The following was written in December 2016 by an Army paratrooper who was in Ramadi in 2006 and had four more deployments with a total of two decades of service. He is now a veteran.
The Army is Tired of your social justice/PC Bullshit (or so I thought)
Published on his blog July 9, 2020
A note written Dec 16, 2016.
At this point I still considered myself a leftist, a liberal and even called myself a social democrat. That would all change in short order. What follows is what I wrote nearly four years ago.
I think these anecdotes are perfect for pinpointing the problem with social justice and allowing groups commiserating. I apologize in advance this turned out way longer than expected.
Recently President-elect Trump said he will nominate U.S. Marine General (retired) James Mattis as defense secretary. Let me tell you, there couldn’t be a bigger sigh of relief from the collective U.S. military.
We are tired of being used as guinea pigs for social experimentation, such as women in direct combat units, a new transgender service policy, both are policies that leave many questions unanswered as Obama and his SecDef leave office and leave it for the next guy to sort out. Allow me to expand upon this.
I can tell you from personal experience social justice has infected the US military as well.
This is dangerous for the world given how many pots we have our hand in and how much the world, good or bad, relies on the U.S. military to be stabilizing force and a force for peace.
Now, let me state, that I consider myself a liberal. This will be the first presidential election since 2000, when I started voting, that I won’t be voting for a Democrat for president.
Now, we find ourselves, our country, along with our military forces, facing another cultural revolution. It’s not new, we’ve been through things like this before, yet we haven’t.
It’s not a revolution that makes our military any better in the long run because it’s not constructive and inclusive; it’s a revolution of destruction and exclusivity.
In instances it pushes for special treatment over equality.
Also, the Army is so inundated with administrative briefings on things like sexual harassment and assault prevention (read: third wave feminist propaganda), equal opportunity and diversity (white guilt training), anti-hazing, anti-bullying training, that they overwhelm the ability for us to train to do our actual combat jobs.
They infantilize adults who we trust to make decisions about life or death on the battlefield. We want a grown up who treats service members like people and not children to run the government again.
That’s the very basic reason behind why some military members voted for Trump. They may disagree with everything else, they may be repulsed by him, personally, but the repulsion to the totalitarianism of the left is stronger.
I was all for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell which was a horrible, degrading and bigoted policy, signed by the Clinton administration when I was just a kid.
I actually had the horror of having to separate a soldier from service under this policy. Because it was the law and the policy and the rule of law is important to maintain good order and discipline. I regret it. I didn’t want to do it. But those were the rules at the time. And I follow the rules set forth by Congress and President. My personal opinion on such matters is not a part of the equation when it comes to enforcement.
We have opened up all positions to women. I agree with letting women serve in direct combat jobs so long as they can meet the standard to serve in those occupations and positions.
Except now we have people saying the standards in some areas are too hard like the US Marine Corps Infantry Officer’s Course and Special Forces selection.
Yeah, no shit, it’s hard. That’s why we’re the best fighting force in the world.
This proves they didn’t want equality of opportunity they want equality of guaranteed outcome. It’s not going to happen.
Women were moving just as fast to jump into these new combat positions as they were to register for the draft.
And now that we’ve opened these positions up and saved women spots, the Sergeant Major of the Army had to put out a letter begging women to apply for the positions because nobody was applying.
For the transgendered, The US Air Force just issued a policy stating airman in transition do not have to pass a physical fitness test. Some animals are more equal than others, I guess.
These are just little subversions to the standard and special treatment for special snowflakes that really irk me.
It makes me angry because when you apply one standard to one set of people and another to another set of people it is detrimental to unit cohesion.
Singling individuals out for special favors or treatment is the opposite of what you want to do to build a cohesive team.
These special treatments destroy unity. Unity is necessary to ensure completion of the mission.
And most people who are minorities will tell you they don’t want special treatment. They want to be treated like everyone else, because the last thing you want to do in an element that demands uniformity is not be uniform.
Oh and speaking of physical fitness tests where is the equality in the two standards: one for male, one for female? So, on fitness test days I’m going to start identifying as a female then I can do up to 60% less work for the same score and pay. I just don’t know what I’m going to be from minute to minute.
