...Wednesday's post continued:
"You may have got your wish, I'm getting news in as we speak that Rumsfeld is out..."
I thought I'd lost my train of thought following the end of that post, but I hadn't. The story wasn't over yet. Thursday I returned to range detail for the Task Force. Friday was drill, prepping for my home unit's range. Saturday it was my turn to fire. Sunday we cleaned the weapons. It's what we do in my church.
Through out the weekend I saw a continuation of what I experienced when I returned to the office to tell of Rumsfeld's resignation. When I told the Major that Rumsfeld was out, there was an immediate look of surprise. The news echoed around the office. I thought it was over, and then, the aftershocks.
What I saw in the aftermath was an exercise in sociology. A real mashup of Thomas theorem and Solomon Asch. Simply put, Thomas' theorem states that situations that are defined as real are real in their consequences. Asch found that "social pressure can make a person say something that is obviously incorrect." The victory of the Democratic Party taking both the House and the Senate, and the subsequent retirement of Rumsfeld, has pierced through years of fog that had enveloped both the military as well as civilian cultures.
For so many years, with the aid of your "liberal media," many Americans, like those in Asch's research, would tell you that line "A" is the longest line out of the three, that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction, that we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here. Conventional Wisdom. Or as the British say, "bullocks."
This is part of what I was trying to tackle in my recent post, For the Record. Hell, that's what we've all been doing as bloggers since we started. We've all been trying to crack through that thick sound bite shell around our fellow citizens.
I was as stunned as my Commander was to hear of Rumsfeld's resignation in seeing those around me mull over what it meant--in addition to Tuesday's election results. Seeing them critique the Secretary of Defense, Republicans, the President...openly being critical. As John McCain said earlier this year, "elections have consequences."
-My Thanks to Pissed on Politics for diggin up this Youtube gem.
For so many years, with the aid of your "liberal media," many Americans, like those in Asch's research, would tell you that line "A" is the longest line out of the three, that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction, that we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here. Conventional Wisdom. Or as the British say, "bullocks."
This is part of what I was trying to tackle in my recent post, For the Record. Hell, that's what we've all been doing as bloggers since we started. We've all been trying to crack through that thick sound bite shell around our fellow citizens.
I was as stunned as my Commander was to hear of Rumsfeld's resignation in seeing those around me mull over what it meant--in addition to Tuesday's election results. Seeing them critique the Secretary of Defense, Republicans, the President...openly being critical. As John McCain said earlier this year, "elections have consequences."
