Two Different Corps

The growing divide.

Disclaimer right off the bat: this is not directed at any one person or group of people, but is rather an observation of a trend from my admittedly limited point of view. I follow dozens of solid, educational, proven leaders who regularly share incredibly beneficial information on Instagram, Facebook, etc., and I hope they continue to do so in coming years. In a world that requires one thousand qualifications for every argument, please believe me when I say: this piece is intended to be constructive, not destructive.

I’ll admit, I am worried that this will come across as bitter and angry. I don’t intend for it to be either of those things, but I would like to convey an urgent message, one that many of my active duty brethren have raised over the years in quiet conversations but have been largely unable to share for fear of reprisal and needless drama. If it sounds like I’m bashing a specific person or group of people you know, it’s probably pure coincidence. I ask that you don’t read your own grudges and/or preferences into this.  

The Great Divide

I’ve come to realize that there are two very different Marine Corps today. This is obvious to me as I scroll Instagram and LinkedIn, and see the many photos, reels, and diatribes of Officers and Enlisted alike.

First, let me clarify what I’m not talking about. I’m not talking about the age-old divide between Officers and Enlisted. I’m not referring to the perception that Officers treat Enlisted people like trash, or that Officers are oblivious to the trials of their subordinates, etc. That debate is nothing new, but it’s a discussion for another time. What I want to talk about is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Company Men

In the first camp, you have what I’ll call the Careerist (I don’t intend this to be pejorative, simply descriptive); he or she seems primarily concerned with institutional milestones and achievements that will resonate with civilian elites (various PME, the Service Academies, prestigious staff positions at MOS-producing schools, etc.), post-graduate plans, fairly vague notions of things like leadership and morale, heck, even Lean Six Sigma and other qualifications/certifications that tend to “brief well” in the civilian world.

You can typically find their thoughts and musings about things like leadership, integrity, accountability, and other OCS buzzwords on any given social media platform. Their names are known throughout D.C. by civilian and uniformed leaders alike, many of whom often swoon over their incredibly touching internet tributes and monologues. Other leaders compliment their “bravery” and “courage” for their essays which contain nothing controversial but simply reiterate major Pentagon (and social) talking points. These stunning and brave posts usually earn hundreds or thousands of likes, sometimes from Generals, command E-9s, retired bigshots, and defense industry heavy hitters, a standing applause from the “in-crowd,” the “who’s who” inside the beltway.

Now, whether or not the individual’s advice/exhortation is even remotely realistic, practical, effective, or necessary, or more importantly, if he/she actually practices these things in his/her own personal and professional life, seems to be irrelevant. You say the right thing(s), you get the applause. You’re one of us now. It’s a simple formula.

The sad reality is that many within this camp constitute the military’s very own “ivory tower,” defined as “a state of privileged seclusion or separation from the facts and practicalities of the real world.” Again, I’m not saying they’re all wrong, or that even most of them are wrong. But it’s certainly possible to be tone-deaf without necessarily being wrong.

Going Deeper

Now, to drill down, I think there are two sub-camps within this camp; there are the guys who have “been there done that” and are now using the privileges of rank and the wisdom of old(er) age and experience to share what they’ve learned, utilizing social media as an incredibly effective communications tool. This is one of its major benefits. We need more men unwilling to toe the line and play the part of the detached and stoic politician in uniform who only offers vague, moralistic nonsense disguised as “professionalism.” All this to say, social media is not inherently evil; it’s a tool that must be wielded wisely and used for the good of others. It’s incredibly encouraging to see videos about kit considerations and concealment techniques with 50,000 to 100,000 views and hundreds of comments. Did you ever think you’d see the day where Field Grade Officers on Instagram would be sharing quotes from War Is A Racket? I didn’t. And yet here we are. This is social media at its best, not because it echoes any single narrative, but because it takes a tool that is so often exploited for personal gain and uses it to educate, to exhort, and to refine.

One way to identify the people in this sub-camp is to ask, “who is the focal point of the majority of their content?” Are they using their platform to elevate others? Are they spending their free time sharing their own past experiences in order to prepare the masses of young men and women who could soon find themselves at war? Or is it all about them? There’s nothing wrong with having an audience, provided it doesn’t become an avenue for constant self-promotion and self-adulation. “With a great audience comes great responsibility,” said me, just now (source: I made it up).

Me, Myself, and I

The other sub-camp, however, is the real reason I started writing this; for this camp, it seems to me that a military career is simply another tool among many to promote their own social media presence and develop their personal brand. These are the leaders who post daily reels in uniforms you know they don’t have to wear except once a year and paint the military as a way to “achieve your dreams,” delivering long monologues about topics that their track record really doesn’t support.

