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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   32902 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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So what happens when Elite Human Capital find that they need the consent and willing support of the masses - if say a war happens and they need to Defend Our Values in less hospitable places than Rotherham or Blackpool?

Who is going to fight for them and why? Are they going to offer loot like the armies of old? Are they going to appeal to Our Values? Are they going to appeal to the loyalty of newly imported foreigners - will they fight and die for their new country? Evidence suggests no, roughly as many British Muslims went off to fight for ISIS as joined the British Army.

Elite Human Capital is picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. The materiel superiority they rely upon has been greatly eroded, as shown by a series of failed wars against third rate powers in the Middle East and most recently the Houthis. China and Russia are on a whole other level, they will definitely require a massive effort to defeat. A massive effort requires people who are highly motivated and united with their government whether by nationalism or religion. Thanks to the sublime diplomatic manoeuvres of Elite Human Capital, we will probably have to face both Russia and China plus Iran and North Korea.

Who is going to fight for them and why?

This is not the position of strength you imagine it to be. In fact, threatening non-participation is a lose-lose-lose position for anyone not absolutely and forever essential - which is almost everyone.

Imagine that young natives don’t join up the fight, but young immigrants do. Now you have immigrants taking over your armed forces from the bottom. Whichever amount of immigrants die in war is replaced by more immigration. Natives lose.

Now imagine that neither natives nor immigrants join. The natives will be forcibly drafted, since they obviously won’t organize as a community to resist a draft. The immigrants will organize and not be drafted. Natives die off in war and their relative numbers further decline. As draftees they are ejected back at the end of the war, worse off than before. Natives lose again.

If only natives join up and immigrants don’t, then the threat is seen for the bluff that it was and the natives earn nothing but death at the front lines. Natives lose.

The natives will be forcibly drafted, since they obviously won’t organize as a community to resist a draft. The immigrants will organize and not be drafted. Natives die off in war and their relative numbers further decline. As draftees they are ejected back at the end of the war, worse off than before. Natives lose again.

Drafts are theoretically compulsory but realistically if people don't want to fight that still makes a big difference. For a lot of reasons.

This is some fun fictional thought experiments but remember Vietnam? Remember fragging? I’m a millennial but even I know how bad things can get

Is that supposed to be a counter example? If so, please explain who threatened non-participation and gained something for it.

I would argue blacks fought hard against being forced to enlist, saying “why should we fight for a country that hates us? No viet cong ever called me nigger” and therefore benefited greatly in their fight for greater social privileges

Did they benefit because they threatened not to go to war and gained their rights before enlisting, or because they did actually go to war?

The went to war because they were drafted but they rioted heavily as a result

No Russian ever called me privileged cis-hetero white male.

The natives will be forcibly drafted

By who? The Ukrainian 'drag them into the van' approach works because they've been pumping out nationalist and anti-Russian sentiment for years and years, plus they have a very clear threat and plenty of useful history to draw upon. And it only works in that the country hasn't yet collapsed. Huge numbers of people have already fled, they don't want to die for Zelensky.

Trying forcible conscription in a country like America today would be a courageous decision, both amongst politicians and draft officers. The US military was thoroughly demoralized in Vietnam, they could not adequately motivate the troops. A world war against multiple great powers is a much bigger stress-test.

Non-participation is already happening. All across the West, nobody is joining the military. Despite all this geopolitical tension and war propaganda, our armies and fleets are actively shrinking. Elite Human Capital cannot find anyone to die for them, they are lowering physical and mental standards and still falling short as the white population opts out. Qualitative and quantitative decline is already locked in. That's the force that we go to war with, the hard core that the conscripts are supposed to support.

Unwilling soldiers are not very effective in combat and neither are most immigrants (on both HBD and motivation grounds). We are set to lose and lose badly, which is bad for everyone but especially troublesome for the reigning political elite.

By who?

By the same mechanisms that makes native populations generally law abiding as is. Social shaming, an internal drive to be pro-social, and a few resistors being made example of.

Ukraine

Ukraine is a losing position for the natives. The men are dying, the women are fleeing and marrying foreigners. Their culture is suffering greatly. Their only hope is that they won’t let in migrants post-war, so that they may slowly rebuild. Otherwise they may forever lose their civilization.

