Yup. Obama drove out all the warriors with this shit. But, in the long run, it’s ok. We don’t go to war anymore to win; haven’t done so since August, 1945, so competency is not required. Not only did we take 15 years and a few trillion dollars to not defeat a buncha illiterates with only small arms and black pajamas, we did a repeat for 20 years when the next team wore white pajamas, then we gifted them $85B in modern equipment and now are paying them $160,000,000 per month for the privilege of having been defeated & chased outta the country by them. Just need men to quit enlisting & we’ll be fine. We’ll still pay about a trillion a year for nuthin, but ... FWIW, I’m USAFA ‘76.
I am glad my WWII veteran father -- who joined the U.S. Army Air Corps at age 17 and had to have his widowed mom sign approval papers for him -- is no longer around to see what has become of the country that made him so proud he shed tears every time he heard our National Anthem. 💔
likewise for my gramps, WWII vet lied about his age to enlist at 16. fought in the pacific theatre, never really talked about it, and I never pried. The military is going down a dreadful path, not sure where the recruits are gonna come from.
Don’t forget that the British Empire and the Soviets helped you “win” WW2. Also the war had been going for a couple of years before you entered the conflict as well
It’s a simple, demonstrable fact that the Brits and the Soviets would have been defeated without US support. No competent historian would tell you otherwise.
“American” (Wall Street) finance gave birth to the Soviet Union who went on to slaughter 60 million Christian Russians - a lot more than the Germans killed. Funny that Britain and America allied themselves with that evil regime
German money was the primary source of funding for the Russian revolution. Jacob Schiff, a German emigre to the US organized some additional Wall Street money.
We backed the Soviets in WWII because, once Hitler betrayed them, they were fighting the same enemy as we were. We stopped backing them very soon after the war’s end.
If you’d have preferred the NAZIs and Imperial Japan won WWII, you’re welcome to go fuck yourself nice and hard.
The weather and fighting on numerous fronts defeated Germany. The commissars killed plenty of their own people - as communists are prone to do. If Britain and France hadn’t declared war on Germany the local conflict with Poland would have been brief. Germany saved Europe from total Communist control
Food, tires, gasoline, ammunition, trucks.... and a credible, aggressive threat to every win in their European theater.
Without the US, the Soviets would have LOST. They would have lost their whole country if Germany wanted it.
Without the US, the UK would have fallen, leaving no resistance in Europe to Germany exploiting the maximum productive capacity of France and the UK with support from Italy and Spain.
The fantasy that the Soviet “won” WWII because they died in bigger numbers is a sad joke.
Not only did they die in higher numbers you clown like child they killed 84% of all Germans without Russians killing Germans the Germans beat us you absolute moron
Why would you want to support Bolshevik Russia at all ? America was never threatened by war so what a waste of American lives. Ask yourself why wage war on Germany for invading Poland from the West but support Russia for invading Poland from the East
True. But my point was the reason we went to war: to win. (Germany was defeated by the USSR (on the eastern front). They used significant American materiel, but they did the fighting and dying. We’ve romanticized the American & British empire contribution cuz we made the movies, but we were a second front to reduce the German capability in the east.)
He never said they didn’t. He wasn’t even talking about your points; he was addressing completely different matters. Maybe you need to re-read his comments. Not sure what your point is?
I missed this little chestnut last year. You know that Americans were still eating three square meals and driving cars around to movies and grocery stores while we fought WWII, right?
The war production board had line items for things like chocolate and ice cream.
If the US had to we could have just kept producing weapons and materiel and destroying German and Japanese shit until there was nothing left of them.
The USSR had TWO fronts. The US saved them from the Japanese along with feeding them, clothing them, providing trucks, ammo, air support, undermining Germany’s productive capacity, logistics, and communication….
But, sure, count up the dead and tell us all the Soviets won.
So, you trotted back to Wikipedia and didn’t find the right pacifier to suck on about this.
The idea that the USSR could win WWII without US support is revisionist history by idiots who decided the Stalinist archives were telling the truth. Now that academia has fully submerged into a cesspool of woke nonsense it’s mainstream.
If Germany peacefully occupied Europe (including of course the UK) they’d have had the combined productive capacity of an entire continent, they’d have as much of the Middle East and Africa as they needed which means functionally infinite oil.
But, sure, the guy in the bar fight with the bloodiest face and the most broken ribs is the “winner.” Go with that.