You may have seen where the culture and atmosphere created by this social justice phenomena led to significant and newsworthy instances that highlight how bad it’s gotten and how far it goes.
For instance, in March of 2016 when soldiers at Fort Gordon were doing their mandatory equal opportunity training and were taught about white privilege.
Think about the atmosphere and culture it breeds to have such a briefing. Think about the culture that would have to exist for a person to feel comfortable giving a briefing to a mixed audience of statistically mostly white people, and mostly white men on top of that.
Now the Army says this was a mistake but it’s hard to believe given my time in the military.
I know the people they select from our ranks to become EO advisors are true believers in everything the racial grievance industry tells them. They have to be or they can’t make it through the training to get the position.
That is ironic when you consider they are put in charge of people of all races based solely upon their merit and rank.
The US military is about as close to true meritocracy as you can get.
At least it used to be, I don’t really believe it is anymore, because career managers are being informally pushed to make decisions based upon characteristics which don’t matter, like race and gender, which I will address later.
Another event occurred in May 2016 when about ten black West Point Cadets were photographed giving a black power salute in uniform. This was obvious and blatant political activism with racial activism, supporting black lives matter.
A direct, blatant violation of Army Regulation and DOD Policies. They weren’t punished and probably just received a stern lecture because anything more than that would be the system of oppression holding black women down.
The most damning thing is that they are attending one of the best universities in the US based upon their own merit. West Point is not easy to get into, and then it’s not easy to stay. The fact that they were there had nothing to do with their race or gender. It had everything to do with them being smart, despite this obvious lapse in thinking, and hard-working students.
It’s also hard for me to imagine that 10 white men giving the “white power” salute in uniform would be given equally delicate treatment. But we’re supposed to believe this myth that all things are equal.
In mere months these people will be out leading formations of soldiers, possibly in charge of up to 40 people as second lieutenants in the Army. That gives me a warm fuzzy feeling for sure.
We also have, what I’m supposed to believe is, a “problem” or “crisis” in the military of not having enough minority general officers.
We are especially lacking diversity in officers who command actual combat units. It’s mostly white men who actually command these units.
Why? Because minorities, especially black people, do not go to combat arms at the rate that their white counterparts and up until this year women weren’t allowed in combat specialities.
Why don’t black people join combat arms? I don’t know. They just don’t. I’m not a mind-reader or sociologist.
The people who command combat units are the people most likely to become Generals and command them at higher levels.
Now they want to institute a form or affirmative action in a “Rooney-rule” like we have in the National Football League to force young minority officers in assignments like General’s Aide so they can get the connections to make it to general. These used to be merit based assignments because of the effect of lift they can have on your career.
There is a distinct problem in the military with giving the wrong job to a person who is not the most qualified. Because when they make decisions at high levels, lots of people could die.
The higher they go, the more people they are in charge of, the more lives they affect. They have to be the best and brightest, receiving information, interpreting, analyzing and making those decisions. I don’t care about their skin color, sexual preference or gender. May the best rise to the top.
Allow me to close with a personal first hand example of the kind of degrading effect this social justice garbage has on our military, our discipline and our culture. Just an anecdote to put a pin on the problem of social justice in our military.
As usual, we were having our semi-annual sexual harassment and rape prevention training. It’s all of us, from officer to sergeants to enlisted, in the same room because we all have to do this training. It’s not optional. It’s not a good to do. It’s a giant red flag if you don’t have it completed.
Now, we get to discussing ways to prevent rape: i.e.. Don’t leave your drink lying around to get drugged, go out with friends, maintain situational awareness of your surroundings if you’re out late at night, etc. The same thing I’ve done for years, mostly, except I’ve started watching anti-feminist videos on YouTube recently.
One soldier chimes up and says we are just perpetuating rape culture, we should just teach men not to rape. She is disgusted that we would give women agency for their safety and security.
Already, I am exhausted and have nearly facepalmed to the back of my brain and I have rolled my eyes so much during the briefing that I thought I would have to get them extracted an put back into the sockets properly.