We are set to lose and lose badly

Another lose condition for your culture, then. I didn’t intend to catasrophize like this, but obviously literally losing to a foreign power is a lose condition.

The intended win condition should have been “natives threaten non-participation and earn concessions from the elites”, and I intended to show that it’s unrealistic and empirically isn’t happening.

I point out that you won't be doing well in a world where the US takes a major loss. Assuming that you're Israeli based on the hebrew and 'your culture' remark, there will be all kinds of problems coming your way. China might like a bit of Israeli technology but they're ideologically and historically committed to the other side of the Middle East struggle, they've been working with Iran for some time now. It'll be back to '67 borders for you and that's a best-case scenario.

Social shaming, an internal drive to be pro-social

That stuff works in a disciplined, united society where men are actually moved if they get a white feather. It doesn't work today, especially amongst young people from Western Europe and its offshoots where nationalism has been all but stamped out and individualism is the order of the day. Nobody is going to get blown up by a drone so that Taiwan can have gay pride parades, only a small fraction truly believe.

obviously literally losing to a foreign power is a lose condition

China is far away. The biggest effects will be political and economic. Ukraine and Asia excepted, we are not looking at annexations. People are already fed up with how government is run, losing a big war will be the end for Elite Human Capital.

I point out that you won't be doing well in a world where the US takes a major loss.

I don’t want you to lose. I want the part of American culture that’s aligned with my values to participate in America’s institutions. I want you to flourish, but you won’t get there by lying down! You need to pick yourself up and rediscover civic duty!

China

China is no friend of ours, I agree.

That stuff works in a disciplined, united society where men are actually moved if they get a white feather. It doesn't work today, especially amongst young people from Western Europe and its offshoots where nationalism has been all but stamped out and individualism is the order of the day. Nobody is going to get blown up by a drone so that Taiwan can have gay pride parades, only a small fraction truly believe.

That’s a bad thing, that you shouldn’t accept. If native Americans / Brits don’t participate, either someone else will or your entire nation will suffer. That is my point.

China is far away. The biggest effects will be political and economic.

Those effects are terrible! Besides the fact that I don’t believe there will be a hot war between the US and China, and that I don’t think you’ll lose if there is one, if you do lose a hot war to China the implications are huge. I’m not sure if you know how rich the US is today thanks to your world hegemony, which implies how far you could sink. Don’t downplay it, there are only bad outcomes that can come from a free society losing to the world’s biggest fascist state.

Edit, forgot to answer this:

Assuming that you're Israeli

Correct. I used to think the pfp gave it up, but I guess Shabbat candles aren’t as obvious reference as I thought.

That’s a bad thing, that you shouldn’t accept. If native Americans / Brits don’t participate, either someone else will or your entire nation will suffer. That is my point.

Would you tell this to jews who were offered the choice to collaborate with nazis?

Jews were a minority barred from participating in the public institutions of Nazi Germany, so it’s not a good parallel to the natives majorities who are willingly giving up their places and power. If Jews could e.g. join the SS, I would absolutely think it was a good idea for them to join en-mass and change it from within.

If Jews could e.g. join the SS, I would absolutely think it was a good idea for them to join en-mass and change it from within.

What if they were only allowed to join as canon fodder, and never as higher ranks? If "changing from within" could happen the way you describe, we wouldn't be where we are now.

More comments

Another lose condition for your culture, then. I didn’t intend to catasrophize like this, but obviously literally losing to a foreign power is a lose condition.

So we go from western hegemony to a multipolar world (we are actually already there but many still haven’t woken up to that fact). I’m not miffed. Western hegemony has unleashed stagnation and decadence. Conflict breeds innovation and potentiates natural selection, important forces for revitalizing humanity

Where is the part where you, your children and your culture flourish? You won’t get there by losing a war to China, of all things.

What does it benefit me for Taiwan to remain free? Why should I sacrifice my brother, my son; or my life for some Taiwanese and the EHC that hates me?

