Have you ever watched a period drama that takes place in the 18th or 19th century and wonder why so many rich British were Colonels?
After the end of feudalism and the rise of the “modern” military, the officer class still came from and saw themselves as lesser nobility.
That was was separated the officers from NCOs.
NCOs were poor or working-class who enlisted and by effort worked their way up.
Officers were gentlemen of good families and education who joined the service to legitimize themselves. Today we’d call it credentialziing.
Officers (except in the Navy where everyone is on the same boat) didn’t expect to do much fighting. They sat on a horse on a hill overlooking the battle while giving orders by bugle.
Even among enemy armies, it was ungentlemanly to kill another officer. There was also a good chance the other officer was a distant cousin in the lesser nobility bloodline.
So some son of some lesser noble would become an officer, serve some period in the British Army, then upon leaving be given colonial land in Africa or India or somewhere else, enriching the family and increasing their prestige.
We saw some of this during the Civil War. Wealthy and well-connected families would pay or rub elbows and a son would get a commission as a Captain or Colonel, despite having no real military training or experience. They would do their duty far away from the battlefield and still receive honors and prestige.
This changed by the end of the Civil War and was one of the victories of the Confederacy that improved America. The war got to be so bloody with so many casualties that those prestige officers were killed and many of the branches of the well-conected family trees were pruned. This lead to a reordering of post-Civil War society.
This happened similarly to European armies during WWI. Officers were killed in droves. Being an officer on horseback from a good family didn’t protect you from belt-fed machineguns and artillery.
As a result, the officer classes were improved and became more meritocratic. The military gives newly commissioned officers shit, but in reality, it’s far better than it was a century or two ago where most of the officers were there because they came from the right families and got their commissions through nepotism.
It may be a new reordering of society. It may be that war has become too easy with drones and missiles doing a lot of the killing, with very little Iwo Jima and Market Garden type hard fighting for months where whole units are wiped out. But we’re going backward with our officers.
They are now, once again, a noble class.
Yes. Our generals are elites with Ivy League educations. They are the new nobility.
How many Leftists have I covered who were officers and then come out into politics using their military service as a credential while simultaneously saying their service is why they know you can’t own certain types of guns.
They were officers and so they are just better than you. They earned their nobility through service the way the knights of old did, and you didn’t, you shitty civilian. Why didn’t you serve, are you a traitor or a coward? Either way, you have no right to question them, no matter how much it seems that they hate America, you are beneath them.
Driving a desk while receiving a DOD paycheck has become one of the tools of credentialism in America, which is why you see Progressives flocking to the military that the Left used to hate.
When the military was a meritocracy that elevated the working classes, they hated it.
Now that getting a commission is like getting an MBA from Harvard and officers get to study the same sorts of pseudo-intellectual bullshit like CRT, the officer class of the military is wonderful and how dare you question it.
Progressives are regressing our military too.
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