I like how you just give Germany the entire continent of Europe and UK without a fight....you can always count on the shitLibs to come up with some Fantasyland scenario.
I never said Germany could have the entire might of Europe and the UK and then lose to the Russians ....lol.
What nonsense. Germany’s war was against Bolshevism. The European theatre was instigated by Britain and France. The USA made the world safe for Bolshevism
You got all the Trotsky World Domination types to run your country for you as they fled Europe
strangely we agree here and i think you misinterpreted some of my comments.
i was saying that once the war had started if Germany didn't have the Russians as enemies they could have handled the west.....it was USSR that defeated the Germans in the end.
Once Germany attacked and entered Russia, it was all over....just a matter of time on how long the Russian steppes took to break them down as they got further and further away from their lines of supply.....same as Napoleon and his Grand army.
Meritocracy is how everything should work. Now, in reality, almost nothing is a pure meritocracy. The military is no exception, but perfect isn't on the table. We strive for perfection. We rarely get there. When we get close, we're doing pretty damned good. There's always an angle or a hook that some people can work. It's not right, but politics happens. I was never in the military. But I've seen jocks at elite prep schools and universities who were dumber than a box of rocks, and the children of prominent power brokers, who were degenerates. I've seen doctors with big credentials who I wouldn't let take care of my cat. Those of us in the rank and file of smart enough and lucky enough to get into those institutions at the time, couldn't get away with being stupid or degenerate. Today those same institutions are a sad husk of what they used to be. They've beclowned themselves with trite, temporarily gratifying collectivist half-baked ideas which fall apart on even cursory inspection. Why? You tell me. Greed, stupidity, conformity, inertia, baby boomer cosplay radicals trying to relive the 1960's, more factors abound no doubt. Sure, there are still some superstar students and faculty, but there is a lot of fluff in there. And it's not benign fluff. It's fluff coated in the corrosive acid of DEI and other assorted trendy yet harmful ideas that have captured the imaginations of the dilettantes in the power class. The institutions suffer, and good, constructive people who could take advantage of opportunities are left out so that some ridiculous, destructive nonsense can be indulged.
We can't afford this. We can't afford institutionalized stupidity and incompetence, particularly in critical technical professions. The military constitutes a profession with an expansive knowledge repository and stringent requirements for excellence in order to successfully complete complex tasks and missions. Yes, they break stuff and kill people, but it's not nearly that simple. Same idea with Medicine, Aviation, Engineering, Law, many other professions. Putting incompetent, ideologically driven people who can't do the basic thing in there is an instant recipe for failure and degradation of the professional system. And we are well into it throughout the West. Our external opponents not so much. They are not stupid or tired. They are not lazy. They are coming for us.
This is going to get solved, one way or another. If we don't arrest the decline into idiocy, then idiocy will suicide itself and take us with it at some point. It's not if, it's when. I don't know that an inflection point is going to be produced by one signal event. So far it appears not to be the case. Maybe it's not bad enough yet. But the evidence that bad ideas lead to really bad outcomes is all over the place, everywhere.
The Air Force didn't kill George Floyd, obviously. The cop who was mostly guilty of being dumb and being in the wrong place at the wrong time didn't kill him either. George Floyd OD'd on narcotics. His autopsy shows this clearly. Had the police never arrested him, there is a good chance he would have just collapsed and died by himself. The EMT's had a hard time getting through the crowd of angry racialist wokesters hassling/threatening the panicked police. This didn't help the unfortunate Mr. Floyd get some Narcan in a timely fashion, which probably would have pulled him out of his death spiral.
DEI won't save future George FLoyds. But it will kill the Air Force and every other institution that allows it to metastasize. It's already happening. The best and the brightest will figure out how to succeed without the traditional elite pathways, which have been outed as corrupt, mediocre, and hostile to productive individuals. Eventually, the elites will either reassert and champion the idea of individual excellence, or they will pass into irrelevancy. The market decides, whether its the market of ideas or money or any other dimension of human interaction. Where you sell a product or a service, competition never stops. No government can overcome this without rendering itself instantly into obsolescence. Because somebody else is going to attract your citizens, your capital, your future. It's merely a question of how much farther we allow ourselves to fall.
The local Dems cheered when women got to be Navy Seals. Woo hoo such progress! The VERY SAME people who were anti-war 5 minutes before. Princilple-free numbskulls.