It benefits you to be hegemon, and it benefits your camp to be in the institutions of hegemony. It doesn’t matter if the fighting happens in Taiwan, Korea, or the Department of Education

It doesn’t benefit me if me I’m dead or my relatives die in the fighting.

How about we making immigration conditional on being automatically drafted in any foreign wars instead?

Ranger, you’re not anywhere near cynical enough. All it took was 9/11 and the plebs in middle America were lining up outside every army recruitment center. You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think patriotism for a war against China can’t be easily manufactured.

Eh, I’m more embedded in the bubble of people actually enlist and like half of them now root for Iran in international sporting events. The chuds will never be pro-China, but ‘let’s you and him fight, I ain’t joining the 7th fleet’ is entirely plausible.

Right wingers root for Iran in international sporting events? What bubble are you talking about?

All it took was 9/11 and the plebs in middle America were lining up outside every army recruitment center.

And all it would take today is Donald Trump (Jr.) saying 'Fuck China boys, they stole your jobs, grab your rifles and let's go.' If the war starts during a democratic administration, on the other hand...

If the war starts during a democratic administration, on the other hand...

"Fuck the Dems, they stole the election and are tied up with China RN"?

The rest could stay the same ;)

The difference here is that the proles think the elites hate the country the proles are fighting for, much less the proles themselves. Proles fight for a country that their kin can succeed in, even if some haliburton exec profits more. Proles will not fight for a country that actively sneers and spits on them. White americans still have suburbs wherein the dream of an america that fights for them lives large, the modern scouser thinks Labour will sell his daughters for ISIS votes.

You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think patriotism for a war against China can’t be easily manufactured.

I mean, this is how it's going to go: "Wait, so those coastals in their faggoty white collars are now going to be forced, from their Harvard mouths, to extend us some fucking courtesy, and this is a bad thing... why?"

All it took was 9/11 and the plebs in middle America were lining up outside every army recruitment center.

US was significantly less divided in 2001 than now. Also,

You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think patriotism for a war against China can’t be easily manufactured.

Any more or less than it was for Vietnam?

Are you implying that consent will be manufactured by "extending the plebs courtesy"?

US was significantly less divided in 2001 than now.

By what metric? US dividedness could well be argued to have the Shepard tone nature. Also, it might be worth noting that we are talking about the UK here.

To begin with, if anything the level of division regarding US adversaries seems to be lower now. Back during the cold war, it's widely known that Western societies were suffused with Soviet sympathisers. Nowadays, even on a contrarian forum like this one, the vast majority of people is enthusiastically aligned with the establishment position on Russia and China to the point that disagreeing will get you a wall of downvotes and actual social censure.

Vietnam

Wasn't the dissent there carried by a faction of elites, rather than plebs? They've learned their lesson; Harvard kids will probably not get drafted again.

disagreeing will get you a wall of downvotes and actual social censure.

I routinely and vociferously disagree with the elite consensus on these issues, but based on the number of downvotes it seems like there are more people opposed to criticism of nuclear power.

Are you implying that consent will be manufactured by "extending the plebs courtesy"?

No, I'm implying that any consent that can be manufactured is going to be very limited. The entire reason the elite has hollowed out the military is because expanding the military (and the manufacturing base needed to support it) also necessarily expands the middle class, which since they'll ultimately use some of that money to enact politics the elite doesn't like is obviously a challenge to their power.

Thus I predict a reaction of "oh look at that, all of a sudden you do need us after all; well, we don't come cheap any more, cost of living has risen mainly because of you so there will be no more of that and the F-15s you would want to use to force us to go anyway seem to be occupied at the moment". I don't think they'd sign up for the wages they pay now and, while a massive salary for a private [more for officers] that far outstrips what Buc-Ees can offer would fix that problem real quick, that puts the elite in a tough spot as far as what they want to fund: their foreign policy goals, or their domestic ones.

I don't believe that, in the 1970s, the urban power bases were even capable of outright saying they wanted to wage war on the half of the nation they don't like because they don't share the same aesthetics. By contrast the sitting President today has said outright that this would be desirable.

