One Riot, One Ranger: Difference between revisions
→Real Life
(update links) |
Jason taylor (talk | contribs) |
||
Line 140:
** Makes a bit more sense when you think about the fact that the Texas Rangers are more like a state-level FBI rather than a state-wide police department (in Texas, that'd be the Highway Patrol). They're not supposed to send in a whole big force. They do the investigating and coordinating with different police departments, and when they need a whole bunch of manpower, they get it from the Highway Patrol or local police and sheriff's departments.
** Interestingly though, as the other wiki's article details, in the actual trope-naming incident it was pretty well averted, with other Texas Ranger captains '''and''' the Adjutant General present, though many of them may have come originally with the intention of being spectators at the bout, not keeping the peace when it was stopped.
**It was subverted often enough. The original Rangers were conceived as a backstop to the militia in a state where militia was not enough [[Everything Is Big in Texas|for geographical reasons.]] They were in fact in conception not unlike [[Badass Israeli|the Palmach]] during the Mandate days in the Middle East. They remained on constant patrols and conducted retaliatory strikes that were far more brutal then folklore likes to remember. They had more then enough badasses and were even surprisingly advanced in military technology for such an out of the way place, taking up the revolver earlier then the Federal cavalry. But they worked as a team like sane people when they could. It was not true that one [[Bandito]] gang or Commanche warband only needed one Ranger.
* The Mounties (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) have a similar reputation. Their original name was the Northwest Mounted Police, and they were given responsibility of just about everything north and west of Ontario. When the Yukon gold rush occurred, the NWMP made sure is was the most orderly and civilized gold rush ever seen, especially when contrasted against the California gold rush a few decades before. The Mounties today service as the federal police investigation branch (similar to the FBI), and are considered polite, professional, elite, dedicated, and ''fearsome if crossed''.
* Commando raids were conceived with this trope in mind (although they usually involve a team rather than literally using one "ranger"); send in a small force to go in quietly, carry out a specific objective (e.g. sabotage, assassination, rescue a person of importance, gather intelligence, etc) and then leave ([[Suicide Mission|optional]]).
| |||