Ok, 1) I may be a pansy, but I’m honest and 2) that’s my speculated attitude from a reasonably comfy lifestyle that could change if things got bad enough but they’ve not been that bad for me yet so I don’t know really what would have to pass in order for me to change my priorities if they can be changed–what with being a common pie-eyed inertia-stricken decendent of WWII Germans who never could figure out what to do either.
So there.
As response #2 got so long and convoluted and lacking in punctuation that I thought for a moment I had written it I will just accept #1 and be done with it. But I never said “pansies;” in fact I didn’t even THINK of using that word, it being insulting to some of my friends here. Instead, what I first called you all was “pussies,” a word that is insulting to ALL of my friends here. 
However, this is actually a topic I have given a fair amount of thought. When I was young my father told of the Resistance bringing him through France. At one point the fighters took some old German reservists they had captured and set them lose to see if they could outrun bullets, which the fighters thought was hilarious fun. Dad was shocked but as the Nazis had recently killed the sister of one of the fighters by raping her with a nail-studded broomstick he came to understand how they had gotten to that point. And I thought about it, too, wondering if when push came to shove I could put my humanity on a shelf and do what was necessary. My conclusion was that I had no choice, that it was my duty.
Then again, I’m self-destructive so my judgement is skewed.
Just suppose,
That this November that Kerry is leading in the polls by 20 points.
But the election night is an even bigger debacle than 2000.
That it is clear that the electronic, paperless vote results are a fraud.
The Supreme Court awards GWB with the election again.
What would you do?
That might push me over the edge.
Really? Maybe it’s because I’m not already “on the edge” 
but that is not even enough for me to head for the hills, much less become a terrorist. There’s still some room to work within the system.
No,
What if you really thought the election was stolen or rigged.
You can’t work it out through the system because the system is broken.
Then what?
I’m a little old for fighting from the hills but sabotage could be a fun hobby. Got some knowledge of chemistry and a few airports and the country’s railroad and highway hubs nearby. One could keep himself busy until he got caught.
Take to the streets. Chain myself to the White House gates to get attention maybe. Nothing involving violence though.
No, but I’ll volunteer as a rabbel rouser.
When I was coming home from overseas I was in a group of about 150 officers. We sat around Camp Phillip Morris wondering when we would get home and nothing happened. Finally a couple of guys got friendly with some HQ types and discovered that officers had to have certain accomodations; that the only troopship in the Atlantic area with enough space for all of us was just loading in Italy to return to ZI; we would just have to wait because they didn’t have the staff to recut our orders and break our group up so we could go on smaller ships.
We volunteered to do our own clerking. No dice.
So we started going around and writing down all of the possible violations of Army regs and SOP’s that we could find, including some pretty silly ones and I don’t know what would have happened if HQ had called our bluff.
In any case, a bunch of us then asked for an appointment with the Inspector General. The Captain in charge of our area was really pissed, but the next day we started doing our own clerking, and it also turned out that special accomodations for officers weren’t such a hard and fast rule after all. They shoved the whole bunch of us into the good old Haverford Victory and shipped us out for old New York, New York ASAP.
I get the feeling that we didn’t have much dirt of our own but the boys running the camp were worried about what the IG might find.
And a rabble rouser besides that ‘rabbel’ thing, whatever that is.
David, I’ve long suspected that what a couple years in the military does best is turn disorganized, undirected young people into organized and highly motivated troublemakers* and players of the system* who would make Gandhi proud.
I think I’ve asked this before but don’t remember the answer: You were in a B-26, right? Marauder or Invader? What position?
Both. Pilot.
As to ‘working the system.’ Newsman Franklin Pierce Adams was an officer in France in WWI and this story was told about him by writer H. Allen Smith. After war Adams’ CO told him to prepare a list of people to go home first. Adams asked how he should select who should go and was told any one he wanted.
The first name on the list was Adams, Franklin Pierce.
(continuing the hijack)
Did you, as a Marauder pilot, feel “betrayed” by the USAAF when they redesignated the A-26 as if the Marauder had never existed, as I have heard some flyers were? And which was more fun to fly?
#1 Not a bit.
#2 Flying characteristics were similar. Both were cramped, noisy, cold in winter, hot in summer. In the Martin B-26 you at least had company. In the Douglas A-26 you were all alone with only diembodied voices over the intercom.