Wasn't the dissent there carried by a faction of elites, rather than plebs? They've learned their lesson; Harvard kids will probably not get drafted agai

Selective service just got expanded ro include women.

if you think the draft was unpopular when it was men coming back in body bags, then you haven’t seen anything yet

Yep, the actual plebs beat up anti war protestors.

The GWOT was a tempest in a teacup compared to any war with China. Bush didn't draft civilians, didn't mobilize industry, he and his successors funded the whole thing with debt. One could calculate that going off to fight was relatively low-risk - you have all the equipment, training, fire support and medivac on your side. You go on patrols and come back to a nice base somewhere fortified. The other guy has an AK, maybe an RPG and some dodgy roadside bombs.

China is a completely different story. That's America's biggest trading partner, Australia's, the EU's. Suddenly stores are empty of all kinds of things. People who thought they were comfortably retired wake up and see that their portfolio is down 30-40% and that the government has taken over much of the economy to regulate prices. Even the US Air Force relies on Chinese parts for its air to ground weapons, everyone else is going to run into massive supply chain problems.

Fighting China and Russia won't be like the wars in the Middle East, it will be absolute carnage. Massive swarms of drones hunting people down day and night, constant shelling, digging trenches, a 'safe' base getting hammered by missiles from thousands of kilometres away. There is no medivac, the other guy has the same tools as you do. One sunk destroyer = one year of Afghanistan deaths. It will be a real test of endurance on both sides even at the conventional level.

A short term burst of patriotic enthusiasm will dry up very quickly when people realize how many casualties are being taken and appreciate that conscription isn't just a joking matter. It won't be happening to other people, it'll be happening to us. All of this pain needs some kind of justification, leaders need to credibly explain why victory must be achieved at any cost.

The aftermath of 9/11 by itself irreversibly damaged to middle class' willingness to sacrifice themselves for their country, and this is without touching the cultural humiliation during the 2 decades since. If you think anyone is signing up to fight for you, you're in for a surprise.

“Irreversibly damaged” like Vietnam, of course? We shall see. As this post itself discusses, the value of propaganda is hard to underestimate, many men have fought far more bravely for far less and with far less reason to want to do so in the past. If men are necessary to fight China, they can be made to want to do so, and there is very little anyone can do to stop that.

Those men of years past didn’t have twitter.

Elite human capitals propaganda is garbage these days. Haven’t you noticed? “The left can’t meme” is a truism for a reason

“Republicans are weird” seems to be working.

It's a forced meme followed by another forced meme that it's working. What I heard about Vance this morning from the mainstream was about him pouncing on Walz for claiming to have carried a gun in a war zone.

In what context?

It does seem to be a popular meme on reddit, where literally anything critical of Republicans has had a solid chance of becoming a popular meme for approaching twenty years.

Not that I've seen.

If there's any reaction, I'd likely chalk it up to being stunned and confused at the blatant astroturfing or utter hypocrisy, as the political side that's been using the term 'Weird' as a badge of pride for decades has now turned around and used it as an insult.

It’s increased military enlistment amongst whites? That’s strange

Does ‘the left can’t meme’ only apply to memes targeting white men?

That’s a good question, but I’m not a memeaologist so I can’t say

If men are necessary to fight China, they can be made to want to do so

Those men couldn't even stop their countrymen from rioting 4 years ago. What makes you think they're going to fight an enemy that actually shoots back?

So what happens when Elite Human Capital find that they need the consent and willing support of the masses?

If only we had some sort of clue.

Western Elite Human Capital can't maintain their superiority unless they can hand out white feathers to young men. But the EHC has been loudly seeking the abolishment of those men for the last hundred years, and they've been succeeding for the last 50.

At that point, how are they different from my foreign enemy? Sure, my foreign enemy won't let me have the human rights or standards of living I want, but my domestic enemy is already busy denying me those things with the approval of their consciences, so why the fuck should I risk my life and limb defending these assholes if all I have do to conduct a purge of them is to do nothing?

I think the EHC expects 1984 to be non-fiction, where collusion between the powerful in Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia generates a meta-stable system of global oppression, but I'm not convinced it's going to play out that way.