Now, knowing some of these people personally, I can tell you that most have good intentions, and are genuinely moral, upstanding folks.

And I think they do this for any number of reasons.

Sometimes Officers like to think out loud. As a young Officer, it was almost expected that you wax eloquent about ethereal, intangible topics such as these. The more words, the better. In OCS and TBS, the best leaders are often portrayed as the ones who talk often about leadership, and spend a lot of their time “thinking.” It’s kind of like “planning;” there’s a lot of talk about “planning” and how important it is, and how Marine Corps Officers consider themselves exceptional “planners,” but how much “planning” do we actually do on a daily basis? Probably not nearly as much as we talk about it.

But it’s kind of a cultural thing; leadership, planning, thinking, Command Philosophies, the list goes on; it all sounds really good and intellectual and scholarly. This isn’t a bad thing. But it certainly leads to a lot of idle monologuing, which I do think can begin to spill over into our perception of ourselves. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this does, in many cases, lead to grossly over-inflated egos.

So in my opinion, that has something to do with it; guys start to believe that either: 1) they are actually put into leadership positions because they are more knowledgeable and/or capable than the men and women they lead, or 2) that their every thought about these matters will enrich the lives of their listeners. I’m inclined to believe most people fall into the latter camp. But add a decent social media following to the equation and you really get a dangerous snowball effect of growing self-admiration.

Don’t Believe The Hype

I do also think that many Officers, after years, and even decades, of having captive audiences, not (necessarily) by merit, but by legal obligation, tend to begin to believe their own hype. And for many of them, this job really is the best part of their life. There’s nothing wrong with that. But put yourself in an Officer’s shoes for a week; endless salutes as you walk through base, people standing up when you enter a room, audiences of 50, 100, 500 Marines seemingly enthralled by your unending wisdom every Friday afternoon. The benefits of rank, and the ensuing attention that the uniform brings, can be intoxicating. Now, tack on even a hint of social media fame, and you begin to think you really are the next big thing.

Pretty soon, engagement becomes king. And how do you drive engagement? You entertain. You share the highlight reels. Before you know it, the influencer symposiums, the nice hotels, the silly videos, the dress uniforms, the graduate degrees, and the 500+ LinkedIn connections with General Officers and government officials who love and share your incredibly obvious “leadership lessons” and act like you just spoke truth to power, even though everyone agrees with you, becomes the norm. And over time, your incredibly privileged position as a leader of United States Marines becomes little more than another source of content with which to build your empire.

To put it another way, I’ll ask this; why does it seem that so many leaders are now using the rank, the uniform, and the billet to promote their own personal brand? And, perhaps just as important, why are none of their peers lovingly pulling them out of this masturbatory echo chamber?

It’s truly baffling to me that nobody ever asks: who is all this content for? Who are the pronouns in your LinkedIn bio really for? Is it for the sons and daughters of America that we love to talk so much about being “privileged” and “humbled” to lead?

Or is it for future employers? Commanding Generals? The Pentagon elites? Our own need to be seen? Because it’s certainly not Lance Corporals liking and commenting, or saying “you really walked the walk on this one, Sir",” but other senior leaders telling their friends, who are also senior leaders, how incredibly wise and insightful their takes on leadership are. To that, I think we should say, at least once in a while, “according to who?” Do the people that we lead get a say in the matter?

Further, where is the Lance Corporal who has ever had their “morale boosted” by a Marine Officer doing the electric slide in his/her PT clothes? I’ve yet to find him. So I must ask, who is this all for? If we’re going to impress anyone, shouldn’t it be the people whose very lives are in our charge?

So, in sum, here are my two main concerns with this sweeping trend:

1) Social media allows people as a whole to present themselves as someone they’re not, or at least someone they aren’t fully. It lets military leaders be the ideal version of what they should be in a relatively safe and risk-free way that real life leadership does not. It doesn’t require real life “proof” that what I’m saying works or makes any sense, or that I actually “walk the walk.” There’s no discomfort involved. Any disagreement or dissent can simply be chalked up to “hate” and disregarded. Thanks to the internet, you can hypothetically have zero deployments, mediocre fitness reports, and below average credibility amongst your peers and yet still be the face of the Marine Corps to a large swath of the American public.

A couple thoughts here:

1- It’s worth considering how this affects recruiting efforts.

2 - Further, how would an E-3 be treated for using the Marine Corps uniform as a social media prop for his or her small business? I think we all know the answer. But how is building a personal brand any different?