I cannot help but wonder if the standards were lowered for those women. I heard that the women who go through Ranger training are not really meeting all the standards of the past. We shall see what happens when they are eventually tested in combat.
I was an airborne ranger infantry officer and the XO of a training company near the end of Vietnam. I remember how much easier BCT was than Ranger training. I can’t imagine what it is like now if they really can call a timeout.
Excellent piece. As a retired Infantry/Aviation officer I can tell you it’s spot on. I failed my EIB 4 times. You see the new Chief of Naval Operations? I’m sure she got the job because she’s super qualified. China and Russia must just laugh their asses off at us.
I'll take a stab at it, by stating what's eating me about it. Above everything else we want our military to as effective and efficient as possible (as much as that might seem like a contradiction to people's experience at times). Above all we want to be able to count on them to do the job, full stop. All the rest of this stuff just blurs the lines with bs. It's like caring about what color hair, eyes, or skin the firefighter has who takes you out of a burning house.
It is also an attack on all those men and women who maybe didn't want the job, didn't like the job, but damn well knew exactly what the job was, and gave their lives because they did.
Because it is a blatant distortion of reality, whereas most of the bullshit can be hidden under a mountain of words; equity, equal treatment, tackling unfairness.
As the author outlined the military is life in the raw. You are either a competent parachutist or you are not. They've been parachuting for a century and they know everything about it. The standard is well understood. No ambiguity. And all the nonsense flourishes in an ambiguous world.
So the military has well understood things where you are either good enough to do or you are clearly not. Anathema to people who make a living abusing language to feel important.
Yeah it sucks. I know exactly what you mean. There's not much to feel patriotic about these days when you know, with certitude, how the current trajectory ends.
That lump of pride in the throat has become a lump of despair.
But don't worry, you only have to accept a semi-death and semi-defeat in a semi-patriotic country with a semi-fit, semi-competent, semi-serious military.
Dear white colonel,” Col. Ben Jonsson wrote in the Air Force Times, “you and I set the culture, drive the calendar, and create the policies at most of our installations around the Air Force. If we do not take the time to learn, to show humility, to address our blind spots around race, and to agree that we are not as objective as we think and our system is not as fair as we think, then our Air Force will not rise above George Floyd’s murder.”
The air force had nothing to do with that criminal's death. It was the overdose of chinese drugs that killed him.
This DIE nonsense is going to turn our military into a social club filled with inept people.
This piece and the one Chris wrote for The Blaze are great but be sure to read an equally superb piece in The World WarII Museum entitled "United States v. 2LT Jack R. Robinson" by Erin Clancey The link can be found in the Substack by Chris.
Everyone is so racist he made Colonel and going for General. He should be disqualified for spitting on everyone who helped him and blatant idiocy. But he will probably be the next Chief of Staff in our increasingly evil and stupid regime.
Having served right before and after 9/11, I can confirm this.
All my Drill Sergeants were black... I barely even noticed.
They had, however, already started to ramp up the affirmative action - especially in the commissioned officer ranks - and dangling citizenship in front of some third-world foreigners. But even they were a different type of immigrant than we see today. They generally LOVED America, the military, and our history. They mostly just desperately wanted to be a part of our great nation and were willing to do some hard work to earn it.
Most of our problems, including this one, are easy to solve. We have most of the laws and regulations on the books already. Discrimination based on immutable characteristics had been mostly ILLEGAL in America, and definitely in the military.
If America wasn't already the most diverse nation in history BEFORE the institution of ridiculous anti-American diversity laws, then who was?
Why doesn't ANY other country or military seem to suffer from the lack of diversity you claim is fatal to a nation? Why do they always hate when "diversity" goes the other way, like in South Africa or British India? The colonists brought prosperity, technology, and innovation to the countries they colonized while the modern day diversity colonists bring lower wages, crime, and a socialist ideology that has destroyed every country it has infected.
I'm a Navy brat, born in the 50's, and I can tell you that our white household hosted several of my father's black comrades. And he was a southern boy. Belonging to the American military was a prestige job, especially following the depression and WWII, and those jobs were available to everyone who qualified. People assumed that military members were competent and professional. That trust and respect has been practically obliterated in the last 20 years, and much of that is due to this kind of nonsense.
I served for 6-years in the forward-airborne infantry (2/504PIR -2/75Rbat) and was deployed places under pretty wild conditions. I had such respect for my leadership during these deployments.
