Tech For Campaigns: Let’s elect more progressives (WTF?!)

[Smitty-48]

And don't volunteer unless it's serious. You could end up in the paint barn sanding jets for the next two weeks, and I'd rather be shot at, honestly.

No need to volunteer at all, if you see the need, and you know you can take care of that shit deftly, then take the initiative and just do it, but there's no need to raise your hand and say "oh, oh, pick me", just fuckin' do what has to be done, then back into the formation and cover your arcs, badda bing, badda boom.

Yeah, but there's generally no honor or nobility to be had in volunteering on the flight line. It's not like those delta force guys jumping out of the choppers into Mogadishu to fuck up some Africans' day and become legends. It means instead horrible details that -- I am not kidding -- you'd rather be shot at instead of doing in some cases.

Anything that has some semblance of honor doesn't need to be asked. If some plane has a mysterious flight control problem, people just stay there for like 18 hours or more to figure it out and fix it.

There is no honor in the paint barn.

Well, it was mostly Gordon, Shughart just went in because Gordon was going in, it was Gordon who made the requests, but he wasn't so much volunteering as he was insisting, Garrison didn't want to put them in, Gordon talked him into it, but only because Gordon thought he could save Super Six-Four, he had eyes on, he thought it was doable, he called for the ball, and took the initiative.

I don't think it was suicide, it's CAG, quite sure they thought it was doable to shoot their way out of it, high risk, but calculated. If I had to guess, I'd bet that they calculated that the Rangers would make the crash site much sooner, so it wasn't going to be as long as it turned out to be. It wasn't actually that far away, holding out until help arrived probably looked pretty doable.

It was more like; the Rangers are going to get there, but they're not going to get there in time, we have to buy some time here, but I don't think they thought the Rangers weren't going to make it at all.