2) It largely misrepresents the mostly harsh realities of military life. The military is not silly, it’s not goofy, and it’s not glamorous; maybe 3% of it is “fun.” It’s also not ethereal or hypothetical or speculative, and this is where we need the people in the first camp to restore sanity and refocus potential recruits on the harsh realities of military life. You’re not going to be dancing in the parking lot. You’re not going to be making reels with your besties (probably). Life isn’t going to be all giggly and bubbly as you sit in your library with leather-bound books all around you waxing eloquent about leadership and integrity. You’re not going to spend your days making platoon TikToks to “boost morale.” Officership is about way more than just expounding vague, general, unspecific ideas about “leading people,” and it’s certainly something that takes decades to master.

Real Life

It’s one thing to to talk about leadership in the abstract, treating people as a theoretical idea; it’s quite another to actually lead actual real people, in real life. It’s not like an Instagram comment thread; it’s not all “yes!” and “needed this!” and “you’re the best!” responses. It’s awkward, it’s messy, and it’s imperfect. And I don’t think the reel, TikTok, wake up at 0730 and make my coffee in my sweet bachelor/bachelorette pad, drive my awesome new car to work, roll in around 0830, take a picture with the CG, and then do a ten minute monologue about “servant leadership” crew really acknowledges this fact.

But what’s even worse is that we’re now starting to see this group of self-promoters branch out and offer their incredible expertise to private sector leaders. This brazen lack of humility is where I lose my patience.

It needs to be said: government “leadership” is not the same as private sector leadership. There are similarities, yes, because both involve people. That’s not the point of this post but I’ll sum it up with this: “leadership” in the government where you address a group of people that is legally required to listen to what you’re saying and contractually obligated to obey your every command is not the same as influencing comparatively “free” grown professionals to take actions that will lead to increased productivity measured in terms of actual money. This is why the “CEO/SVP equivalent” nonsense is so dang silly. It’s not even close. Military leaders, Officers and Enlisted alike, make very high stakes decisions at extremely young ages, no doubt about it. But we shouldn’t be ashamed to say this is not the same as being a Project Manager for a Fortune 500 or handling hundreds of millions of dollars for a bank. The military leader and the corporate leader both have their part to play. But by pretending they’re the same, we demean them both.

And when it comes to relatively young Officers who have only ever held garrison billets now promoting themselves as the go-to consultant for all things people-related, perhaps a bit of humility is in order when speaking at length on “military leadership,” and strongly, strongly suggesting (or at least not denying) that you held a position of major responsibility in what most civilians think was all-out war, but in reality was an office job 9-5 with a couple PFTs sprinkled here and there. Again, you can’t control what you do and/or where you go; but you can control the truthfulness of how you portray yourself to the world.

But that’s not my point, so I digress.

Moving on to group 2. 

I’ll refer to Group 2 as the “ranchhands.” Think about the bunkhouse in Yellowstone. There’s no glamour; no social media following, no fancy conferences or working groups or leadership events, sometimes there’s not even air conditioning. There’s just “whatever the fr*ck my squad leader tells me to do for the next hour, and then the next hour, and then repeat, until Gunny lets us go home tonight, and then I’m going to do that again and again for the next 3-4 years.” It’s blue-collar. It’s all dirt, sweat, blood, heavy crap, lower back pain, sleep deprivation, over-caffeination, terrible chow hall food, getting under-paid, being out of breath in the pitch black while running straight past the barracks, tasting pennies.

Though I never served as an enlisted man, it’s obvious that this life has the potential to be incredibly fulfilling. Men need to be tested. There is a time and place for harsh living. There are many benefits; brotherhood, camaraderie, the opportunity to excel at your given profession, training time, the potential to deploy overseas and fight. But it’s certainly not glamorous, or clean, or “happy.” Most of these guys have never received a framed certificate with their name on it, certainly not from a Service Academy, or a fancy professional military education institution, or anywhere else. They make fun of it all the time, but receiving their EGA was the proudest thing they’ve ever experienced. Many don’t have families, aside from the platoon. They certainly are not on LinkedIn.

And I think when military leaders who are (by design, and necessity) separated from this world of grit and sand and dust and sweat and divorce start making videos and posts about how happy and goofy and silly the military is, or posting their sixth humble brag LinkedIn flex about graduating from the X and Y Academy For National Defense With A Triple Master’s Degree in Discipline, Doctrine, and Leadership while all of their men/women were training or deploying or cleaning the CP for the 9th time this month and rambling on and on about how the Corps has allowed them to “follow their dreams!” and all the other motivational nonsense, this divide only grows.

“Couldn’t have done this without my mentors!” Really? You couldn’t have gotten a Master’s Degree without a full-bird Colonel at the Pentagon who you just so happened to tag in your post? I bet you could’ve. Stop being weird.