The EHC thinks that they can replace the uncooperative local peasants with pliant foreign serfs. I think the democrats especially are realizing that the foreign serfs turn out to have more in common with the local peasants, and that the appeal of living under the auspices of the EHC is not the opportunity to shine the shoes of the EHC but the opportunity to live like the local peasants. The democratic EHC is still overestimating its appeal and thinks commandments from on high are diktats the local peasants will suck up, enforced by new serfs imported at EHC request.

I maintain that the new EHC of feminized wokescolds maintained a surprisingly long period of visibility because it was filled with attractive college women and men who wanted to fuck them. As these women aged and the new college women abandon femininity and attractiveness, the actual mass of simps hoping to score has diminished, and this will result in a consequent reduction in democratic EHC power for reasons that will be unfathomable to the EHC.

It was never democratic. There's always been resistance to "wokeness" and immigration and so on. When I showed up Canada was still (at least visibly) in an incredibly smug, happy place about multiculturalism and even back then there was resistance to migration. When people learned how many people Canada was taking in under Harper they wanted it to take smaller numbers. No one cared is all.

The female "wokescolds" didn't win because they were hot. They won because you'd get fired if you went too far and the culture-makers listened to them. Anita Sarkeesian was hot and faced significant backlash before she won. Why? Because anonymous nerds online can be brave. But she won where it counted, in the real world, and now companies pay danegeld to avoid being considered sexist.

The elites just won too hard and are now suffering from success.

Precisely because a lot of their power isn't democratic, they were able to radicalize further and further (which may cause more of the performative ugliness). This led to an elite religion that is not only highly divergent from what many proles, brown or white, want, but actively hostile to us. This has simply gotten worse as time has gone on, and so more and more proles are being turned off.

But they're getting more turned off because elites are successfully enforcing this across many fields. More migrants are coming in now, the state is passing laws that let it undermine the family more in the name of LGBT rights and there's a corresponding push to control social media to prevent any counter-narrative.

"What, is the North going to fill their armies with Irish immigrants who have no reason to risk their lives for the Union?" -Confederates, 1861.

China

Another counterpoint. Mao is famously one of the few people who can be said to have more or less exterminated an entire country's elite human capital. The tatter remains of those bloodlines never really recovered (they are only 17% or so richer than average)

Yeah, it's not so much elite human capital.

It's more just naked power, and the will to use it. If you hate the people you're oppressing you can accomplish a lot even if they are smarter than you.

Though to be fair a good chunk of those fled to Hong Kong, Taiwan, immigrated to the US, etc. Anecdotally I have a friend of Chinese descent whose grandfather was a banker (and a personal friend of Chiang Kai-shek). He supposedly escaped on a fishing boat to Hong Kong under a pile of dead fish.

Fair, but most of them did not escape and those that did are not even in the zipcode of political power in China right now.

Unfortunately China has failed to stop a new elite technocratic class from fermenting in the trash heap. A new crop of economic elites has supplanted the old legacy that indeed fled to San Francisco, Sydney and Vancouver via Hong Kong, and this new crop is dabbing their toes in both the China and Western economic elite. The new moneyed Chinese are not climbing the ranks of coroporate america, but indtead forming medium sized enterprises cornering all manner of small import export goods no one thinks about. Your costco crab chunks may come from Alaskan fishermen, but they are processed by some Chinese-owned slave factories in Thailand.

Wasn't Xi Jingping's father purged by Mao? Somehow he weaseled back.

According to Wikipedia, yeah his father was purged during the Cultural Revolution. Not that I'm a fan of Pooh-bear, but it makes me kind of happy in the schadenfreude sense to learn that. Mao was an utter shit-bag, and I am amused by imagining how mad he would be if he found out that the son of the guy he purged is now running the country.

Mao would either be ashamed by history proving him a monstrous fool or in denial about that. Whether his cognitive dissonance would take the form of anger or unearned pride/boastfulness is an open question.

A highly substantial part of the urban elite in China did escape, actually, to Taiwan or Hong Kong or Singapore (or in some cases to the West). It took about 8-10 years for capitalism to be abolished fully in all of China, there was actually plenty of time for much of the elite in Shanghai and elsewhere to leave after the war ended. If you were 99.9th percentile wealth in China in 1947 (and therefore likely in the intellectual elite), you probably did leave.

