So this navy captain get fired for complaining about his crew getting the flu. What nonsense! Okay, granted, I did not bother to read the good captain’s letter, I could not care less about a Yankee battleship as long as it is far away. I could also not be bothered to read or watch any of the reporting around said non-issue. I saw what was important: A navy captain walking down the gangplank, tog bag in hand, while a crowd cheers his name like some bizarre passion play. I never was in the navy, so I am not sure about their ranks, but even if this was just A captain, instead of THE captain, that whole mess is made-for-tee-vee nonsense on par with those aeroplanes that disappeared just as they entered the magic force field around the Twin Towers on 911. Kaboom! We-all smell bullshit all the way from that wharf in the Guam, a south-American colony of the Undeclared Soviets of America.
Look, maybe the Americans are just very different from the rest of the world. I mean, they have privatised everything, including their police and jails. You did not think a police force would shoot so many civilians in cold blood if there was not a profit motive, did you? Well, all those Afghanis, Somalis, Syrians and Iraqis that are shot every day? The Yankee war machine has been privatised to the point where a dude in his underpants sits in his momma’s basement, directing a drone that drops bombs in Yemen. That attitude could be the only solution for those cheering crowds as the captain walked the plank. Because in the military, nobody “gets fired”. Ever.
This means that ship was not Navy-navy. When a military officer (or even recruit) effs up, there is hell to pay. Firstly, there is a court martial. I have never heard of anyone ever been given a choice between court martial and anything else. I think even honorary suicide will only be allowed after you’ve been cashiered. No, that does not mean they sort out your final pay before you leave, it means they strip you of every little emblem, insignia or adornment on your person, then break your sword before they allow the civil police to lead you away for civil punishment. You really have to eff up bad before they do that to you, so what gives with our dear captain?
Wait, let me go look at his boat…Yep, I’m back. Turns out, we are not talking about a rowboat here, it is a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Cannons and everything. You know, like, a huge, humongous Navy battle ship? Only thing is, nobody lets something like that lie around unwatched. Any captain that leaves that bridge, will do so only after he has signed his seat over to a responsible officer, who will then be acting commander of that ship. Such a commander, temporary or not, shall keep his vessel under control, including the crew. There is not a way in hell any Navy captain would allow his crew to stand around cheering (or even jeering) after a cashiered officer (or anyone else) walking down the gangplank. Discipline is the backbone of any military. So what is going on here?
There can be a ‘political’ explanation for this: Trump will give this war hero his rightful place, and so win support for the next round of ‘elections’. Hillary will use this to attack Trump, hoping to win support for the next ‘election’. Theatre for the plebeian masses, more circus so we forget about the scarcity of bread. It could also be that some politician somewhere overstepped the addled bounds of his authority, and managed to get someone to do him this favour before the military even took it seriously. In time, the good captain will have his day and we will all stand on our balconies, clapping our hands in approval, like so many trained seals. I hope the foregoing bullshit is true, because the most obvious alternative is just too bizarre:
Listen to this story: The captain of a large armed battleship anchors in a foreign port, packs a small bag, and leaves the ship. As he leaves, his former crew collects on deck, and hundreds of civilians (in a foreign country) on the dock, right by the battleship, all of them wildly chanting his name. That’s it. Finished. No formal process via normal disciplinary channels. No investigations, questions or queries. Then, just to be sure, we use the terminology “Fired”. You fire a worker, not a soldier. “Fired from job” is a purely civilian term. But this ship’s captain got “fired”, publically and with fanfare, “fired”. By whom, exactly?
You see, if a ship’s captain gets fired, it means the owner/s of that ship decided to relieve him of his post. Again, they cannot just show him the gangplank, they immediately need a replacement. A ship is not a stupid machine, it is an organism drenched in sweat and fear. If you leave it alone, it can die. Or get stolen. There must always be a captain for every ship. So let’s say they had a replacement handy, fact remains: the owners ‘had enough’ and fired their captain, just a paid employee, after all. A paid employee, that’s all. Like any other employee in any other corporation, the captain of a ship can be hired and fired at will. So who does the hiring and firing for the USS Theodore Roosevelt, then?
I would really like to speak to whomever it is that hired and fired captain Crozier. I don’t really have anything to say to them. It would be like meeting the guy that owns that big ball of yarn, or the guy that restored a spitfire and now flies it around on weekends. Meeting the owner of the Theodore Roosevelt would be like meeting the guy that built the biggest kite on earth, or owns the most spoons. Just ordinary folk, all of them, really. Salt-of-the-earth types. Lovely people. Except, they all pale against the bloke who owns that boat! I mean, the parties we could have… Have you seen that thing? That brother must have some serious bucks! If I’m ever going to collect stuff in my life, I want to be like that guy…
…I want to own a private corporation that can hire and fire the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier fully armed with nuclear warheads. And the jets to deliver them. Yeah baby!
