MAGA Looking For A Few Good, White Men For Military, Everyone Else Can F*ck Off
'We have in our stupid hands a list ...'
The American military has had a recruitment problem for some years now. You might think you know some reasons for the shortfall: rising levels of physical unfitness among America’s youth, increased drug use as marijuana has been legalized, a crackdown on white supremacists already in the ranks, low if not below-poverty-level salaries, two decades of sending American soldiers off to be maimed and killed in dumb wars, constant stories about the Veterans Administration’s inability to provide those who do come back with the medical and emotional resources they need to readjust to civilian life. You could point to a long list of obstacles for recruiters.
Or you could do what nimrods on the right do and blame the problems all on the military having gotten too “woke,” then announce your preferred solution is to purge the armed forces of any “woke” officers who have ever so much as nodded politely at a minority or a woman or a minority woman.
No, really, that is the gist of this recent report from the Associated Press about a right-wing think tank (or “think” tank, we suppose) that has drawn up a list of senior officers and a disproportionate number of female personnel that conservatives think should be booted from the ranks:
Those on the list in many cases seem to be targeted for public comments they made either in interviews or at events on diversity, and in some cases for retweeting posts that promote diversity.
This report should not be confused with last month’s report about all the officers Donald Trump’s people are hoping to purge from the military. That list appears to be less focused on “woke” officers and more focused on “any officer who has ever been or even thought about being mean and nasty to Mr. Trump.” Though we’re betting there’s some overlap.
The reasons some of these names are on the “woke” list makes us want to gouge out our own eyeballs with a spork. There is the female Air Force officer who put up “multiple woke posts” on her Twitter feed, including one in favor of LGBTQ rights. Another female Air Force officer was a panelist on a discussion of DEI in 2021. There is an Army officer who traveled to 14 different HBCUs around the country looking for recruits for the military’s intelligence operations.
Well, Harry Truman did integrate the military and he was a Democrat, so that was by definition a bad thing.
The idea that the military, by virtue of recruiting people who aren’t straight white men, is now a bastion of weenie soy boys more concerned with recruiting minorities instead of becoming perfect killing machines has been a shibboleth on the right for some time. Who can forget adult failson Donald Trump Jr. pointing to the Russian military as an ideal because its ads showed roided-out white men shooting things? This was of course well before the Russian military marched into Ukraine and got its ass handed to it by a Ukrainian military that allows women to serve in frontline combat positions, but no one ever accused Junior of being able to tell his ass from a hole in the ground.
One prominent purveyor of this shibboleth has been lunkheaded former Fox anchor/mama’s boy Pete Hegseth, who is currently running around Capitol Hill promising senators that he’ll quit drinking if they pretty please make him the nation’s Defense secretary. Hegseth’s writings and public pronouncements on the military pretty strongly advance his view that America’s armed forces should be a hyper-masculine force for white Christian dominance, and all the women in combat roles should resign their commissions and report, barefoot, to the nearest kitchen:
“I’m straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles,” Hegseth said on the podcast. “It hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated.”
Hegseth also promised to fire any general or admiral who was “involved in any of the DEI, woke shit.” This would include the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. CQ Brown Jr., for pushing a supposedly “woke” agenda.
Even if Hegseth does not get confirmed, though, whatever dipshit Trump yanks out of his TV and plops down in front of the American people will have the same values and spend his confirmation hearing spouting the same meaningless repetition of woke woke woke woke woke-itty woke woke like a Chatty Cathy doll with a busted string while assuring all the Republican ignoramuses on the Senate Armed Forces Committee that he’ll purge the military of anyone who has ever so much as come within 50 yards of a copy of anything ever written by Gloria Steinem or Ibram Kendi.
And to think, the military was once considered the most egalitarian of American institutions. Of course, that was before communist infiltrators like Truman wokified it. Luckily MAGA is here to set things right.
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After 23 years of service, I can confidently say that Hegseth is straight up lying about females in service/combat. He is lying. And people believe him.
At this rate, our military effectiveness will suffer. I guarantee it.
As a guy with two years in military communications, and an adult life paying attention to the military, it is my opinion that your man Pete Hegseth does not understand the nature of the military. In the alternative, he does not understand the American model.
Individual valor, while highly praised in theory, was written out of American militarism in practice because the industrial model was more effective at winning wars. We learned this lesson in the Civil War.
Yes, we need troops in good physical condition, just like we need people in good physical condition at final assembly in any enterprise. But what makes American troops effective is the ability to deliver an unprecedented array of ordnance at just about any objective, on demand, at any time. Individual valor isn’t the point. What makes it work is coordinated group effort put forth by troops who have been trained to work together, no matter what havoc is going on around them. Doesn’t make any difference what sex you are or what your sexual preference is. War in the field isn’t a beauty contest. Helps if you have experience with the conditions on the ground and with the equipment. If they can work together, without flying off into a panic, turning tail and running, they can, while working together as they have been trained, deliver overwhelming force to any objective.