Meet the chief of staff General Milley, a warrior and a scholar
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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My tiny hope is this really demonstrates the fuck-up-move-up/Peter Principle whereby organizations tend to be run by incompetent morons while the people below them have a better grasp on reality. That tends to hold true in most large organizations I've been part of, with a similar observed tendency for large orgs to be run by sociopaths.
Its my one tiny hope as well. When you look at the history of the US military, Generals/Admirals have almost always been political positions, ranging from "Still Competent" to "Utter Retard", punctuated by a handful of guys who were EXTREMELY good at their job. To go with one example I know off the top of my head, Ernest King called Pearl Harbor several years before it actually happened. During a wargame, he was the only one to actually utilize his carriers as the main strike for his fleet instead of using them in support of his battleships like all of the other admirals had. Everyone else said he was crazy, said his tactics couldnt work, or that he got lucky. Then the attacked on Pearl happened, and King is over in the corner chomping on a cigar saying "Told you." Which lead to him getting promoted to Fleet Admiral to get through WW2. He is memed as "God-Emperor of the US Navy" for a reason.
But while our Command-level staff is usually utterly useless, our E-6s (Staff Sergeant/Petty Officer) and O-6s (Colonel/Captain) have an unusually high amount of power over the war effort, and are usually the guys actually kicking ass, taking names, and coming up with tactics on the fly, while the Command Staff are saying "Advance in this general direction." There are few, if any, militaries that give that kind of free range to their lower level officers, and I HIGHLY doubt any sort of Chinese force we would potentially fight would have that sort of control, and be heavily controlled from the top down (like with the Soviets before them).
Its the one reason why I am actually not blackpilled on any sort of potential war with China. But I do think we would take far more losses in the early war than we would have if we kept morons like Milley away from the control.
I'm more worried about what Milley would try to do against us, rather than what he wouldn't do against China.
All Authoritarian systems fundamentally operate like this. It's a key flaw within them.
This is why meritocracy is declared to be fascist by the Left.
"To the workers of the world."
Fundamentally, the Sociopaths rise to the top given the toxic regime of the organization itself, and then they intentionally promote people who can never threaten them, and will be dependent upon them. This is also why vice is incentivized. Vices are easy to make people dependent upon you, because it's easy to make yourself the only dispenser of that vice, and the enforcement against that vice is defined solely through you.
The sociopath surrounds himself with loyalists who are dependent on him by either vice, incompetence, or preferably both. It's not an accident. He has to.
I'm not confident this is an effect that manifests more squarely on either side of the right/left spectrum, and I've witnessed it within highly meritocratic, large companies. I think it maps more onto organizational size than ideology. But maybe you're right. My personal experience is hardly a statistical sample.
I actually agree with you. There's absolutely an ideological aspect to it, but sheer size requires a high level of authoritarianism due to the structures inability to adapt quickly to changing threats. Thus, creating the environment for collapse.
Order begets chaos. Chaos begets order.