the solution to author's condundrum is twofold: "soldiers who are resistant to a military order fall into one of four categories recently described by Eric Hun

the solution to author's condundrum is twofold: "soldiers who are resistant to a military order fall into one of four categories recently described by Eric Hundman: grudging obedience, refinement, exiting service, and defiance." But I'd say not masking is more "grudging obedience" not "defiance". It's minor, and easily correctable if challenged. They start court-martialing for a single mask violation, then it starts to look like defiance. But if the structure from top to bottom "accepts" that non-masking is context-sensitively and accepted (sometimes), not adhering to the "letter of the law" is just skating by or cheesing-it. Not open defiance. Yeah, that sounds a LOT like the real military. To me this means the issue there is the chain of command. Look, it's either a serious issue or it isn't. If you send mixed signals, then what do you expect? The second thing is that, in the real world, orders can't be "stupid". If your orders are to run into a machine gun nest and certainly die but as a hero for the greater, etc. even that can work. See that ain't stupid - that just sucks for you. But if it's stupid you are saying - do this for no reason because bureaucratic stupid, stupid. And you are going to get at best grudging acceptance. I'm not saying it's actually stupid. I'm saying the behavior of all ranks indicates they "think" and act as if it was thought "stupid". I mean, when you are young and healthy and a war-fighter - do you really think that "useless" masking to avoid a "minor flu-like" virus might not just seem "stupid". To be clear, I'm not saying it is stupid or is just the flu or whatever. But it's clear to me that a bunch of military and first-responders that have a very different risk posture might very well be just thinking along those lines and they act as such. They aren't acting stupidly or randomly. There's a reason that there is such blowback.