intent to offend anyone. The videos were intended to be humorous skits focusing the crew's attention on specific issues such as port visits, traffic safety, water conservation, ship cleanliness, etc."

Up to now, I haven't commented in this space concerning the current imperial distraction about whether homosexuals should be openly participating in the empire's death rituals. I've neglected this because, as with so many other pseudo-issues of our day, I've felt paralyzed by the basic initial question of: where to start? I still don't know, but maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe the thing to do is just pick a place, arbitrarily. Why not? What's the worst that can happen? Maybe I'll be forced to fire myself off this blog. Big deal -- the pay's not that good, anyway. So here goes.

I think that many of my former colleagues in "conservatism" -- whatever that may be -- consider that having Gaze In The Military™ is bad, because that will detract from the glorious, manly virtue and dignity of that military. To which I say: nonsense. Such virtue and dignity do not exist. They are illusory. The US military is a machine, having the following major functions:

(1) Providing profit to a number of large, politically-connected contracting corporations;

(2) Providing profit to strip bars, massage parlors, and other forms of the commercial sex industry wherever base facilities are to be found, in the US and overseas;

(3) Providing distractions and other political benefits to the parasite class in the District of Columbia;

(4) Providing protection to imperially-friendly foreign despots who otherwise would likely be overthrown by the people on whose necks they stand;

(5) Providing death and destruction to those foreigners who are recalcitrant and un-cooperative with the purposes of the DC parasites and despots who stand on American necks and drink American blood;

(6) Providing employment-of-last-resort to the domestic underclass, as well as futile death or severe maiming to an acceptable fraction of that underclass;

(7) Providing occupational training and indoctrination to future soldiers in the Army of Domestic Occupation (that is, "law enforcement"); and

(8) Vaporizing vast oceans of (borrowed) wealth.

None of this has anything, really, to do with virtue or dignity. It has a great deal to do with mass murder, tyranny, and ruinous waste. And so, I would argue, it makes very little sense to object to either the military's exclusion of homosexuals, or its inclusion of homosexuals; to its production of "appropriate" videos or its production of inappropriate ones. Those are the small details, lacking all significance. The real and reasonable objections to the military concern its essential nature, and its use.

Homosexuals should not be in the US military. Heterosexuals should not be in the US military. Women should not be in the US military, and men should not be in the US military. I hope I haven't left anyone out in.