The following post is sponsored by Samuel Finlay
When Samuel Finlay asked ROK to write a post about his military novel Breakfast With The Dirt Cult, we were immediately intrigued. The book has already been positively reviewed by Matt Forney, as well as by Amerika, Takimag, Counter Currents, and Apocalypse Cometh.
After speaking to Sergeant Finlay about how his book came together, his reflections on his military experience provided a new appreciation for the struggles and sacrifices of modern infantrymen:
1. The little things matter even more
You’d be hating your life, then you’d see some goofy bastard do or say something hysterical or perform some heroic GI Joe feat of awesomeness and you think, “Good Lord, these bastards are outfuckingstanding!” and you’d just be thankful for the cards you’d drawn.
2. The military provides no exception to the rules of the sexual marketplace
I noticed that much like at school, girls gravitated to certain types of guys. Hell, there were girls who became absolutely feral like they had to meet a dick quota or they’d get fired, then you’d go to a bookstore and see magazines where women bitched about how guys treated girls.
3. The call of duty can sometimes ring hollow, even for the most dedicated of soldiers
As you can tell, the military is a moveable feast of bullshit. You swear the Oath, then you realize how the service really is, then you make your peace with the suckitude, and if you’re lucky, wind up being a part of something more and partaking in an experience that’s kind of a mystery cult (hence the title).
4. The guys on the ground sometimes feel that they are just pawns in a game
When you consider that modern liberal democracy itself may be a sham, and that guys like Edward Bernays were right in that the real power in a polity is in the hands of those who shape the opinions, beliefs, preferences, and prejudices of the electorate, the shit flat out goes plaid. It means we’re fundamentally wrong about a lot of things; that shit has been fucked since way back and that a hell of a lot of people (theirs and ours) have died under false pretenses.
5. It’s a story that’s not being told
As a guy who loves books and stories, it pissed me off that no one writes about or for them. This was a completely random group of young men from 18-35 from all over the country, and they’re out there kicking ass. There’s so much that I felt was significant about them and the role they played; and yet what stories were celebrated in print and TV? Sex and the City. That sort of bullshit.
Finlay is a man who was wounded serving our country and lived to tell the tale. He writes from a red pill perspective that you would never find in the glorified and sanitized Hollywood portrayals of war. The account is raw and uncensored, but it possesses the verisimilitude necessary for a book to stay with you long after you read it.
This is the author himself on the impetus for the work:
It is a novelized account of a period during my enlistment as an infantryman in which I got caught between a soon-to-be-ex-stripper and the Afghanistan campaign, then after being wounded downrange and consummating the affair, had all hell break loose on me.
In trying slog through the anger, hurt, and confusion that went with coming home, and generally try to make sense of it all, my thoughts led me to the belief that many of those who shape the ideas that influence everything from love to war have taken us upon a self-destructive course. And in our folly, we have marched to their cadence. While this makes it thoroughly in opposition to PC orthodoxies, there were things I saw that I felt needed to be told.
Finally, our own Matt Forney had this to say about Finlay’s first novel:
As a coming-of-age story, a young man’s awakening to the reality of the world, it’s not only (mostly) well-written but unique. When Finlay is at his best, he captures the Slaughterhouse Five-level lunacy of modern America and the unease he had of living through it […] I can’t wait to see what Finlay comes up with next.
Click here to see what everyone is talking about and buy Breakfast With The Dirt Cult today—it’s only $2.56 on Kindle.
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Good book. Unfortunate for the guy, but the experience gave him a modicum of understanding as to how this whole pseudo-clockwork system buttfucks all men. They will never celebrate this man’s work because it actually has substance and meaning, unlike all the shells of soulless fiction on shelves and sitcoms on the boob tube.
I read this book also and can say it resonated with me. Highly recommended.
So not just in war, but in love too, soldiers get a handle on rigged game and the bullshit.
And the system hates veterans for even more reasons it seems.
this is now on my to buy and read list
Funny how we have to qualify truth as “raw and uncensored” these days… rather than just simply allow people to read and draw their own conclusions. We put trigger warnings in our speech and we don’t even realize it (note that I am not bashing the author here).
The military is the single biggest collection of misfits, miscreants, and ne’er do wells that you will ever meet outside of a maximum security prison. And you will never have closer friends or dudes that you’ll love like family when you get out. I was a soldier, and got out in the late 90’s. I was embedded with a Marine Battalion in Afghanistan in 2010-2011 as an adviser, and it was the best time that I’ve had in decades. I was like a surrogate big brother to a lot of the “kids”. My blood pressure went down, and I became more introspective over there. I never knew how much I missed the life until I got back into it.
