That wasn't a personal comment, Gew, and it certainly wasn't a slam on your military service.
The correlation between the military and the HOA is that in both, the relationship is one of agreed-upon, accepted, and respected interdependent cooperation between the members.
In an HOA, one member who suddenly decides that "hey, I made a conscious commitment and accepted obligation to my neighbors, but I've decided that I now don't want to honor it" can have a significant impact on his neighbors, financially and socially.
In the military, the breaking of those conscious commitments and accepted obligations can be far more devastating.
You, as an officer, have likely seen, or are at least familiar with, what happens to a unit when its cohesion begins to crumble from one or two individuals who decide that teamwork isn't really important anymore.
At the same time, that decay can also start at the top and work its way down. Band of Brothers showed that in the first two episodes where members of Easy Company actively talked about fragging Sobel, and where the sergeants attempted to turn in their stripes.
The same thing can happen with an HOA -- a board can become draconian, a group of martinets. Those are the HOAs that make the news when they finally become so over the top that the membership breaks.
I just wish that people wouldn't use those instances that do make CNN, FOX, etc., as the sole basis for their concept of what HOAs are and do.
That's about as logical as seeing a news report about the recent shootings in Seattle, and with no other basis for the decision, become stridently anti-gun.
In turn, that's about as logical as saying, in effect, "one HOA is the same as the next, and they're all bad" so I never want to live in one.
The comparisons of HOAs to a Soviet-style goverment do nothing but expose the depth and breadth of an individual's ignorance.
If that is truly to be believed, then Grampster is nothing more than a bald-faced liar, because no HOA could function in such a loose and informal manner, and in fact he's covering up the depth of his own lust for power.
