PugJesus

JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?

Please preserve democracy. Preserve civilization. Maybe someday, we here in the US will be able to cast off the fascist regime, limp back into the international order, hat in our hands, and ask the nations which preserved themselves to re-educate us in basic humanity.

Explanation: New Romaboos often like the Praetorian Guard, because, conceptually, they sound cool! Who doesn't like the flashy, fashionable elites of a feared military? And historical games, especially, often feed this perception, as 'Praetorian' is a relatively well-known term, and most games like to have 'elite' units for gameplay purposes.

In reality, the Praetorians were not really a warrior-elite as we'd understand them. While they were the Emperor's bodyguard, they were often derided as parade-ground troops at the best of times; and furthermore, saw more action as a brutally repressive secret police than as a proper military unit. Recruits sometimes transferred in from the Legions, but usually, they were middle-class native Italians without experience joining the Praetorian Guard directly, enjoying a higher pay rate and lower service time in exchange for the cushiest damn posting in the Empire.

Not only that, but the Praetorians were notoriously disloyal, as both secret police and institutionalized bodyguards before the modern era tend to be; as well as having the usual soldierly vices of corruption, brutality, and arrogance, which made them resented by the common people.

And to top it all off, in the few times they did see open combat, they almost always performed fucking terribly. C'mon guys. Is it too much to ask that you have SOME redeeming feature?

Explanation: New Romaboos often like the Praetorian Guard, because, conceptually, they sound cool! Who doesn't like the flashy, fashionable elites of a feared military? And historical games, especially, often feed this perception, as 'Praetorian' is a relatively well-known term, and most games like to have 'elite' units for gameplay purposes.

In reality, the Praetorians were not really a warrior-elite as we'd understand them. While they were the Emperor's bodyguard, they were often derided as parade-ground troops at the best of times; and furthermore, saw more action as a brutally repressive secret police than as a proper military unit. Recruits sometimes transferred in from the Legions, but usually, they were middle-class native Italians without experience joining the Praetorian Guard directly, enjoying a higher pay rate and lower service time in exchange for the cushiest damn posting in the Empire.

Not only that, but the Praetorians were notoriously disloyal, as both secret police and institutionalized bodyguards before the modern era tend to be; as well as having the usual soldierly vices of corruption, brutality, and arrogance, which made them resented by the common people.

And to top it all off, in the few times they did see open combat, they almost always performed fucking terribly. C'mon guys. Is it too much to ask that you have SOME redeeming feature?

Conservatives speak highly of law, because law implies fairness and legitimacy; but conservatives have no respect for rules or order, only for hierarchy.

It was so when the optimates wept over the violation of norms in Ancient Rome (but illegally murdered democratically-elected populists), it was so when medieval nobility pled legal order as to the reason why peasants had to stay in their place (even as they routinely violated the rights of their vassals), it was so when capitalist robber-barons demanded state support for suppressing strikers (but hired illegal thugs to murder strikers anyway on the unusual occasions when the government wasn't quite corrupt enough to back them), it was so when Chief fucking Thog claimed an extra 1/3 of the hunt's meat under 'traditional rules' in some prehistoric Alpine tribe, but forbade Huntsman Trog from his share because Trog looked at him funny.

It's so now.

Fuck.

Jesus fucking Christ. I didn't have this on my "Fascism speedrun Bingo" card, but here we fucking are.

The worst part about it, other than me suffering and dying, which is a bit of a downer, is that it's not even "CEO gets a new mega-yacht for marginal improvements in social efficiency". Like, me dying isn't dying for an on-average-superior system, it's me dying for a system that exists, at this point, just to make healthcare efficiency worse.

If it was "Emperor of Healthcare buys a 224th megayacht because the new triage system he ordered implemented saves 0.1% more people, but you, PugJesus, specifically, are going to die under this new system even though the 224th megayacht could pay for your lifetime treatment", I'd be pissed and terrified, but at least there's a POINT to it. But no, it's "We've found a way to cheat 67% more people out of getting healthcare! Here's a reward, Mr. CEO, for making society worse!"

Vegans poisoned our water supply, burned our crops, and delivered a plague onto our houses!

Don't worry, I'll get to go even sooner than that. I have pre-existing conditions, once my insurance is stripped from me, I'm living on a timer.

But vegetarian food is so much more than just replacing meat.

Sorry, I'm not in the market for a new faith.

Pretty sure I wouldn't find it funny even from the outside. I guess I like the vast progress made on every metric since 1900.