I think the envisioned future is the EU as a patchwork of federated states ruling over the end of history. Each has its own elite class which sends representatives to the superstate bureaucracy while ruling over its ethnically fragmented domestic underclass through anarcho-tyranny and therapeutic authoritarian institutions.

In this scenario the armed forces are only used for domestic repression. Foreign relations are carried out entirely through financial manipulation and funding mercenary armies (a continuation of England's foreign policy of the last five centuries).
The limited loyalty needed for its janissary soldiers can be guaranteed by allowing them to rape and loot the natives with impunity, while offering some limited protection to whichever native groups give most support to the regime; an all-pay auction that maximizes their exploitation.

At least this is the vision of steady-state tyranny you can see e.g. Burdensome salivating over. If history doesn't end as planned such a regime probably wouldn't be capable of surviving perpetually, but the Ottomans lasted centuries with that kind of system until events caught up with them.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;

Not really a new concern, though, is it?

That poem is reflecting the elite/prole equilibrium in a high-trust, high-cohesiveness, homogenous society with decent state capacity, to name a few of the variables that no longer obtain. Applying it to societies with enough trust that credit cards work is unwise.

One thing to note is that the british officer class did/does have a sense of noblesse obligee, with higher casualty rates in officers than in men for WW1 and WW2, and even now I hear less grousing from tommies about their officers than other countries (to be fair I haven't spoken to infantry for a decade, so I might be missing something there). Again, the homogenous culture of US and UK militarIES has a flattening effect, and the british especially seemed to reserve racialized denigration of their soldiers to dismissal of foreign levies especially the sepoys/rajputs (though Gurkhas and sikhs enjoy consistent appreciation among British commanders). Modern western societies are fractured enough for this to largely no longer hold, and frankly we saw the first iteration of this crack during Vietnam where an unfit officer class rushed through low quality command school earned the ire of black and white grunts alike.

For those wondering this is from a poem called “Tommy” by Rudyard Kipling:

(This link has better formatting: https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_tommy.htm)

I went into a public 'ouse to get a pint o' beer, The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here." The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die, I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I: O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away"; But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play, O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be, They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me; They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls, But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls! For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside"; But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide, O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap. An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit. Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?" But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll, O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes," when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too, But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you; An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints, Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints; While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Tommy, fall be'ind," But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind, O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all: We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational. Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace. For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot; An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please; An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

To make a line break in markdown you must type two spaces at the end of each line. This will allow you to correctly format poems and lyrics.

I went into a public 'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins," when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls,
But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, wait outside";
But it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide
The troopship's on the tide, my boys, the troopship's on the tide,
O it's "Special train for Atkins" when the trooper's on the tide.

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap.
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes," when the drums begin to roll.

We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints;
While it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Tommy, fall be'ind,"
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind
There's trouble in the wind, my boys, there's trouble in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when there's trouble in the wind.

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;
An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

It's a weird thing to say, but the more I read him, the more I come to the conclusion that Kipling is remarkably underrated and underappreciated, and that's even taking into account the modern climate and improvements in cultural tolerance.

He’s quite skilled at producing delicious, dense verse. It’s very evocative of sentiments which are occasionally unpopular but never really go out of the public consciousness. That’s the problem—he was too consistent. One can take any single verse from his poetry and tell exactly what the rest of the poem is about and how one is supposed to feel in response. Sometimes one doesn’t even need a line. Anathema to anyone trying to make a career out of study.

Of course, actually needing to make a career out of studying a poet indicates he should either speak more clearly or shut his mouth.

He's my favourite poet, constant bangers. 'The Beginnings' is still politically relevant today, in certain circles anyway. Gods of the Copybook Headings, The Hymn of Breaking Strain...

It became mandatory to savage Kipling (I think) after WW1, and by the 30s he was just the dead horse you ritually beat to show you had Correct politics in the English department: "Kipling is a Jingo Imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting... It is no use pretending that Kipling's view of life can be accepted or even forgiven by any civilized person" etc. etc.

His reputation never really recovered, and it wasn't anything to do with the quality of his work.

Well, I like him.

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