By Robert Charles, retired naval intelligence officer (USNR)
Former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell
Former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer
“Sir, Yes, Sir!” is how military personnel show respect for a superior. “Sir” or Ma’am” demonstrates selflessness, discipline, service, and order.
Winning wars depends on that unblinking focus on others, mission, and discipline, not yourself.
Yet here we are, tossing tradition for made-up nonsense, leftist manners, swapping chess for Chinese checkers.
A year ago, Biden’s marshmallow military issued guidance tossing “gender specific” traditions, replacing the English language, as practiced for the past millennium, with newfangled, non-gender “pronouns.”
Suddenly gone were first, second, and third person singular and plural pronouns, distinguishing subject and object, longstanding identifiers for men and women.
In their place we got Orwellian oddities.
No longer authorized in fitness reports, awards, speeches, letters of commendation, citations, death notifications, honorable discharges, or any other reason were references to one’s sex or gender.
Specifically “unauthorized” were uses of pronouns or gender-specific terms, including “he/she” or “best male/female,” as well as any reference to age or race.
This bizarre twist was only made more incognizable by the rationale offered for it.
Wrote the androgenous, all-knowing “diversity and inclusion” Gods, the godless godfathers of guidance, a sudden shift would “improve interoperability, efficiency, creativity, and lethality.” Seriously?
For starters, who taught these witless wonders what those words mean?
Interoperability has to do with allied technical interfaces, same operating fuels, ammo, spare parts, doctrine.
Efficiency is not improved by ambiguity, creativity has much to do with winning but nothing to do with gender, and lethality? Really?
The whole thing is such a crock it is hard to talk sensibly about, but here is what has been happening.
Fitness reports now are all about “they” and “them,” not “he, him, she, and her.”
So a CO or selection board might expect to read:
“They were exceptional them, the best they of the year, met all the top standards for them, and treated all they and they with respect, inclusive and diverse.”
Opening of a speech, rather than “Ladies and Gentlemen,” might start, “Good Morning, they and they.”
A letter of commendation might say:
“They performed at an exceptional level, exceeding all expectations for they or they, kept their dress or dress pants crisp, consistently referred to all other they and them as they and them, were best in their age bracket regardless of age, sensitive, on time to all mandatory gender training sessions, offered a disproportionate number of subordinates gender transition surgery, used their pronouns consistently, asked others their pronouns, gave all a fair and equal chance of winning, did not distinguish at any time or in any way based on performance, effort, or attitude.” . . . . (read more on AMAC)
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