Tag Archives: SJW

Recent Posts

Worth the Read!

3 Comments

This is a correction as to the author of this fine article. It is Craig Pirrong, Professor of Finance & Energy Markets and Director of the Global Energy Management Institute, Bauer College of Business, University of Houston.

August 2, 2017

Tell It to the Marines: SJWs are Inimical to Real Warfighting

— The Professor @ 11:43 am

Everything in the military should be directed to its purpose: winning wars while being sparing of American lives. As Patton said, making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. The focus should be on lethality, and strategic, operational, and tactical prowess. All other considerations are beyond secondary, because it is a matter of life and death, not to mention national security.

This is why I read with satisfaction that SecDef Mattis wants to focus training on warfighting, not Mickey Mouse:

Notably, Mattis has ordered a review of the “requirements for mandatory force training that does not directly support core tasks” – the many hours soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines spend prior to deployment meeting the Pentagon-required tasks that sometimes have little to do with the role they will actually fulfill when deployed.

“I want to verify that our military policies also support and enhance warfighting readiness and force lethality,” Mattis said.

Damn right. And about time.  To do otherwise puts lives at risk, and jeopardizes the national interest by compromising the ability of the military to fight and win wars.

But real warriors have long been the target of Social Justice Warriors who want to use the military to advance their agendas, even when doing so is inimical to combat effectiveness, either because it diverts resources from primary missions, or because it actually undermines order, discipline, and effectiveness.

The recent kerfuffle over transgenders in the military is a case in point. The whole purpose of making transgenders in the military a cause celebre had nothing at all to do with fighting shooting wars: it was all about fighting the culture war. Some of the attacks on Trump for his bolt-from-the-blue statement that he was overturning the late-in-the-day Obama policy regarding transgenders in the military were rather astounding. One was the commonly repeated statement that there were as many as 15,000 transgendered individuals in the US military. That would be 1 percent of the force: bull. (How many transgenders do you know?) Even the Rand study that was commissioned to advise Obama administration policy put the number at less than half of that–at most–and admits that there is no empirical or epidemiological basis for the number. It is a wild ass guess. Nothing more.

Then there were statements like how terrible it was to exclude transgenders from the military because the suicide attempt rate among them is almost 10 times that of the population at large. Methinks that argument cuts quite the other way: why would you want to put in a high stress environment people who are disproportionately suffering from severe emotional problems? This is not conducive to military effectiveness, and even putting that aside, how is it helping these people? Suicide rates are already above average for military personnel, especially those who have been in combat: tell me how it is compassionate to encourage such emotionally vulnerable individuals to go into a profession that can test every fiber of the far stronger? Indeed, it is sick that transgenders are being used as pawns in the SJW war on convention and majority culture.

My policy recommendation is pretty simple: don’t ask, don’t snip. Apply the same standards of conduct and performance. Those that hack it, fine. Those that can’t–adios. That’s a truly non-discriminatory policy that is consistent with the overriding goal of the military: combat effectiveness.

The recent flap over transgenders sparked by a (go figure) Trump tweet is only the most recent example of the SJW campaign against traditional military norms. One that I’ve been keeping my eye on is efforts to change the Marine Corps, always a bête noire to the left because of its unapologetic, uncompromising stance on traditional standards of the service, and its resistance to PC tripe that the other branches have capitulated to. The anti-USMC vanguard sees an opening due to the recent scandal involving Marines sharing online naked photos of female Marines, often accompanied by unflattering commentary.

Is it gross? Yes. Would I be upset if my daughters were the subject of such indignities? Probably–although I am sure I would tell them that this is a problem easily avoided: don’t pose for (or take yourself) nude photos.

But even granting, for the sake of argument, that the Marine Corps is a socially retrograde institution, out of step with progressive values, and beset with misogyny: I don’t care! I look at the effects of its culture and traditions at achieving the purpose of the organization: on those terms, its record is unparalleled. Do not interfere with any military organization that has achieved a record unblemished by defeat. Do not interfere with any military organization that within the last 100 years has been able to get its men to fight and win horrific battles. There is no other body of troops of similar size that can match its record. Just look at the names: Belleau Wood, some bloody small wars in Central America and Haiti, Wake Island, Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Bougainville, Tarawa, Peleliu, Saipan, Guam, Tinian, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Inchon, Seoul, the Chosin Reservoir, Hue, Kuwait, Fallujah I and II. Grinding, bloody battles all. Despite often fighting on a shoestring (always being last in line for equipment) and facing grave disadvantages in terrain, protection, and position, and taking grievous casualties, the Marines always prevailed. (Yes, Wake is an exception. But that was a forlorn hope in which the Marines covered themselves in glory.)

When people approached Lincoln with tales of Grant’s drinking, he responded: find out what kind of whiskey he drinks and send a barrel of it to all my generals. I have a similar response to those criticizing the retrograde social attitudes of the Marine Corps.

The truth is that we have little understanding of the unique alchemy that creates an exceptional military force like the Marine Corps. It is possible, and indeed even likely, that the attributes of the Marine Corps that most infuriate SJWs are inseparable from those that make it a nonpareil military force. PC won’t prevail on Peleliu. SJWs won’t take Saipan.

The case for letting Marines be Marines is strengthened by the fact that it is, and always has been (with some modest exceptions in WWII and Vietnam) a volunteer organization. Nobody makes you become Marine, and you should know what you are getting into: in fact, it is precisely that knowledge that induces many to join. Self-selection at work.

