EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
Author: Stilgar Naibsky
Are you asking about the barracks? Yes, I've been to the barracks. Is that where you become a man? Of course, I don't know a better place to become a man. Do you want me to tell you? Well, since you ask so kindly... In the barracks you learn useful things. You learn to shoot a Kalashnikov, for example. But mostly you learn to disassemble and lubricate it. True, the Taliban must have fired a lot more rounds practicing shooting, but if we catch them in a competition in disassembling and lubricating an automatic rifle, we'll crush them.
I also learned to control artillery fire in a haphazard way. It's true that I don't remember how it was done because I haven't practiced it for years, and artillery these days probably works with completely different devices (not the artillery itself, but things like compasses and rangefinders). When I think about it, it worked with different devices back then, even in our unit there were a few that the officers played with. Now there must be something for everyone. Of course, these aren't the truly useful things. The truly useful thing is when you go there with an IQ over 100 (unfortunately, this is not the average for Bulgaria, according to various data it is 91 or 93), to see people gathered by personal identification number, not by interests, and to lose any illusions that democracy of the one-person-one-vote type can work.
It is also useful to see how people quickly solve their problems when they are armed despite all the talk that they will kill each other. But this is not the most useful thing that is learned in the barracks. It is not what makes you a real man. The most important skill that the barracks teaches is scythe. Mastering scythe is a main result of staying in the barracks. I am now convinced that this is a deliberately sought effect laid down by the architects of the barracks. Yes, you can learn to shoot an automatic rifle, but you shoot it once a month, not the other way around. On the other hand, activities such as sweeping, shoveling snow and digging gardens are everyday life in the barracks. If someone (a conscript) claims to you that he shot more in the barracks than he did, he is lying to you. We called the broom a "personal weapon".
Once it snowed heavily. For two days we shoveled snow from the square and piled it up at the edges. On the third day the sun came out and we were ordered to scatter the snow from the piles on the square so that it would melt faster. Faced with such Sisyphean tasks, even the greatest patriot, determined to learn how to defend his homeland with a weapon in his hand, will develop the skill of sleight of hand. The meaninglessness of the conscript soldier's main occupations is carefully selected so as to awaken the inner sleight of hand even in the greatest barracks enthusiast.
And so, those of us who have successfully graduated from our native barracks, we skate in life. We skate to work, but no one says that a person has to go to the barracks to become a worker. They say that you go to the barracks to become a man? Why? Well, because the skill of skating is most important when a woman is harassing you to do something. It is only right that a real man can come up with thousands of excuses why something cannot or should not be done. Skating is a form of fighting female control, and therefore no man should be allowed to marry before he has passed the barracks, otherwise he will be crushed.
This also explains why some young men complain that they want to go to barracks, but don't join the professional army for a year or two. This sweeping only happens in the conscript barracks, in the professional army they don't do so much nonsense and hire cleaning companies. It is much harder to master the vital skill of scavenging in a professional army than in a conscript army.
They accuse the most famous defender of the conscription barracks in Bulgaria – Angel Dzambazki, of being gay because he didn’t have a wife. It’s not necessary, I say! It’s entirely possible that the person simply knows that without schooling in the art of conscription it is spiritual suicide to take a wife. Without the quiet rebellion of the conscription, the slipper is capable of crushing the soul of even the most muscular man. Dzambazki knows this and that’s why he bravely defends the barracks in front of the journalists who are trying to humiliate him. Bring back the barracks! Let’s help Dzambazki start a family!
