US Strategic Command (or “Stratcom” if you’re trying to make a nuclear-capable arm of the US Defense Department sound cool) has issued an apology for a poorly received New Year’s Eve tweet which has since been deleted.
“#TimesSquare tradition rings in the #NewYear by dropping the big ball…if ever needed, we are #ready to drop something much, much bigger,” the offending tweet read, with an attached video featuring B-2 stealth bombers flying all stealth bombery and causing gigantic explosions with bunker buster bombs while words like “STEALTH”, “READY”, and “LETHAL” flashed across the screen. The tweet concluded with the ostensibly unironic hashtag “#PeaceIsOurProfession”.
“Our previous NYE tweet was in poor taste & does not reflect our values,” Strategic Command tweeted. “We apologize. We are dedicated to the security of America & allies.”
This statement is, obviously, a lie. The part about “security” of course, because dominating the globe with nonstop military violence and aggression has nothing to do with security, but also the “does not reflect our values” part. The US military deleted the post and apologized for it because it received an angry backlash from hundreds of commenters and was circulated virally on Twitter for its jarringly creepy message, not because it did not reflect their values. It reflected their values perfectly. The only way you could possibly encapsulate the US military’s values in a 42-second video clip more perfectly than cramming it full of footage of $2,000,000,000 war planes cruising around dropping $3,500,000 GBU-57 bombs would be to also show the human bodies they land on being ripped to pieces. Inflicting death and destruction using unfathomably expensive machinery is the US military’s whole job. Of course it reflects their values.
The real issue here was not values but perception. The US war machine pours an immense amount of energy into perception management, making sure that ordinary Americans either (A) ignore the horrific things that are being done in their name or (B) think that those things are awesome and patriotic. The offending post was clearly attempting to accomplish (B). A team of paid social media propagandists simply did not understand that ordinary human beings wouldn’t resonate with a message that amounts to “Hey I see you’re all preparing to bring in the new year, so watch how good we are at killing large numbers of people!”, and some damage control became necessary when everyone got freaked out. Can’t have people opening their eyes to how insane America’s relentless military expansionism has gotten, after all.
Watching the propaganda arm of the US-centralized war machine is a lot like watching a manipulative sociopath learning how to function in normal society. Sometimes they’ll slip up and fail to react the way someone with a healthy sense of empathy would respond to the death of a pet or someone’s emotions or whatever, and they risk alienating whoever’s around them and losing access to the resources they could exploit them for if they can’t manipulate them out of the creeped-out feeling people get when they’re around someone who doesn’t empathize like a normal human being. I suspect many of the commenters who flooded in telling Stratcom to delete its tweet were not so much interested in eliminating a violent social media post from the internet, but in eliminating that creeped-out feeling you get when the sociopath’s mask slips a bit.
#1: ghostdogtxn To: Ada (#0)
ghostdogtxn posted on 2019-01-02 17:53:43 Reply Private Reply
#2: GreyLmist To: Ada (#0)
United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM, STRATCOM) - Motto: "Peace is our Profession" [Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines]
Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) - Motto(s): "Deterrence through strength, ..."
Eighth Air Force - The 8th Air Force motto is "Peace Through Strength."
Whiteman Air Force Base
509th Bomb Wing - Motto(s): Defensor Vindex (Latin); Defender Avenger || Emblem: The Air Force wings represent the branch of service but are not in the familiar outstretched position. When the ancient Greeks approached a stranger, they raised their arms with palms outward to show they were carrying no weapons - a sign of peace. The 509th obtained special permission to display the wings in this configuration to show that it, too, comes in peace. [Pic]
393rd Bomb Squadron, Whiteman AFB | 2-minute documentary video w/interviews | @ 0:53: "This purpose is really deterrence and we do that every day just by existing." | @ 1:06, "Teddy Roosevelt probably described it best where he said, 'Walk softly and carry a big stick,' ... and that's what we are." [2017/10/20 article + Wikipedia ref. for more 393rd info]
131st Bomb Wing, Missouri Air National Guard
110th Bomb Squadron, MO ANG
B-2 Spirits: The B-2 reached initial operational capability (IOC) on [New Year's Day] 1 January 1997.
Side-issue re: deletion of gov-sector tweets -- are they Official Records or not?
Can federal agencies really just delete tweets? - slate.com | APRIL 17, 2018
One writer’s weird, tedious, and infuriating attempt to track down federal agencies’ policies around deleting tweets.
GreyLmist posted on 2019-01-08 16:20:34 Reply Private Reply
#3: GreyLmist To: Ada (#0)
Military Apologizes For Bombing A New Year's Eve Tweet - NPR | January 1, 2019
2 web.archive.org/Wayback Machine examples of the video postings by our Military at their twitter.com sites almost 2 months prior (on November 6, 2018); now removed from those locations and more (along with the New Year's Eve rerun-version), due to the voluminous uproar of complainants soon before the New Year's Day Rose Parade and Rose Bowl flyovers:
US Strategic Command on Twitter/NYE Apology [31 Dec 2018]
Note: Although Military postings of the test range video have been deleted at the Military's Twitter-sites (including those that were posted back in early November 2018), one YouTube-reformatted version was allowed to return at Stratcom in the very next post there (by Greg Rubini, most likely a civilian) on Jan 1 (a significant date historically and traditionally for the B-2); where it still hasn't been deactivated or removed, even though Mr. Rubini's posts were very critical of the Stratcom-censors and other gov-officialries. From the text message: "This is the B2 bombing video that US Strategic Command @US_Stratcom posted yesterday." ... B-2 dropping two MOPs [55 second video by The Aviationist: former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, David Cenciotti, who had serendipitously saved it on December 21, 2018 from becoming even scarcer (because of the New Year's Eve noisemakers) than it was when he found it.]
GreyLmist posted on 2019-01-09 12:17:13 Reply Private Reply
#4: GreyLmist To: All (#3)
of yesteryear, this is for all of you miserable snowflake meltdowners then who would genuinely like now to become Patriots of the U.S. Constitution:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOVIAL
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_sequences_in_C
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_sequence
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_(programming_language): 4. "Hello, world"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HelloWorld.svg
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_code
"Legacy code" upgrade:
Frosty the Snowman says Happy Birthday! [B-2 Spirit: New Year's Day 1-1-97] - YouTube, 4 seconds
Happy B-Day to you, too, U.S. Constitutionalists anew. Be goodly and jolly Patriotic-spirited Americans of the Constitution henceforth, all y'all new allies. And remember always that, really, every day in America is Constitution Day.
: )
GreyLmist posted on 2019-12-07 11:41:10 Reply Private Reply