I started this as a paper trying to articulate what I see as wrong with current Army culture. Then I noticed some rhymes and decided to focus in on one specific little "meme" (in the Richard Dawkins sense) that I have particular grievance with.
The just... utter scale of the vanity that seems to drive the decisions impacting Soldier's day to day lives never ceases to amaze me. It's really felt like throughout my career that my day to day work life has either been in service of my actual, technical, skillful profession. Or just trying to "look" the part. I can stack as many MQ Evals as I want, go to college to learn more about my profession, but I'm still beat out for promotion by people who pursued the more "vain" side of the Army and chased promotion points.
I'm planning on writing several more papers, essays, and poems(?) with the ideas that this poem started as.