Every intelligence institution is built atop the military-industrial complex, which is itself necessarily powered by a crude, volatile goulash of exploited marginalized social rejects and frothing, twisted American Imperalism True Believers (who are p much dangerous human orcs)
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You can't run any of these institutions without incorporating SOME enlisted or prior-enlisted-track personnel into your command structure. You can't have an agency made up of JUST the nifty crème de la crème guys with college degrees because most of those people go elsewhere
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So a guy like Agent Ross—who is, at his core, just an over-the-hill Air Force officer who got put out to pasture—is extremely realistic Because to be an officer, especially in the modern Air Force, you've gotta be the sensible adult in a room full of children (even as a pilot)
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As cool and secret-squirrel as Ross seems in the movie, the fact is that in this guy's past he's had to listen to one of his exhausted NCOs tell him the reason the aircraft failed inspections is because one of the maintainers was distraught over the death of his D&D character
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And all that NCO wants to do is hand out the necessary ass-kickings so that he can go home and gamble with some of the dipshits from Logistics But he's gotta stand there and get whipped by Ross who is probably at that point five to eight years younger than him
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Yep It's a very "eye of the storm" kind of thing I had my commander—an older, barrel-chested, kinda frat looking guy—casually ask me what my plans for the weekend were I replied "uh, probably Pokémon" And that guy's reaction was very Agent Rosshttps://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1302737208563191808 …
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Because you're the leader, right, and you're also approaching or in your forties You can't just show CONTEMPT for your airman, right, this is, to some extent, a child you've adopted, a foundling you've taken in But also this creature is a wretched and pathetic disgrace
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So he masked his feelings and kind of just said "well, uh, have fun with that", with this sort of consternated friendliness, and briskly walked off I suppose I should have said I was going to climb Big Sur or something
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Right like the larger-than-life framing of the Avengers kind of obfuscates this, but if you're a guy like Agent Ross, you for sure don't want to have to put up with the bullshit of a kid like Scarlet Witch (cf. Coulson, whose manchildness BENEFITS this)https://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1302739772213833728 …
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This is not to say that pilots are nice guys—pilots are largely arrogant motherfuckers—but to be a pilot who crosses over into the intel field, you've GOT to be the kind of person who is willing and able to handle a Pokémon kid, because AT best they grow up into Pokémon adults
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And the reason Ross seems relatively sanguine about all this is because he's not actually a gung-ho neocon warhawk whose entire life is about maintaining American hegemony He's a 9-to-5 guy who slid into this career track because he wanted to keep working and this sounded fun
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Killmonger by comparison is way more invested in at least the philosophy of the American imperial project than Agent Ross He's a Navy SEAL, so, you know, literally an extremely violent and monstrous bully, a gun itching to be fired at anyone He's in it, obv, for the killing
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Like Killmonger and Ross are both like "America is an evil entity that causes immense suffering globally" but where Ross approaches that with a kind of milquetoasty "but at least _I'm_ doing my best" philosophy, for Killmonger the violence and victimization is precisely the point
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That's why Killmonger _could_ serve in a cohesive unit with other SEALs, who are in reality closer in temperament to MAGAs like Dan Crenshaw, despite clearly being very conscious of institutional white supremacy It doesn't MATTER, as long as he wants to kill motherfuckers
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That's the whole thing, right, Killmonger is a no-hoper, enlisted-track nihilist, he joined the military to hurt people because all he wants to do is hurt people and he found the best capacity in which to be put to that purpose Agent Ross is a chill ex-jock with a college degree
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Okay nevermind so Killmonger is intentionally the Tony Stark of social outcast garbage and he's definitely *coded* like enlisted-track SEALs but textually he's slumming it by the time he actually joins uphttps://twitter.com/arthur_affect/status/1302767275229941761 …
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