Well, at least someone again admits the "Knife buying for investment purposes!" is a ludicrous joke. It is. I wait expectantly every day to see scam-mail in my trash box inviting me to invest in knife futures, but even those guys know better. 'Nuf said.
I fully expected someone to point out a few makers and designers who do have military credentials - and right along with it, words to the effect they have better creds than an engineer or tradesman whose been making knives for years.
Again, this soap opera is dealing with a misconception. Just because a maker has combat experience means nothing in the grind and grit world of knifemaking. It is a spurious argument that surviving combat equals better insight and design - as the overwhelming majority of civilian makers proves every day. That Strider Knives can compete, does compete, and does make knives that successfully sell is a testimony to hard core knifemaking and marketing skills. That's what it takes in this business, not Condition Red awareness of surroundings.
Those who continue to insist that claims of being a combat vet are insufficiently substantiated are still locked into a belief that it makes a difference on the market place. That belief is false - being a combat vet, or not, stands alone. Being a good knifemaker and producing quantity and quality sufficient to achieve a standing in the market at a price point stands on it's own. We already have achieved consensus the products are not the argument - if it's not the intelligent design of the knives or leading edge components that are under question, then neither are the skills that produce them.
This leaves the issue of verifiable combat experience to most who question it. And, as I pointed out, combat experience has nothing to do with knife production. It's totally unrelated. The anguish and disappointment I read in posts about it seems based on the destruction of an expectation and illusion. "I'm angry because I found out my cherished belief isn't true."
No, you're angry because your cherished belief in the holy annointing of warriors in combat is proven false, and the construct that some immeasurable superiority or enlightenment unavailable to common mortals has failed. That's because it doesn't exist. The draft, used to provide soldiers for WWII, Korea, and Vietnam long ago showed ordinary mortals are sent to war, and battle damaged or not, ordinary mortals return. They are nothing more than that.
You have to accept a lie - that combat is a "holy" experience - to accept that being a combat vet makes a difference, and then give credence to negative speculation. Those who self righteously demand more answers from individuals miss an important point. You should be demanding answers from yourself. Why did you accept the delusion combat makes a difference?
As I said about 1,000 posts back, you will not resolve this, and certainly not here. It's not about the knives, or the skills of the knifemakers, which the knives amply testify. It's about seeing the lie that is exposed in your own thinking.