I DO NOT have that same respect now. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t join today if given that choice. Too high a chance of getting wiped off the board b/c bad decisions by DEI, CRT combat officers placed in leadership roles because of skin color.
In forward-deployed combat situations, IF you make bad decisions, people die.
This is not entirely new. I served (US Army) 1974-78, and back then if there were X number of ranks on the promotion list for the next rank, and not enough were black or Hispanic, the next black and Hispanic soldiers were moved up onto the list, bumping the same number of white candidates off the list (moving them down the list for the next round of promotions).
In the companies I served in (the last in a mech infantry battalion), I had a total of four first sergeants, two at each post, three black, one white. One of our black first shirts was so beloved, we called him "the Chocolate Chip" (and "Chip" was painted in cursive on the frame of his jeep's windscreen). We always tried to do the right thing, not for fear of bringing Chip's wrath upon us, but because we didn't want to "let the Chip down." We worked our butts off for him.
OTOH, the black first sergeant who followed him was an equal-opportunity promotion, and probably had been through most of his career, as his shortcomings were immediately apparent. At the time, the first shirt was responsible for bringing chow out to the field for the battalion's scout platoon (in which I was a squad leader), because on an exercise we could be spread out all to hell across the German countryside. It quickly became apparent that he couldn't even read a map. And it got worse. He was universally unliked, not for his color, but for his incompetence and shortcomings as a leader.
As an aside, I had the distinction to serve (in an armored cavalry platoon) under SFC James Lamarr (a black man), the finest soldier I ever met. A combat vet, he was task-oriented, eminently fair, and concerned for our welfare and the success of the mission at all times. I get choked up just thinking about him.
Growing up as a Navy Junior in the 50s, 60s and early 70s, while my father rose in rank from a lieutenant to a vice admiral, I could see how the military far exceeded the general population in addressing and resolving the effects of racist thinking. It was a conscientious program that provided results that from my perspective far exceeded what the rest of the country was achieving. It strikes me as too facile for persons on either side of the racial divide to resort to racist thinking--whether to excuse any particular person’s lack of progress, or to attribute racism to the reasons behind a superior’s decision.
Yup. Obama drove out all the warriors with this shit. But, in the long run, it’s ok. We don’t go to war anymore to win; haven’t done so since August, 1945, so competency is not required. Not only did we take 15 years and a few trillion dollars to not defeat a buncha illiterates with only small arms and black pajamas, we did a repeat for 20 years when the next team wore white pajamas, then we gifted them $85B in modern equipment and now are paying them $160,000,000 per month for the privilege of having been defeated & chased outta the country by them. Just need men to quit enlisting & we’ll be fine. We’ll still pay about a trillion a year for nuthin, but ... FWIW, I’m USAFA ‘76.
I am glad my WWII veteran father -- who joined the U.S. Army Air Corps at age 17 and had to have his widowed mom sign approval papers for him -- is no longer around to see what has become of the country that made him so proud he shed tears every time he heard our National Anthem. 💔
likewise for my gramps, WWII vet lied about his age to enlist at 16. fought in the pacific theatre, never really talked about it, and I never pried. The military is going down a dreadful path, not sure where the recruits are gonna come from.
Don’t forget that the British Empire and the Soviets helped you “win” WW2. Also the war had been going for a couple of years before you entered the conflict as well
It’s a simple, demonstrable fact that the Brits and the Soviets would have been defeated without US support. No competent historian would tell you otherwise.
And even before the US got officially involved, it was still financing the British and Soviet war effort.
“American” (Wall Street) finance gave birth to the Soviet Union who went on to slaughter 60 million Christian Russians - a lot more than the Germans killed. Funny that Britain and America allied themselves with that evil regime
German money was the primary source of funding for the Russian revolution. Jacob Schiff, a German emigre to the US organized some additional Wall Street money.
We backed the Soviets in WWII because, once Hitler betrayed them, they were fighting the same enemy as we were. We stopped backing them very soon after the war’s end.
If you’d have preferred the NAZIs and Imperial Japan won WWII, you’re welcome to go fuck yourself nice and hard.
Love your comment
Deluded but passionate
Historically incorrect but that’s okay if it makes you feel better
Cheers 👍
wrong....The USSR would have taken a couple more years to accomplish their goal, Germany was NEVER defeating the Russians...lol.
