I’m going to shovel out some opinions, here, and I will not be bothering (entirely) to support them with references and argumentation. Let me put that out front, since I am going to make some very negative assumptions about some people, and may even vent my spleen. Or, air it out, anyway.

This is some thinking and studying I did as part of an article I have not written yet (it’s been sitting in my head for over a year) about “tactical” stuff.

I still get ads for tactical stuff a-plenty, but lately they have turned just a bit more sinister. It used to be gravelly-voiced masculinity about how a real man is always ready for a hurricane, or a cougar. Both, simultaneously (the mark of a real man, plus doing all that while baking popovers) is not considered. I’ve written about this topic elsewhere – honestly, I forget where – but one time I got to do a poorly-controlled straw poll at a conference: “please raise your hand if you have ever been a normal civilian urban situation, and had to defend yourself against someone armed with a gun?” Next question: “what about a knife?” and “How many of you have used pepper spray on someone?” (a few hands). But I had about 100 people in my class, and the results were about what I’d expected: nobody had really needed to use a tactical ninja letter-opener to defend themselves against a platoon of Rhodesian SAS or anything like that.

Yet “tacticool” remains a look. The blacked-out gear and spandex may not be universally badass-looking on us all, but we simply cannot ignore the semiotics of the thing: this is supposed to be intimidating. It is supposed to symbolize that the wearer is capable of taking it, and dishing it out, too. I mean, look at that guy and all his armor except on his face and crotch, where all the bullets go. (and an expert with a samurai sword would also dispatch that goon with a single thrust) But these are grown men, who scuttle about in tacticool, as if they’re going to start laying down suppressive fire.

We all have different ideas of what constitutes a badass outfit. Back in the good old days, it was big shiny iron plates. Or, you know, something else.

How many of you dear readers have ever crossed swords with a fencing master who has trained olympians? That’s my high-water mark. [It went unbelievably badly] I’d be shocked if any of my non-AI readership has ever been in a gunfight for real. I think that the adult situation in which I most wished I had a gun handy was the not-so-well-managed encounter with a female bear on RT879 one night when I was on my motorcycle. In that moment of clarity, I remembered what most strategic geniuses know: run away. After all, I was on a perfectly good motorcycle. Because if you run away you may never have to deal with it, or someone else will. In computing it’s what we call “an optimization” – you figure out a way to leave the hard part until never. Ponder this: I could spend my whole life hauling around a “tactical walking cane” suitable for beating up the broad cultural stereotype fentanyl addict, and it would do exactly no good against mama bear. No refunds.

I have much love for that image, because the AI did a pretty fair job on the “tacticool” ‘operator’ in his perma-press work clothes, and stuck goggles and some weirdness on the grenadier’s kit. Also the combination beard-busby is a look we need to bring into style now that I am past the age of military impressment. Or should I say “I am no longer impressed”? What’s funny is: imagine that the guy on the left is ICE. Imagine the guy on the right is line infantry of the old guard. A fight between those two would sound like: “(click) Uhhhhhhh” The action begins when the ‘operator’ raises his gun, which is loaded and ready and the (click) is when the experienced infantryman knocks the ‘operator’s gun out of line and runs him through with the bayonet. The point I am trying to make, here, is that a lot of these ICE guys are doing a fun job of cosplaying badasses, but an actual badass would not feel a need to discuss it afterward with their therapist. Setting aside the clothing, a roman infantryman from LegioX would look at that guy and his short sword would do its usual work. After all, it’s monday.

Don’t get me wrong – I love fashion, and I really like military fashion. I forget if I posted a photo of my reenactor perfect chasseurs of the imperial guard pelisse but it’s fun to wear, and watch pedestrians get out of my way with furrowed eyebrows. That’s what I’m getting at, here: if I walk down the street in napoleonic kit, I’m a weirdo. If my neighbors had a classical education and I walked down the street dressed as an Edo period Shinsengumi and wearing both swords, they would walk quickly to someplace else. The same way a lot of people do, when they see ICE.*

[By the way, here is an anodyne for watching ICE in action: imagine the expression of a LegioX centurion watching those guys. “oh my god what is this shit? Don’t they know how to break a few skulls?”] I’m glad that ICE is so incompetent. Perhaps I’ll go into that more but in the meantime, as a placeholder, a Vietcong mortar-team could put an 81mm round between any of the ICE idiots standing there in a close-packed line trying to scare Portland’s population of inflateable frogs. There is a point in that: in the ICE guys’ minds, they are warriors. In the mind of someone like Sazz, [stderr] they’re way too grouped up and their command hierarchy is obvious from their deployment. Writing that makes my blood run cold because I know what Sazz meant when he said something like that – these guys are so dangerous they couldn’t even hurt themselves. He was full of one-liner putdowns like that, which mostly featured Marines.

