Bret Devereaux

Since y'all wanted me to write about the silly idea of the 'universal warrior' and warrior vs. soldier dichotomy, and it came up in the context of Steven Pressfield's silly video...I am now watching his video series. Y'all do not know the pains I go through to educate the public

Seriously, he opens by treating Plutarch's Sayings of Spartan Women entirely uncritically as a representation of Spartan culture pre-490. That is the very first thing he does and it causes me physical pain.

Also, he's calling Sparta a warrior culture, which...I hate Sparta. A lot. I am on record on this point. But even I would contend that the Spartans were soldiers, not warriors.

This is now a live-tweet thread. He is now talking about how the USA is not a 'warrior culture' but the US military is a 'warrior society' which is such intense hot nonsense I don't even know where to begin.

Also this guy talks a lot about the culture of the US Military, given that I cannot find that he ever served (to be fair, neither did I) and has zero professional training in either ancient history or military history.

'Spartan women were famous as the most beautiful women in Greece' - based on Helen and the fact that women exercised naked (!?) No reference to Lampito from the Lysistrata? How disappointing...