Over 80% of ALL German casualties were caused by USSR
and the Russians suffered 80% of ALL allied causalities.
haahahhahaha.
They lost more people in the Battle of Stalingrad than the allies did COMBINED ALL WAR!
lol.
" no historian"
ahahhahaha
found one right here that disagrees.
The weather and fighting on numerous fronts defeated Germany. The commissars killed plenty of their own people - as communists are prone to do. If Britain and France hadn’t declared war on Germany the local conflict with Poland would have been brief. Germany saved Europe from total Communist control
yes as Stalin was preparing to invade and attack Germany and the rest of Europe.
He had amassed 6 million troops and 35 thousand tanks , when Hitler pre-empted him and attacked first.
Food, tires, gasoline, ammunition, trucks.... and a credible, aggressive threat to every win in their European theater.
Without the US, the Soviets would have LOST. They would have lost their whole country if Germany wanted it.
Without the US, the UK would have fallen, leaving no resistance in Europe to Germany exploiting the maximum productive capacity of France and the UK with support from Italy and Spain.
The fantasy that the Soviet “won” WWII because they died in bigger numbers is a sad joke.
Not only did they die in higher numbers you clown like child they killed 84% of all Germans without Russians killing Germans the Germans beat us you absolute moron
> Not only did they die in higher numbers you clown like child they killed 84% of all Germans
Using supplies paid for by Americans.
Timmy crack corn = intellectually helpless little shitstain Kid.
The only sad joke here is you maybe you should read some books instead of comics
Read some more Sergeant Rock comic books
Why would you want to support Bolshevik Russia at all ? America was never threatened by war so what a waste of American lives. Ask yourself why wage war on Germany for invading Poland from the West but support Russia for invading Poland from the East
joooos controlled Usa
Would saying we saved Britain's sovereignty in a war we did not have to fight so that they could survive as free people suffice for you?
Last I checked we did that on your continent and sacrificed hundreds of thousand of our lives to afford the luxury of pedanticism.
We didn't get anyone's help to save all of Europe from certain loss. We were the help that won the war.
As a side benefit Russia didn't lose another 30 million citizens.
True. But my point was the reason we went to war: to win. (Germany was defeated by the USSR (on the eastern front). They used significant American materiel, but they did the fighting and dying. We’ve romanticized the American & British empire contribution cuz we made the movies, but we were a second front to reduce the German capability in the east.)
Gee, could the making of WWll movies have been affected by the lowering of the Iron Curtain?
about 3% of the material was ALLIED supplied.
its a greatly over exaggerated contribution.
He never said they didn’t. He wasn’t even talking about your points; he was addressing completely different matters. Maybe you need to re-read his comments. Not sure what your point is?
USSR defeated the germans.
Without the USSR ,....German takes over Europe and Great Britain....REGARDLESS of what USA did or didn't do.
I missed this little chestnut last year. You know that Americans were still eating three square meals and driving cars around to movies and grocery stores while we fought WWII, right?
The war production board had line items for things like chocolate and ice cream.
If the US had to we could have just kept producing weapons and materiel and destroying German and Japanese shit until there was nothing left of them.
The USSR had TWO fronts. The US saved them from the Japanese along with feeding them, clothing them, providing trucks, ammo, air support, undermining Germany’s productive capacity, logistics, and communication….
But, sure, count up the dead and tell us all the Soviets won.
Timmy crack corn and I don't care🖕
you're just too stupid for me to present a myriad of facts and evidence to dispel your idiocy.
it's ludicrous....not a single military historian has your side dipshitt.
So, you trotted back to Wikipedia and didn’t find the right pacifier to suck on about this.
The idea that the USSR could win WWII without US support is revisionist history by idiots who decided the Stalinist archives were telling the truth. Now that academia has fully submerged into a cesspool of woke nonsense it’s mainstream.
If Germany peacefully occupied Europe (including of course the UK) they’d have had the combined productive capacity of an entire continent, they’d have as much of the Middle East and Africa as they needed which means functionally infinite oil.
But, sure, the guy in the bar fight with the bloodiest face and the most broken ribs is the “winner.” Go with that.
I like how you just give Germany the entire continent of Europe and UK without a fight....you can always count on the shitLibs to come up with some Fantasyland scenario.
I never said Germany could have the entire might of Europe and the UK and then lose to the Russians ....lol.
