Disciplined Delusion and the Lohmeier Hearing

By Forrest Marion, PhD
Military Historian and Air Force Veteran

For a bit of ancient history, it was four years ago this month when Lt. Col. Matt Lohmeier – a former U.S. Air Force F-15 pilot and Schriever Scholar,[i] and in 2021 a U.S. Space Force squadron commander – was relieved of duty for comments he made promoting his book, Irresistible Revolution.[ii]

Lohmeier dared to challenge the Pentagon’s combat readiness-, morale-, and recruiting-degrading mandates based on CRT/DEI which the new administration’s leadership had reinvigorated from the Obama years and implemented on steroids.

Traditional and essential Western military values such as merit-based advancement, accountability, trust, mutual respect, and unit cohesion had begun to falter under the coordinated assaults of neomarxist ideologues and their mostly clueless enablers, advancing utopian fantasies for their own purposes.

As I wrote in Standing Up Space Force, “Lohmeier appeared on a podcast to promote the book, in which he stated that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was promoting ‘diversity, inclusion, and equity,’ which are ‘rooted in critical race theory [CRT], which is rooted in Marxism.”[iii]

All true. What was clear only to some at the time is now old news.

Secretary Austin – demonstrably more concerned about imagined “right-wing extremists” than leading a serious defense establishment – allowed Lohmeier’s firing to stand, prior to an investigation.

Lohmeier separated from the service in September 2021 and has spent much of the last four years working in concert with other conservatives addressing the need to rescue the U.S. armed forces from wokeism before it’s too late and to restore time-tested military principles. His role as executive vice president of STARRS (Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services) has been a major part of his strenuous efforts.

All of that leads to the Senate armed services confirmation hearing (May 1) in which Lohmeier testified as President Trump’s nominee to serve as the Under Secretary of the Air Force.

Unfortunately, the hearing offered some senators the chance to demonstrate their disciplined delusion, forgetfulness, or both.

The questioning and commentary of the committee’s ranking member was particularly noteworthy, but the identity of the senator mattered less than the letter following his name – D.

In his statement, Lohmeier made clear his interest in promoting two specific principles regarding Department of the Air Force (DAF) personnel: 1), accountability, and, 2), an apolitical force. As a former F-15 pilot, he knows firsthand all about accountability, if not also the benefits of an apolitical force.

In response to the senator’s questioning, Lohmeier affirmed, “I’m only interested in holding people accountable who don’t follow the law, and who don’t honor their oath to the Constitution.” He made clear his intent, if confirmed, to ensure “we have proper accountability and high standards in the [DAF],” and reiterated his desire for “a culture of accountability.”[iv]

In addition to accountability, Lohmeier affirmed his desire to promote “a relatively apolitical military workplace. . .. a non-partisan military workplace,” and stated that he is “very interested in non-partisanship from our uniform wearers in particular.”

Grounded in the U.S. Constitution, his words were in keeping with the traditional, merit-based system that, in short, enabled the American military to attain an overall remarkable record of successes in the twentieth century, highlighted by the operations of the two world wars and the deterrence of the Cold War.

The ranking member challenged Lohmeier by asserting that

“I think we all want to see leaders who are accountable themselves and also [of] the highest standards, but those standards have to be consistent with this country [and those who serve in the armed forces]. They come from . . . many races, many nationalities, different views . . . and the goal is, as you indicated, an apolitical military force. [But] everything – that I’ve read in your book – and everything else [Lohmeier has said], is far from apolitical [emphasis added].”[v]

But the senator was incorrect in his assumed shared goals with respect to accountability and an apolitical force.

Sadly, it is demonstrably not the case that we all want to see leaders who are accountable themselves.

If we did, then the divisive, racist DEI agenda of the previous administration would never have been advanced.

Instead, what we had for the four years beginning in January 2021 was, in too many cases, a lack of basic accountability – recall the Afghanistan fiasco (2021), the Chinese spy balloon (2023), and the lowest U.S. combat readiness ratings in memory according to the highly-respected Heritage Foundation, to name just a few.

Was any senior military officer fired? A round number is zero.

Regarding the quest for an apolitical force, the chair of the armed services committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, must have listened to his colleague’s comments with particular interest. In May 2021, days after Lohmeier’s firing, the senior senator from Mississippi wrote to Secretary Austin on this very matter:

“If the Department of Defense finds that Lt. Col. Lohmeier’s statements on CRT qualify as a ‘partisan cause,’ it would then follow that the Department recognizes CRT itself as reflecting one side in a partisan debate.

Yet if CRT is partisan, it must be asked why this ideology is increasingly being pushed on U.S. service members.

It has become increasingly clear that the Department is actively pushing CRT through ‘diversity and inclusion’ trainings, recommended reading materials, and cadet instruction.

The Department therefore cannot call Lt. Col. Lohmeier’s statements on CRT ‘partisan’ without being implicated in the same partisan advocacy.”[vi]

In May 2021, neither Wicker nor anyone else could have anticipated the blizzard of degradation in military readiness, morale, and recruiting that was to ensue in the following three-plus years. . .. By those who now claim to be committed to an apolitical force.

In short, the senator in the powerful position of Senate armed services committee ranking member and others in his party continue to refuse to acknowledge that their initiatives, policies, and programs of the 2021-2025 Democratic administration were brazenly contrary to – and destructive of – the basic principles of more than two centuries of this country’s military standards, grounded primarily on merit and accountability, trust, teamwork and cohesion.

Following the thought of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), the cultural neomarxist “oppressor-versus-oppressed” ideology of CRT/DEI is one that highlights personal differences (in America, pigmentation seems to work well) in order to intentionally divide and create distrust in the military context, among its service members.

This is exactly the opposite to what a military requires in terms of morale, mutual respect, and cohesion.

This approach was intended, at least by the few at the top of the DEI food chain, to bring us down as a nation.

The others, one must conclude, are deluded.

The traditional standards – now being re-implemented by the Trump-47 Pentagon – were practiced for most of the twentieth century, generally, in a climate of accountability and non-partisanship – in other words, an apolitical military.

That is, until President Obama’s diversity-inclusion Executive Order 13583 (Aug. 18, 2011) (although the Trump-45 administration was a sort of interregnum).

With all that we now know and have seen, those who continue to refuse to perceive or acknowledge the obvious folly, de-moralization, and degradation wrought by the neomarxist/woke Irresistible Revolution, are found to be engaged in . . . disciplined delusion.

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Forrest L. Marion, Ph.D., is a retired military historian. The author of four military histories, his most recent work is Standing Up Space Force: The Road to the Nation’s Sixth Armed Service (Naval Institute Press, 2023).  

First published on Real Clear Defense