The briefing had included the debunked 1 in 5 statistic among many other debunked facts straight out of UC-Berekely’s manual on Third wave feminism. I was fucking done. But I’m trying to go along to get this training done. Because this is what I’m ordered to do, it’s not illegal, unethical or immoral, so I do it.
Again, even as the highest ranking person in that room, my opinion means nothing. Even after I argued the “one-in-five-stat” with the instructor, whose full time position is as a soldier is as a SHARP instructor and victim advocate. You would think she would do some research. But I’ve already destroyed her on that point. No reason to do anything further to subvert the training and propaganda. I’ve raised questions and doubts in people.
So, I respond to the soldier and say, yes, we tell everybody not to rape anybody but some people are pieces of shit and they’re going to try to take advantage of situations. It’s for the best if you know how to prevent this from happening and protect yourself because we care about you and you are an important member of our team and we don’t want you to be a victim of something like this. All of this, even the instructor and member of the politburo agreed.
The soldier’s response was wholly disrespectful to me as a person first, second made no account of my rank compared to hers, and was a breakdown in discipline to say the least. It wasn’t hostile. It was just disrespectful in a tone, mood and manner that was not her character in every other interaction. And I have known her for a long time and had been in other units with her.
It’s as if, since we are discussing this thing, the rules don’t matter because we had entered the Kingdom of Social Justice so her victimhood trumps all the rank, the rules, laws and regulations and she outranks me in this room by virtue of victimhood. It was weird and it really didn’t catch me until the briefing ended shortly after.
Now, apply this on a grander scale. As I’ve said most of our commanders are white. Why should any black soldier have to listen to them? At any time they could pull the oppressed victim card. No commander wants an EO complaint. The military especially doesn’t want to raise the cackles of the online social justice hate mob. A mob that is mostly disconnected from military service and has no clue about our culture or standards.
So, what are they going to do? This slow rusting and rotting of order and discipline is the real problem. The subversive nature of it is bad.
This is especially bad for a military that is looked to the world around to be the shield and sword when the shit has hit the fan. For better or worse our military is relied upon heavily to protect the world from current and emerging threats for ourselves and our allies.
What happens when this military is slowly degraded by a subversive ideology like cultural Marxism that is slowly becoming doctrine and policy?
But just in the last couple of months we have seen military members take pictures of themselves sitting during the National Anthem as a form of protest to support Colin Kaepernick and his misguided and ill-intentioned virtue signaling stunt. This is a complete disregard for the laws and regulations that govern them.
We have seen now the inclusion of transgendered service members, which I don’t have a problem with, but now we have to pay for their transition.
However, the military doesn’t pay for my wife and I who have done nearly 6 years of deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq to get in-vitro fertilization and treatments for unexplained infertility so we can have a second child. This infertility is strongly correlated to overseas service in a combat zone. So, honestly, fuck them.
Now, I will admit, it is hard for the introspective and liberal in me to discern what of these are issues to be addressed and what is just the white male bristling at change. I have been serving since 1999. By my own merit I have gone from enlisted to officer, but over the years I have seen the culture change.
It’s always for the better when it pushes for inclusiveness and equality but when it pushes for exclusiveness and special treatment it is not in standing with the good order and discipline that makes a military great. It spends more time dividing based upon our minor and insignificant differences than uniting us on the things we agree on.
Social justice warriors are inherently unpatriotic and hate our country, I see no reason to make room for them in our military or to adapt our customs and culture to placate them.
Not to mention if the victim culture continues to exponentially multiply in level and frequency of outrage, our enemy won’t need bombs to destroy us. In order to neutralize our forces they’ll just need a loudspeaker and somebody to hurl insults.
So, why is much of the military cheering for Mad Dog to be the next SecDef? Mattis does not suffer fools. He is not sympathetic to the demands of whiny victims. We know that at his heart he cares about the US military and our ability to defend the US.
That’s it. And he cares about that because that will be his job. Not to be a social engineer or sociologist conducting experiments on people in the most dangerous profession of arms.
Experimentation which exposes individuals to death and our country to imminent danger.
The social justice left has sacrificed national security for virtue signaling, with President Obama at the helm it has become apparent that is our job, not killing the people who want to destroy western civilization.
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