It's Friday, so I don't want to get too heavy right before the weekend.
Ah, screw it! Let's get heavy! I just restarted my laptop which has a USB TV stick plugged into it--it's so I can watch TV on my PowerBook. Anyway, so I restarted and the TV came on. There was a commercial which was made up of a single shot of a fighter pilot in a cockpit. The camera looked to be mounted in the dashboard with plenty of space in the frame dedicated to the world around the cockpit. As the plane took off, I was entranced--I used to be on the path to being a pilot--at least for a little while there, back in high school and college, so any time I see a fighter plane I get nostalgic.
Then I notice the patch on the pilot's flight suit. It's a "Thunderbirds" patch. The Thunderbirds are an elite exhibition pilot team made up of the top acrobatic pilots in the Air Force. These guys are the most skillful fliers in the world.
Then, the fighter plane enters a barrel roll--this means the plane spins around it's center, horizontally. Think of it like you're lying on a bed and rolling over. It's like that only you've just taken off and you're doing it really fast.
The world spins around the fighter while it, and the shot, are in a perfect, calm, center of the spin. While still in the roll, the pilot looks around, as though he's enjoying the view.
Then the screen cuts to black and a URL for a United States Air Force recruitment website pops up and a voice over guy is heard telling us that we should experience something more.
This is the worst kind of propaganda bullshit.
1) Getting a job as a fighter pilot is incredibly hard. You have to be incredibly lucky, skilled or connected. The only reason I got as far as my pilot physical (which I failed) was because I was in Air Force ROTC in college. I did NOT have a slot waiting for me, but they let you take your physical just so you know if you should aim for a fighter pilot slot or something else.
2) That pilot was a Thunderbird pilot. The percentage of Air Force pilots who actually get to become Thunderbird pilots is incredibly microscopic. Essentially, there is NO WAY you can become a Thunderbird pilot.
3) Barrel rolls are not difficult maneuvers, but generally (if memory serves), they are considered dangerous and not something to try so close to takeoff.
4) I haven't heard of this happening recently, but I do know that in Iraq and Afghanistan and in previous instances where the Air Force provided aircraft the pilots were "encouraged" to take stimulants (drugs) to stay awake longer so they could fly more missions. That's not only immoral, that's unsafe. If a pilot is tired, let him go to sleep. If you need more missions to be flown hire more pilots! Don't DRUG the ones you've got! This alone makes me glad my eyes weren't 20/20--passing that physical would have meant I'd have been asked to take drugs to stay in the air and that would have been a hard order for me to follow as caffeine is where I draw my personal drug-line. I love flying, but not at the expense of my principles.
5) When you're flying in a fighter aircraft, you usually end up killing people. That's something they left out of their little commercial.
6) Another thing they left out is that you have to kill people you may not want to kill under normal circumstances. That is to say, in a country you may not want to go to war against. Perhaps, a country that hasn't done anything directly to threaten or even harm you. Like, Iraq. See, in the commercial, the pilot was as free as a literal bird to perform a dangerous maneuver and to not kill anyone and not kill people who did nothing to threaten the US. Oh and he also didn't have to take orders from an amoral pretender who couldn't fly himself out of a paper bag in the cockpit of anything bigger than a trainer.
Now, I know that the US military needs to step up it's recruiting efforts thanks to the Iraq war going all shitily and all, but perhaps a better draw for recruits would be a government that doesn't start needless wars, that doesn't inflict its will on other countries and practices an even, temperate hand on it's enemies.
You know, a nice government. A fair government which actually has the moral compass it claims to.
For a short time, after 911, I actually thought about going back to the Air Force and giving it another try--not as a pilot, just as a concerned American. But then I remembered how Bush dealt with that whole "US Spy Plane in China" thing and thought that Bush had already made some questionable choices in dealing with the Chinese government, do I really want to trust him to get the response to 911 right?
I think I made the right choice and until we see a regime in control of the US that doesn't like to wage war at the drop of a hat (and actually has the average American's best interests at heart instead of the average corporation's), I'd say everyone should stay away from the US military.
Orignal From: Experience Somthing More Like a Trustworthy Government
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