LMAO.....you're such a shitstainedLibtard
Why don't you write a book timmy Crack Corn .🤷♂️you can counter the thousands of historians that don't hold your opinion on WW2.
It should be a good read listening to you defend your position,... it would be unique that's for sure.
derp derp derp derp, hahahahahaha
you ain't too bright are ya Timmy,...timmy Crack Corn !!!
What nonsense. Germany’s war was against Bolshevism. The European theatre was instigated by Britain and France. The USA made the world safe for Bolshevism
You got all the Trotsky World Domination types to run your country for you as they fled Europe
strangely we agree here and i think you misinterpreted some of my comments.
i was saying that once the war had started if Germany didn't have the Russians as enemies they could have handled the west.....it was USSR that defeated the Germans in the end.
Once Germany attacked and entered Russia, it was all over....just a matter of time on how long the Russian steppes took to break them down as they got further and further away from their lines of supply.....same as Napoleon and his Grand army.
Absolutely correct brother 👍
Some people can’t handle the truth but after 80 years of propaganda who can blame them
A gentle reminder that WW2 was won thanks to Russia, not US
Yup. Their men. Our vehicles, POL and guns.
Meritocracy is how everything should work. Now, in reality, almost nothing is a pure meritocracy. The military is no exception, but perfect isn't on the table. We strive for perfection. We rarely get there. When we get close, we're doing pretty damned good. There's always an angle or a hook that some people can work. It's not right, but politics happens. I was never in the military. But I've seen jocks at elite prep schools and universities who were dumber than a box of rocks, and the children of prominent power brokers, who were degenerates. I've seen doctors with big credentials who I wouldn't let take care of my cat. Those of us in the rank and file of smart enough and lucky enough to get into those institutions at the time, couldn't get away with being stupid or degenerate. Today those same institutions are a sad husk of what they used to be. They've beclowned themselves with trite, temporarily gratifying collectivist half-baked ideas which fall apart on even cursory inspection. Why? You tell me. Greed, stupidity, conformity, inertia, baby boomer cosplay radicals trying to relive the 1960's, more factors abound no doubt. Sure, there are still some superstar students and faculty, but there is a lot of fluff in there. And it's not benign fluff. It's fluff coated in the corrosive acid of DEI and other assorted trendy yet harmful ideas that have captured the imaginations of the dilettantes in the power class. The institutions suffer, and good, constructive people who could take advantage of opportunities are left out so that some ridiculous, destructive nonsense can be indulged.
We can't afford this. We can't afford institutionalized stupidity and incompetence, particularly in critical technical professions. The military constitutes a profession with an expansive knowledge repository and stringent requirements for excellence in order to successfully complete complex tasks and missions. Yes, they break stuff and kill people, but it's not nearly that simple. Same idea with Medicine, Aviation, Engineering, Law, many other professions. Putting incompetent, ideologically driven people who can't do the basic thing in there is an instant recipe for failure and degradation of the professional system. And we are well into it throughout the West. Our external opponents not so much. They are not stupid or tired. They are not lazy. They are coming for us.
This is going to get solved, one way or another. If we don't arrest the decline into idiocy, then idiocy will suicide itself and take us with it at some point. It's not if, it's when. I don't know that an inflection point is going to be produced by one signal event. So far it appears not to be the case. Maybe it's not bad enough yet. But the evidence that bad ideas lead to really bad outcomes is all over the place, everywhere.
The Air Force didn't kill George Floyd, obviously. The cop who was mostly guilty of being dumb and being in the wrong place at the wrong time didn't kill him either. George Floyd OD'd on narcotics. His autopsy shows this clearly. Had the police never arrested him, there is a good chance he would have just collapsed and died by himself. The EMT's had a hard time getting through the crowd of angry racialist wokesters hassling/threatening the panicked police. This didn't help the unfortunate Mr. Floyd get some Narcan in a timely fashion, which probably would have pulled him out of his death spiral.
DEI won't save future George FLoyds. But it will kill the Air Force and every other institution that allows it to metastasize. It's already happening. The best and the brightest will figure out how to succeed without the traditional elite pathways, which have been outed as corrupt, mediocre, and hostile to productive individuals. Eventually, the elites will either reassert and champion the idea of individual excellence, or they will pass into irrelevancy. The market decides, whether its the market of ideas or money or any other dimension of human interaction. Where you sell a product or a service, competition never stops. No government can overcome this without rendering itself instantly into obsolescence. Because somebody else is going to attract your citizens, your capital, your future. It's merely a question of how much farther we allow ourselves to fall.
