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Forward, Into The Past!
Jul. 9th, 2013 11:55 amSo, pips and crowns and "Fusilier Bloggins" again.
(see below the cut if you don't know what I'm talking about)
Er-hr-h'rm... colour me unimpressed.
This is class-A pandering.
A symbolic act from a government that understands well, but really doesn't care, about the large power of small symbols that some people hold very dearly and never relinquished.
It's precisely to placate the grouchy 60+ year olds, exactly those who consider the last 46 years of the Canadian military to be an embarrassment and aberration, that this is being done - I thought the same thing when the RCN and RCAF got renamed, rebadged, what have you a year or two ago.
The Army just got to do this last.
Do you have to think very long about the dominant political power base of this constituency, or their voting behaviour?
Like the emigres who returned after Napoleon, they have forgotten nothing and learned nothing.
So, it's 1966 or less again - why stop there - red serge and tricorner hats, powdered wigs for Change of Command parades, or even further and return to Decuriones, Centuriones and phalerae worn on the cuirass?
I served too; wore pips on my mess kit and patrols, in fact - that part never went away.
And if I were serving today, I'd be putting up a grey square on my shoulder as well ("3rd Canadian Division" is more evocative than "Land Forces Western Area", but it doesn't give the Army any more actual divisions).
I understand military traditions, more deeply than Stephen Harper does (was he ever even in Wolf Cubs?) but I don't need to look like a photograph of my grandfather to be reminded that I am his grandson.
I recognize window-dressing when I see it, having taken part in many "dog-and-pony shows" in my time served, and this is one of those empty gestures.
The past is past, and while you may admire it or study it, frankly it's infantile and magical thinking to suppose that you can return to it (or rather, your coloured imagination of it) by adopting its trappings.
I'd sooner see the veterans of Canada's longest war taken care of properly, no matter what's on their slip-ons or whether they're addressed as "Rifleman" or not.
I understand it's not an either-or proposition, there's enough money to do both, but to see what's acted upon first betrays the priorities really in play.
( Read more... )
(see below the cut if you don't know what I'm talking about)
Er-hr-h'rm... colour me unimpressed.
This is class-A pandering.
A symbolic act from a government that understands well, but really doesn't care, about the large power of small symbols that some people hold very dearly and never relinquished.
It's precisely to placate the grouchy 60+ year olds, exactly those who consider the last 46 years of the Canadian military to be an embarrassment and aberration, that this is being done - I thought the same thing when the RCN and RCAF got renamed, rebadged, what have you a year or two ago.
The Army just got to do this last.
Do you have to think very long about the dominant political power base of this constituency, or their voting behaviour?
Like the emigres who returned after Napoleon, they have forgotten nothing and learned nothing.
So, it's 1966 or less again - why stop there - red serge and tricorner hats, powdered wigs for Change of Command parades, or even further and return to Decuriones, Centuriones and phalerae worn on the cuirass?
I served too; wore pips on my mess kit and patrols, in fact - that part never went away.
And if I were serving today, I'd be putting up a grey square on my shoulder as well ("3rd Canadian Division" is more evocative than "Land Forces Western Area", but it doesn't give the Army any more actual divisions).
I understand military traditions, more deeply than Stephen Harper does (was he ever even in Wolf Cubs?) but I don't need to look like a photograph of my grandfather to be reminded that I am his grandson.
I recognize window-dressing when I see it, having taken part in many "dog-and-pony shows" in my time served, and this is one of those empty gestures.
The past is past, and while you may admire it or study it, frankly it's infantile and magical thinking to suppose that you can return to it (or rather, your coloured imagination of it) by adopting its trappings.
I'd sooner see the veterans of Canada's longest war taken care of properly, no matter what's on their slip-ons or whether they're addressed as "Rifleman" or not.
I understand it's not an either-or proposition, there's enough money to do both, but to see what's acted upon first betrays the priorities really in play.
( Read more... )