“I’m so honored to have been selected to be the new Triple Double Special Commander for the Elite and Specially Chosen Officer Battalion (only 4 of us were chosen nationwide)! I’m so humbled!” Really? You’re humbled? The Generals and MBAs and Pentagon SESs on LinkedIn might not tell you this but I will: humbled people don’t spend all day talking about how humbled they are. It’s virtue signaling for attention. Stop it.

I’m not trying to bash anyone unnecessarily, here. But it seems that the collective emotional intelligence of the Officer Corps is almost as poor as its collective self awareness, and your people are starting to notice. I say this with love: quit the virtue signaling, humble-brag nonsense. Instead of talking about being humbled, just be humble.

I don’t have stats to back this up, but I do believe much of this social media stuff has adversely affected recruiting in relatively unexpected ways. There is nothing clean or polished about the Marine Corps aside from the Birthday Ball and the occasional change of command ceremony; it’s grunge, violence, pain, all for a good cause; or at least it should be. If people wanted to join a dance club or a networking club, they’d go to college. They want to join a warfighting organization like the one their Dad was a part of, and based on current recruiting numbers, they’re no longer seeing the Marine Corps as that place. 

The Point

I don’t really have a dog in this fight because I’m an anonymous meme page with an incredibly underwhelming career filled with highs, lows, successes, and massive failures. But I do hear the murmurs of the junior enlisted in my DMs, asking me why there are Marine Corps Officers and Navy Officers dancing around social media like a bunch of 12 year old ballerinas acting like military service is just one big beach vacation, or posting fifteen page LinkedIn screeds about high and lofty leadership theories from behind their closed office door with a dozen unopened leave requests. There is an increasing, and frankly, understandable, frustration in the ranks.

Final disclaimer: there is significant overlap between the two groups. While there are many who did not, there are also plenty of guys in Camp 1 who are now on the social media/MBA/fancy PME train who spent their first tour (or two, or three) in the dirt and sand around the world sweating, bleeding, and fighting right next to their guys. Many of them have spent months and years doing work-ups, deploying, and then doing it all again. The point here isn’t that anyone can ever only fall into one of these groups, but that as leaders grow and pick up rank, they are increasingly tempted to drift further away from the reality on the ground both in personal and professional life and turn the uniform, and the job, into a personal branding tool. The point is also not that Group 1 is only Officers and Group 2 is only Enlisted; there are plenty of each in both groups, but this seemed to be the most familiar and simplified way of explaining the dichotomy of attitudes.

In short, regardless of rank, we are always in jeopardy of beginning to believe our own hype.

Closing

My only intention here is to hopefully encourage a bit of self-awareness among the Group 1 types. Graduate degrees are not bad, PME is not bad, networking is not bad, and social media is not bad. The issue is rarely ever the thing itself.

But excess self-promotion can and will damage your relationship with your people, who are, for the most part, walking BS detectors. You can say it’s about “being relatable,” or “boosting morale,” or that “it’s not about me,” all day long, but they’re not dumb. For every action or post or comment or effort you make concerning yourself, how many are you making concerning the people entrusted to you?

And to the planners and movers and shakers in D.C. currently reeling from the completely predictable recruiting crisis (who will probably never read this), I pose this question; “which way, modern Marine Corps?”

To the left is the self-obsessed, individually-driven, pronouns-in-bio, resume-fanatics plastering their faces and their arbitrary ideas across the social media space, hoping, praying that someone in power notices and gets them that next speaking gig, book deal, or HBS veteran spot so they can tell us all how humbled they are. The stepping-stone crew.

To the right, you’ve got Marines who simply want to keep the legacy of their forefathers alive through hard and realistic preparation for the savage violence which our nation has come to expect of its Marine Corps. You probably don’t know most of their names, but I promise you they’re out there. They might want to get MBAs someday, and that’s cool.

But not right now. Right now, they’re all in, and they’ll go to hell and back without complaint. They’re just waiting for a leadership corps that will get off LinkedIn long enough to tell the Commander, “no Sir, we will not be attending change of command practice this week, we will be in GSRA running PB ops and training to kill the enemy.” Hint: they most likely don’t have 100K Instagram followers, and you won’t find them dancing around the CP parking lot this afternoon. They’re probably either in the field, in the gym, in the pool, or at the armory. If the Marine Corps has a future, it lies with them.

Generals: choose wisely which group will receive your (explicit and implicit) endorsements in the coming years. You all love to say “perception is reality.” Well, the perception is that your Corps has been overrun by woke, soft, and self-interested Capt Sobels who care more about pronoun use, Master’s Degrees, and “white rage” than winning wars. Perhaps instead of fighting your own people for stating obvious truths that make you uncomfortable, you should start listening.

On your side,

LC