Liked your idea about "market" as an alternative space that excludes elites.
They aren’t excluded, but they have to compete like everybody else. Crony capitalism is the worst capitalism.
It’s all going according to plan: that’s the most depressing part
Right. Fight back.
But it's so warm and comforting to know that you've been bombed or tortured by a Latinx lesbian, isn't it!
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/353/985/93b.jpg
The local Dems cheered when women got to be Navy Seals. Woo hoo such progress! The VERY SAME people who were anti-war 5 minutes before. Princilple-free numbskulls.
I cannot help but wonder if the standards were lowered for those women. I heard that the women who go through Ranger training are not really meeting all the standards of the past. We shall see what happens when they are eventually tested in combat.
We all know that the standards were lowered for women.
Of course they are.
You can now call for a "timeout" if you feel like your drill sergeant is being too tough or unfair.
You know how you know that's the case?:
They'd be the last personnel the elites would call for if their life were in peril.
> You can now call for a "timeout" if you feel like your drill sergeant is being too tough or unfair.
Because the enemy will respect timeouts.
Yes of course!
But the woke military leaders will tell us we haven't retreated, we've just advanced in another direction.
I was an airborne ranger infantry officer and the XO of a training company near the end of Vietnam. I remember how much easier BCT was than Ranger training. I can’t imagine what it is like now if they really can call a timeout.
Honestly I'd rather have older guys like you and I do the fighting if we were invaded. Probably better chances.
The last two generations are soft cowards.
If you can't handle being called a maggot by a drill sergeant you're probably not going to do so well when the enemy punches you in the face.
Where 👏 in 👏 the 👏 stadium 👏 is 👏 the 👏 bomb 👏 CISHET?!
Excellent piece. As a retired Infantry/Aviation officer I can tell you it’s spot on. I failed my EIB 4 times. You see the new Chief of Naval Operations? I’m sure she got the job because she’s super qualified. China and Russia must just laugh their asses off at us.
Not sure why this particular travesty makes me feel so despairing of what's become of my country.
I'll take a stab at it, by stating what's eating me about it. Above everything else we want our military to as effective and efficient as possible (as much as that might seem like a contradiction to people's experience at times). Above all we want to be able to count on them to do the job, full stop. All the rest of this stuff just blurs the lines with bs. It's like caring about what color hair, eyes, or skin the firefighter has who takes you out of a burning house.
It is also an attack on all those men and women who maybe didn't want the job, didn't like the job, but damn well knew exactly what the job was, and gave their lives because they did.
Frankly the women shouldn't be in combat roles in the first place.
For us.
If we did, we’d not have allowed our military to become what it has...
Because it is a blatant distortion of reality, whereas most of the bullshit can be hidden under a mountain of words; equity, equal treatment, tackling unfairness.
As the author outlined the military is life in the raw. You are either a competent parachutist or you are not. They've been parachuting for a century and they know everything about it. The standard is well understood. No ambiguity. And all the nonsense flourishes in an ambiguous world.
So the military has well understood things where you are either good enough to do or you are clearly not. Anathema to people who make a living abusing language to feel important.
Yeah it sucks. I know exactly what you mean. There's not much to feel patriotic about these days when you know, with certitude, how the current trajectory ends.
That lump of pride in the throat has become a lump of despair.
But don't worry, you only have to accept a semi-death and semi-defeat in a semi-patriotic country with a semi-fit, semi-competent, semi-serious military.
Well maybe it's just a lump of semi-despair?...
Whatever it is, it tastes like shit.
Drink more "kool-aid". You won't taste a thing
I guess that’s how it works…
I guess they're fine with getting us all killed, white, black, red, yellow, whatever. Oh (head slap), I guess that was the idea.
Dear white colonel,” Col. Ben Jonsson wrote in the Air Force Times, “you and I set the culture, drive the calendar, and create the policies at most of our installations around the Air Force. If we do not take the time to learn, to show humility, to address our blind spots around race, and to agree that we are not as objective as we think and our system is not as fair as we think, then our Air Force will not rise above George Floyd’s murder.”
The air force had nothing to do with that criminal's death. It was the overdose of chinese drugs that killed him.
