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WhoreMods -> RE: I Admit It I........ (6/29/2017 4:28:40 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: jlf1961
quote:
ORIGINAL: WhoreMods
Platt and Ellison both had issues with him wearing an SS belt to a convention and describing the SS as exemplars of military virtues, apparently. There was a lengthy rant about this in one of Platt's Interzone columns.
Barring the atrocities in which the SS were involved in, he was referring to the other noted aspects of the SS units, discipline, etc.
However, he admitted that with all that was to be admired about the SS, their devotion to and loyalty to just one man, Adolf Hitler, was their greatest weakness and flaw.
Drake has spoken in various essays on some of the greatest military units in history, from the legions of Rome to the Immortals of Persia. Each in its own right was the epitome of military virtues, while at the same time, presented some of the great problems with units of such devotion. In the case of the legions, the devotion was not so much to Rome, but the General who commanded them, hence the reason why Caesar's legion followed him into Rome itself, despite the fact that to do so was both illegal and for the time, against regulations (for lack of a better term.)
Prior to ordering his Immortals to attack the Spartans for the second time at Thermopylae, Xerxes ordered them to kill their wives and camp followers who had accompanied them on the march, since he decided that the Immortals had failed because the night before the battle they had been fucking around.
And the Immortals followed the order to the letter.
It's entirely possible that Platt and Ellison's beef is less the SS thing in itself than the fact that Drake didn't offer an immediate apology and offer to ritually burn his belt in front of an audience at the convention: they're both famously bullish and unpleasant men themselves. (Platt's also notorious as a cheerleader for the libertarian right in SF, so maybe he just seized the chance to attack another writer for being even further to the right than he is...)
Given that the Immortals are best known for failing to take a pass defended by only three hundred men, they're maybe an odd group to pick out as all time greats? Okay, the historical accounts we have of that (most notably Herodotus) were written by Greeks and slant the description in favour of the home team, but even so. I take it Drake has it that the Immortals were lions led by a donkey and that the failure to take Thermopylae was more down to Xerxes than his troops?
Des: Good luck.
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