I’m belaboring my point: these guys have mistaken dressing like a badass for being a badass. Reality does not require detailed interrogation to teach us that badasses crop up at random and anyone getting rambunctious should take that into account. I do not know how many drunks in taverns were talking shit and looked up and saw the completely un-upset gaze of a former centurion. Or a chasseur of the Guard, or whatever. This is an important movie trope in American popular cinema and it’s some of the most pernicious bullshit: because someone “serious” (in the language of The Professional) is in the room, random violent thugs don’t recognize it and get hurt very badly. What a complete load of hooey. A “bad guy” with any practice is also going to recognize “the eye of the tiger” or whatever it is, and won’t start a bar-fight that gets them and all their friends crippled. Nor will a retired centurion because why ruin an evening?

I am not a serious martial artist; I’m a strategist (warriors take their orders from me) anyhow, youtube recently fed me up a bunch of videos of Jake Gyllenhal as some ring-fighter who runs around demolishing people who are apparently a) fighters  b) exceptionally stupid. I mean if you were going to fight Bruce Lee wouldn’t you take one look at how he moves and start having a lumbago attack? If I found myself in a potential combat situation with Bruce Lee, I’d be perfectly happy to look like a coward, because, when I am confronted by someone who moves like that – I am! Only an idiot doesn’t seek a favorable resolution. (“Wow, obviously you’ve got some serious workout-time, and if you’re a fighter, I can tell right away that I’m not a worthy opponent, so fight my friend Fred, here…” <– note the idea of “I am not a worthy opponent” embeds some toxic masculinity for you)

[I have actually been in a potentially combative situation, once, in a bar in Croatia where alcohol was flowing and a Serb and a Marine started obviously measuring eachother. I just made sure they each got more tequila and sat down to enjoy it, and the issue evaporated as they often do. By the time that food was done and the check called for, they were blood brothers.]

This is really roundabout. I’m saying that I think the ICE guys, who dress up in their tacticool, are worse than ${manhood-insulting-trope} – let’s be honest about some things: they are dressing that way to appear big and scary. They are dressing that way because, I suppose, that armor plate vest helps them suck their belly in. They are dressing that way because they hold their manhood cheap, and what they really really want to do is lay down some overwhelming force on a weaker opponent. If you are a horrible and cruel person, like I am, you can engage such people in discussions about military honor, bushido, and manliness, without quite saying that you think Kusunoki Masahige wouldn’t let them polish the teeth of his wife’s pet cat. They want to engage in overwhelming force because that’s the only kind they think that they are capable – it’s not a strategic choice it’s simple cowardice.

You know who scares me? The guy who shows up at a street brawl wearing a clown suit. Nobody with that self-confidence is incompetent, and I’d back the hell away because they might be supremely dangerous.

Cowardice has a lot to do with why American popular culture has turned toward sniper chic. As a guy who fired thousands of .308 boat-tail lake city at 400M targets, I recognize it right away – it’s the “thousand yard stare” except it’s not (Sazz had that) it’s some creepy kid from the suburbs who is afraid to get in a fight and thinks 300 yards is a good distance. Strategically, I give them points but they’re still just yapping puppies. When that shitty movie about serial sociopath killer whatsisface the sniper came out, I was thinking “oh god the tacticool crowd will eat this up.” And, they did. Suddenly cop squads started cropping up sniper teams as if they’re in fucking Fallujah. This is all chickenshit.

In terms of warrior ethos, a grenadier from the Old Guard would have casually said, “I’ve killed better men than you” if they bothered to notice the chair-warrior or the ICE agent. Personally, I’d love to see the face of an ICE agent if some Grenadier started telling them about the battle of Eylau. Unless they started masturbating furiously, of course. What else are these assclowns doing, but trying to look a lot more dangerous and scary than they are? [I am not a fan] I enjoyed the old “Dirty Harry” tropes where Clint Eastwood gets in gunfights wearing a snappy courduroy jacket. The whole point of those lousy movies is about fashion and proper clothing for violence. Or something. I’m pretty sure there’s a good dissertation on popular culture regarding fashion in Tombstone or one of the infinite number of Bond movies.

That is the weird, and stupid, aspect of American popular culture: there are unacknowledged clothing cues for violence, that say “I am a tough guy” and they change over time. When Jake Gyllenhal takes off his shirt, we are supposed to go: “oh, that’s a tough guy” and only stupid NPCs tangle with him. My generation reacts the same way when Bruce Lee expands his back muscles like a cobra’s hood. “Yeah, this guy practices.” I think that’s a lot of what’s going on with the ICE idiots in various cities: they expect people to be cowed by their badass clothing and they are really pissed off that it’s not working. Meanwhile as a supporter of LGBTQ, I have to say “come out of the closet, it’s OK, you can turn that into positive play with a partner and it’ll be great!” At my age do you think I can’t tell? These little authoritarian soldiers put their gestapo/SD black uniforms on at home, and look at the mirror and feel unmanly because they haven’t killed anyone, yet. They don’t understand that, right now, they are part of the dominant culture so they are adopting the popular style. That tacticool bullshit they are wearing just shows the bullshit that is in their hearts, really.