This DIE nonsense is going to turn our military into a social club filled with inept people.
This piece and the one Chris wrote for The Blaze are great but be sure to read an equally superb piece in The World WarII Museum entitled "United States v. 2LT Jack R. Robinson" by Erin Clancey The link can be found in the Substack by Chris.
Everyone is so racist he made Colonel and going for General. He should be disqualified for spitting on everyone who helped him and blatant idiocy. But he will probably be the next Chief of Staff in our increasingly evil and stupid regime.
Having served right before and after 9/11, I can confirm this.
All my Drill Sergeants were black... I barely even noticed.
They had, however, already started to ramp up the affirmative action - especially in the commissioned officer ranks - and dangling citizenship in front of some third-world foreigners. But even they were a different type of immigrant than we see today. They generally LOVED America, the military, and our history. They mostly just desperately wanted to be a part of our great nation and were willing to do some hard work to earn it.
Most of our problems, including this one, are easy to solve. We have most of the laws and regulations on the books already. Discrimination based on immutable characteristics had been mostly ILLEGAL in America, and definitely in the military.
If America wasn't already the most diverse nation in history BEFORE the institution of ridiculous anti-American diversity laws, then who was?
Why doesn't ANY other country or military seem to suffer from the lack of diversity you claim is fatal to a nation? Why do they always hate when "diversity" goes the other way, like in South Africa or British India? The colonists brought prosperity, technology, and innovation to the countries they colonized while the modern day diversity colonists bring lower wages, crime, and a socialist ideology that has destroyed every country it has infected.
I'm a Navy brat, born in the 50's, and I can tell you that our white household hosted several of my father's black comrades. And he was a southern boy. Belonging to the American military was a prestige job, especially following the depression and WWII, and those jobs were available to everyone who qualified. People assumed that military members were competent and professional. That trust and respect has been practically obliterated in the last 20 years, and much of that is due to this kind of nonsense.
I served for 6-years in the forward-airborne infantry (2/504PIR -2/75Rbat) and was deployed places under pretty wild conditions. I had such respect for my leadership during these deployments.
I DO NOT have that same respect now. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t join today if given that choice. Too high a chance of getting wiped off the board b/c bad decisions by DEI, CRT combat officers placed in leadership roles because of skin color.
In forward-deployed combat situations, IF you make bad decisions, people die.
That is all.
This is not entirely new. I served (US Army) 1974-78, and back then if there were X number of ranks on the promotion list for the next rank, and not enough were black or Hispanic, the next black and Hispanic soldiers were moved up onto the list, bumping the same number of white candidates off the list (moving them down the list for the next round of promotions).
In the companies I served in (the last in a mech infantry battalion), I had a total of four first sergeants, two at each post, three black, one white. One of our black first shirts was so beloved, we called him "the Chocolate Chip" (and "Chip" was painted in cursive on the frame of his jeep's windscreen). We always tried to do the right thing, not for fear of bringing Chip's wrath upon us, but because we didn't want to "let the Chip down." We worked our butts off for him.
OTOH, the black first sergeant who followed him was an equal-opportunity promotion, and probably had been through most of his career, as his shortcomings were immediately apparent. At the time, the first shirt was responsible for bringing chow out to the field for the battalion's scout platoon (in which I was a squad leader), because on an exercise we could be spread out all to hell across the German countryside. It quickly became apparent that he couldn't even read a map. And it got worse. He was universally unliked, not for his color, but for his incompetence and shortcomings as a leader.
As an aside, I had the distinction to serve (in an armored cavalry platoon) under SFC James Lamarr (a black man), the finest soldier I ever met. A combat vet, he was task-oriented, eminently fair, and concerned for our welfare and the success of the mission at all times. I get choked up just thinking about him.
Extremely familiar from service 25 years later, in every detail.
Our political system has become a sick old man, like the majority of its leaders.
By contrast, all of our enemies are very much focused on "task competence."
Growing up as a Navy Junior in the 50s, 60s and early 70s, while my father rose in rank from a lieutenant to a vice admiral, I could see how the military far exceeded the general population in addressing and resolving the effects of racist thinking. It was a conscientious program that provided results that from my perspective far exceeded what the rest of the country was achieving. It strikes me as too facile for persons on either side of the racial divide to resort to racist thinking--whether to excuse any particular person’s lack of progress, or to attribute racism to the reasons behind a superior’s decision.