“He stuck his finger in the end of your *what*?”
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Don’t tell me you guys never watched Support your Local Sheriff.
Thanks for the rec. On my list!
Joining the millitary is the worst decision I could have ever made. Once your in it like your trained to be stupid, no one cares for real progress or real skill just bravado. One cannot come into his own way of thinking in the millitary develope thier own process no a good leader is a loud mouth and only that. Kids join and learn no skills survival skills that is life skills every one is absolutely scared to get out. You join at 19 get the most money you ever had then you develope a bad habit of blowing it all and you feel no effects at all no bills no rent just a expensive car you don’t need go oversees marry a whore. Get divorced develope severe drinking problem get kicked out become homeless, literally a homeless factory bieng told what to wear where to be, always having someone to cry to does not develope a adult.
Joining the military was the -best- decision I ever made. I’m assuming you joined at 19, so I can definitely see the issue there. I see a lot of my juniors who have no grasp of anything that have to do with the real world, and the really have no incentive to because the military basically holds your hand to do just about anything. I joined at 27, so I managed to see things more for what they are in the service. Assuming you don’t go operational, the life is retarded easy, and the income is high enough (especially for random high school kid) that you can live comfortably.
I understand it’s not for every one. But I tell people this all the time. The United states is a world wide empire, and empires have a life span of around 250 years, six stages the last bieng decadence. So I plan on getting out and doomsday prepping, we haven’t really won a war since ww2 and we also have not really been defeated either but it’s coming. As of 2015 we are at 239, I could be wrong but look it up all empires experience this and then they suffer a crushing defeat or many small ones like we have Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. I mean what makes us so much better that all the past empires, so Im just wary of staking my life on the millitary like it can never go away. I told my chief that and he got mad but it’s the facts I didnt make it up at all,just a bit of knowledge for those history buffs out there. And we are due for a world wide conflict any day now and me myself I have no confidence in my shipmates, and I’m a dirt sailor.
I spent about a decade with the Canadian Military Engineers Reserves, so I never completely gave up civilian life. As a summer job, it beats the fuck out of being a barista. You do things and learn things you can’t elsewhere. As a military engineer you get to play silly bugger but you also learn construction skills, demolitions, and of course leadership. A lot of my former comrades have done multiple tours in Afghanistan.
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I think it is a lot different now than it was back in the late 80s. On the one hand, all the crap in the Middle East has meant that the reserve soldiers have to train that much harder. This just isn’t the same as peacekeeping in Cyprus. On the other hand, political correctness was in full creep when I got out in ’94. I haven’t been out training with the boys in a long time but my understanding is that “grabasstic piece of amphibian shit” is simply no longer part of a drill sergeant’s vocabulary.
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YMMV but boot camp, and your first trade course, act like a fucking time-warp. You go in as a teenager and come out a lot older, mentally speaking.
who’s that bullshit officer who writes here on the military?
It never shocks me how a forum dedicated to manhood is made up of mostly non-vets. I turned down a full scholarship to join the Marine Corps back in 93. I learned moreabout life in those 5 years than I ever would have at college. All my friends thought I was stupid and 20 years later thwy are still,the same losers they were in high school.
There are a lot of ex-military on here, but like me not all are vets. A disturbing number of lawyers, however.
I haven’t read this book. However, as a two tour vet and an infantryman of 7 years, this sounds about right. I might have to give this sucker a look see.
A very timely book review, as I find myself coming to the end of the Broken Empire trilogy that the RoK “Prince of Thorns” review/article encouraged me to read. Downloading now, thanks for the recommendation
“Good Lord, these bastards are outfuckingstanding!”
I’ve come to realize that I’ll never again have one friend as good as the dozen I had in the Marines.
I appreciate everybody who stopped by and read the editor’s write-up of my book and those who took the time to comment. (Thanks for the endorsement, Quintus!) If you’re one of those who bought a copy, I hope at the very least you get a laugh out of it, and at best, maybe learn something from my dumb-ass mistakes that may help you down the road.
Y’all keep hitting ’em! These scandalous two-bit shit-knuckles gotta fall at some point.
This book was pretty solid; not constant with Red Pill truths; but it kept coming back to them, and the struggle men have in dealing with women and what society has evolved to. Heartily recommend it, if only for the 4 page rant about society pussy pass for women when Walton first goes to the bar. Epic stuff.