With apologies to Jack Nicholson, AKA COL Jessup, USMC (see:
http://bit.ly/2pyEKCd), sometimes you help
people handle the truth through fiction and even satire.
Duffleblog.com is in my opinion, one of the more acerbic and
generally accurate satirical military sources. However, I’m often reluctant to
repost or ‘Like’ their posts because candidly I think some people who are not
familiar with the military will take the posting as ‘real’ rather than the
satire it is.
They outdid themselves with “Pentagon Creates New Meme
Warfare Center to Counter Online Propaganda” (see: http://bit.ly/2qUGxXb, which is also the photo
source).
First of all the dateline is Fayetteville, NC the home of
Fort Bragg which houses the Army Special Operations Command, parent of active
duty MISO and the US Army Civil Affairs and PSYOP Command, parent of USAR PSYOP
(not called MISO yet).
Fittingly the lead quote contains a misnomer. It says ‘make
them go virus’ instead of ‘viral’ implying that the writer doesn’t know
anything about the subject matter. They proclaimed that the boss of this
organization would be a 65-year-old two star (Major General). I did a bit of research
and it appears that for the mandatory retirement age for General Officers is 62
(see: http://tfumux.wikia.com/wiki/Average_ages_per_rank_in_US_Military).
MG Farmer has two strikes: he’s over the mandatory age and
given the rest of the article – doesn’t really know very much about the
Internet or popular culture. The implication may be that while DOD, and the
Army in particular, may recognize that something is important and requires
attention, the response isn’t always well thought out or appropriate.
The point for MISO/PSYOP professionals is that you can often
use fiction to do what non-fiction cannot. A prominent former White House
Staffer under several Presidents once told me ‘you can say more with fiction
than you can with non-fiction’.
Enjoy the Food for thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment