Friday, October 30, 2020

THE GOOD OLD DAYS AND NIGHTS

Remember the last century in the last millenium? I do. It was a different kind of time where accusations didn't lead to automatic death sentences unless they were solidly backed up by proof and unfounded, unproven allegations while enough to ruin a career didn't result in jail time in criminal convictions or cancellation of all that had gone before. I wasn't at the event in question but I bought the patch for the significance of the trauma that event put every naval officer thru because of the Navy/Marine one-size-fits-all 'justice' that was in it. Surface warfare types don't attend Tailhook for one obvious reason. Nevertheless we were hounded to swear and affirm that we weren't there and the originals of our statements were forwarded to higher echelons to be consolidated and used against us at courts martial if they could prove that we lied.

The patch was sort of a badge of honor among us because for all the sound and fury, only about a half-dozen junior officers were held guilty at non-judicial punishment of any misbehavior at the convention. The other 134 cases were dropped. Still it was a witch hunt that lasted far too long, swept up way too many innocent officers and destroyed countless careers of men that never even had a chance to argue their case as they were simply tossed on the scrap heap and left to wither away.


Nowadays, accusation alone is sufficient to convict unless you're a democrat in which case there is no case, nobody saw a thing and the media is uncurious and indifferent to the allegations.

2 comments:

Glenn555 said...

I wasn't there either. Being on submarines we NEVER ALLOED THOSE TYPES OF SHENANAGINS. Never, ever, I assure you on my late mothers grave. Honestly, SNERK!

Thomas said...

I remember that all right. I copied my service record when I got out, including the page that was the letter we all had to sign saying we weren't at Tailhook 91. That still angers me, accused drug dealers are given more rights than we were at the time. They said we had to sign this thing under penalty of perjury and we weren't allowed to have a lawyer. Not that I needed one, but it's the principle of the thing that is so wrong.
I also remember the bullshit "Tailhook stand-down" around the same time where we had to go to an auditorium and get harangued by feminazis and scolded by suck up senior officers all day.

Well we've been doing the soap box for years and we're trying the ballot box, hopefully it won't get to the next box.