This meme was made by someone who didn’t serve in the military. Many times did I salute someone who i shouldn’t have because their rank insignia was too small to see at a distance or too similar to another branch’s rank insignia. Having it everywhere makes sense.
And the rank on the back? Genius. I’d know that person was a captain so i could sneak off to buffer time while they weren't looking as opposed to having to go in front of them to rank check for 21st century uniforms.
This is how you get all your officers killed in the battlefield.
Colonial sharpshooters were already excellent at picking off Redcoat officers in 1774.
Then both Union and Confederate officers were picked off at a high rate. Look at how garish Grant’s uniform is compared to Stormin’ Norman.
Finally we learned. WW2 officers had ornamentations removed or covered, even far from the battlefield. When the Indianapolis was hit, no one could locate Admiral Spruance. They thought he might have died. Nope, there was a guy wearing just khakis and no ornamentation helping fight the fires— turned out it was Spruance. No one recognized him because he only recently transferred his flag over.
Field uniforms are different than dress uniforms. This is a dress uniform and it is used to show off your accomplishments and affiliations. Field uniforms would be more like Major Hayes from Enterprise. His uniform is drab and you can't easily tell the difference between him and his subordinates.
This isn't the uniform they would wear for actual boots on the ground warfare. These people are the equivalent to the navy not the army or marines. Snipers arent picking Admirals off regularly on their own ships. If they went "ashore" it would make sense to have different uniforms unless they were knowingly doing a diplomatic mission on that particular plant at that time. Then you wear a dress uniform. There's a reason dress uniforms look different from ACUs.
Because the chain of command needs to be embedded enough into your psyche to override your fight/flight response. Same reason we spend our entire careers in the military practicing war. When it's real, you can't freeze up or get flustered...your job also has to be so well practiced that you can do it instinctively, because when you're getting shot at, instinct is sometimes all you've got left.
That and because it used to be a literal class divide and the officers were genetically better than you and chosen by Gawd, you peasant filth, get back in the spear line.
I don't know if I should upvote you because they actually act like this or downvote because you reminded me of having to deal with it, even as a civilian.
My grandfather was in a WWI German prison camp as a child (his father was British and all British subjects in the UK were put in prison camps when the war broke out). It was largely autonomous, and when POWs started arriving, the enlisted acted as indentured servants to the officers.