I Hope This Helps

. . . Not fucking 1774. T-shirt companies tend to market the most obscenely jingoist shirts to the most ignorant members of the military. They used to say something on "U.S. Army Est. 1776" but now say something stupid like "1774." 1774, as we know, was the year people just began to think that rebellion against the English might be a good idea, after the Boston Tea Party, but before the English decided to the send in their regulars to violate what would have been known today as "civil rights," but what were known at the time as "ridiculous demands of precocious entitlement." At that time, the Declaration of Independence hadn't even been written. In fact, the first battle of revolution, (Lexington and Concord) didn't happen until 1775. That battle was, as is often the case, merely the beginning of a long, hard war in which starvation gripped the native population to such an extent that the Empire wondered why the hell they were fighting at