I do not know if there were weird perverts in imperial Rome, who sneakily dressed like Lictors, or something, in the privacy of their homes, but this whole ICE/tacticool thing annoys me simply because the aesthetics are bad. I don’t want to go talk to any ICE while they are deployed but, seriously, why are they wearing bricklayers’ kneepads? Are they going to weed my lawn? Why the elbow pads? I’ve never fucked a guy; are they expecting to get down on all fours for some butt-slamming action, Chuck Tingle-style? Most laughable of all, as a weapons maven [This is allowed; I make weapons, I can critique them] they’re pathetic: they are carrying paintball guns. I don’t care if they’re loaded with teargas paintballs, I’ve got stuff in my gun safe that would legitimately make an ICE mall cop weep with envy. I just don’t wear it out on the street because all that steel is heavy. And there are legal issues. [Out here I can legally carry concealed a .45 with a silencer and steel core rounds, but a katana is iffy] [America is stupid!] I think a lot of what is going on is that the ICE agents have mistaken their fashion choices for actuality, when they are wearing movie props.

Let me suggest you see Sicario. Or parts thereof. The soundtrack is great, [for both 1 and 2], but the actual movie is, uh… what the fuck is it? Oh, right, it’s the plot of every action American movie made: there are bad guys and there are frustrated good guys who want to take the fight to the bad guys, so they ignore the law and go on a killing spree under cover of authority.

In the case of Sicario, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro do a good job acting like sociopathic badasses, badguys, whatever, it makes no difference. If the reason we are to dislike the badguys is because they are ruthless killers, Del Toro’s character (played with a great downbeat aplomb) is more ruthless and badass and spoiler: he’s so ruthless he shoots the drug lord’s family in front of him, lets it sink in, then shoots him. Oh. That’s what goodguys do. It’s as if the Trump administration mistook this beautifully shot and scored testosterone-kill-fantasy for a documentary. In one scene, the goodguys decide to kill a bunch of (as I used to say:) “broad ethnic stereotypes” of tattooed hispanic gang members, and they ninja out of their cars in a traffic jam, dressed the way ICE agents do, now, and kill a bunch of badguys, as goodguys do. This is what’s stewing down in the insufficiently-used crotches of ICE agents: they want to be ruthless avengers of wrong, killers for rightness, badasses, scary dudes.

They’re not, of course. They cluster up so one grenade would take down a whole file, their snipers are easy to pick out because they’re lazily positioned on rooftops (OMG who teaches these kids!?) and, uh, they’re carrying paintball guns. Sure, they could become scary, the second they load or cycle a real gun, but if you’re looking at 20 ICE agents you’re looking at 20 casualties in under 2 seconds of disciplined fire.

The dialectic – the dividing line – is that these assholes are cosplaying as badasses and are angry that they are not universally being respected as badasses. Because they don’t understand that “being respected as a badass” means being shot in the head, from a distance, with no warning. OK, I see you, I realized that you are dangerous, so you’re dead. I am constantly cringing at those ICE guys. And, oh my god, their leader – he’d be so much happier if he just came out of whatever fantasy world of sexualized violence he dwells in. Like many perverts** his outside life is an unsatisfying phantom of what he really wants to be doing. Many of them need counseling, except for the ones who are just there for the money, to which I say: there were a lot of paid troops with Crassus at Cannae; when things go south don’t cry.

Here I feel I ought to link a few clips from Sicario, and some clips of ICE, but it feels so tedious to me now. Oh, OK:

Look familiar? Fucking ICE is cosplaying Sicario. They mistook a shitty potboiler for a documentary.

(* Fan/not fan of the shinsengumi. I will say, unequivocally, that those were some guys who put their shit on the line behind their mostly stupid beliefs. But, see, when a katana expert believes one thing, and you believe another, and you’re standing in the sun looking at eachother, you need to work on your mental and political flexibility. If you have not seen When the Last Sword Is Drawn I highly recommend it. It’s not a masterpiece but it’s close, but it explores beautifully the kind of relationships that form in a time of political turbulence where neighborhoods are fighting battles with katana and mortars outside of the pub. I admit I do fantasize about seeing the Proud Boys riot against the shinsengumi. I could handle the blood, I swear. In fact, I happened to see Charlie Kirk get shot nearly live – before they started editing it – and it was fascinating to explore my own reaction. First off was: “a lucky miss” nobody aims there and secondly “wow!” as you could literally see the guy’s brain shut down when the blood pressure dropped. BOOM, lights out. Anyhow, if you’re going to feel bad for shitheels like him, just remember that during the Meiji period, Japanese politics was often done with the edge of a katana. What happened to Kirk sucked, but could have sucked way worse.) (For a better movie about Japanese politics in the Meiji restoration, try Shogun Assassin, upsettingly played by Toshiro Mifune)

(** “perverts” is a disapproved term but I am using it here to be insulting)

I see previews for Sicario 3. Wow! Let me guess, the plot will be more: facile and naive revenge, except there will be a surprise twist, like some betrayal and then back to facile and naive revenge. I’m not against revenge, for the record, but this stuff is just fucking ridiculous: some guy steals your car and kills your dog so you kill 420 people to get to them for revenge. 420 people who were just time clock-punching members of Non Player Characters’ Local #465.