I have long admired the Marines, but I knew from my days at Navy that I could never be a Marine in million years–another example of self-selection. But that’s definitely a feature, not a bug. By attracting and retaining people that are suited to the institution’s idiosyncrasies, the Corps has created a culture and esprit that has allowed it to achieve great deeds. It ain’t for everybody. And that’s why it’s great at what it does.

During the recent transgender kerfuffle some criticized using the military to carry out social engineering, to which some objected that the military is nothing but a product of social engineering. But this is not true. Most longstanding military organizations are emergent, not designed or engineered. They are the products of a long evolutionary process. Channeling Hayek, organizations like the Marine Corps are the product of human action, not of the execution of any human design. They have an internal logic that is often tacit and really impossible to understand. One attempts to redesign or manipulate them at one’s peril. Or, more accurately, at ours. For doing things that undermine the effectiveness of the USMC, or of other branches of the US military, gets people killed and undermine the security and interests of the country.

Originally posted 2017-08-10 22:00:20.

Current Events

Social Justice Warriors – Take That Hill!

6 Comments

I’ve already posted for the day, but this one came across my desk and I just had to post. I totally agree with this General. I would in no way, recommend any young man or woman to enter any of our armed forces today. None of them. They will become cannon fodder. Mothers and fathers heed what this man is saying for it is the truth! Don’t let Johnny or Mary do something stupid that will get them killed. 

In case you are like me and having difficulty keeping up with the liberal’s new terms, phrases, and acronyms, SJW stands for Social Justice Warrior. Jeez, I’m getting too old for all this new stuff.

By Kurt Schlichter,Col, US Army (Ret)It gives me no pleasure to say that I no longer recommend that young people join the military, and I’m not alone. The non-Blue Falcon veteran community is in full revolt against the conscious decision to decline embraced by our current military leadership. After failing to win a war in the last 20 years – and don’t say Syria, because the second President * woke up in the Oval Office wondering how he got there, more of our troops were heading back into the hellscape for reasons no one has bothered to articulate – the military has decided to target an easier enemy, i.e., other Americans.

See, the problem with me and the other vets who are disgusted by the brass’s choice to focus on SJW priorities instead of, you know, successfully deterring or defeating America’s enemies, is that we actually listened to what we were taught when we were coming up. Most of us were trained by the heroes who put the shattered American military together after the Democrat war in Vietnam broke it. We learned about leadership, about putting mission first but taking care of people always, and about objectives and how to attain them.

None of that’s a thing anymore.

So, count us out from complicity with the degeneration of our proud institution into a giant gender studies struggle session. And that’s a big deal. Do you know where the military gets a huge chunk on its recruits? Legacies. These are young troops who want to be like their father or grandfather or big brother or neighbor or other role model. I was the third-generation commissioned officer in my family, on both sides. Guess what? Right now, if one of my kids goes in, it’s against my advice. And again, I am not alone. I hear this over and over and over from other vets. And it makes me furious.

You put two divisions behind wire in D.C. to protect against phantom insurrections by guys who dress like Vikings. And then you can’t even feed the troops, or house them. Gosh, if only there was a great big five-sided building full of generals just a couple miles away to square that idiocy away.

Oh, wait, there is.

And now, though we have not won a war in two decades, our military has plenty of time to stop training and focus on purging the ranks of people who like the politicians the current administration opposes. I eagerly await the introduction to the new 69D MOS – political officer. A zampolit for every battalion – hell, why not every company?

And don’t patronize us with baloney about how this is just about rooting out all those secret “extremists” lurking in the ranks – that’s right up there with sending the new second louie down to the supply room to retrieve a box of grid squares. How about you stop trying to expel these mystery “extremists” and start firing the incompetents all around you?

Sadly, this trickle-down SJW foolishness is reaching what used to be the pointy end of the spear. Generals and colonels adopt it because if they don’t, they’ll get tossed out – if you invest three decades in the green machine, it must be awfully tempting to hold your tongue to nail down that retirement and then get the hell out ahead of the deluge. It’s the company grades who buy this pap who are most disconcerting. One lieutenant – for you civilians, lieutenants are the wisest officers in the military, according to lieutenants – went on Twitter to inform me and some other people who were actually alive and in the military the last time America won a war that when we Neanderthals were serving, the military was awash in “white supremacy.” Could have fooled me. When I got off active duty the first time 30 years ago this May, I was stunned at how often race came up back in the civilian world. It almost never did when I was in the service, though in basic training it would have been nice for the awesome power of my pallor to keep Drill Sergeant Whittlesey from dropping me for countless sets of 20.

But hey, some 23-year-old assistant S2 who operates the coffeemaker doubtless has better insights into stuff happening before he was born that those of us who were actually there. The only positive thing about my interaction with that guy was my relief in knowing that I was no longer the dumbest lieutenant in the history of the United States military.

We had our imperfections and misadventures back in the day, sure, but if some idiot had done something bigoted to another solder, we would have slammed him. The only thing that mattered when a new soldier showed up was whether or not he was squared away. But not now. No, winning battles is hard, but internal snipe hunts are easy and fun! Why focus on external warfare when the career payoff for witch-hunting within the organization is so much bigger? Check out this new Navy pledge – us vets’ enlistment/commissioning oaths were apparently insufficient for today’s woke battlespace:

“I pledge to advocate for and acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities of every Sailor in the Navy. I pledge to engage in ongoing self-reflection, education and knowledge sharing to better myself and my communities. I pledge to be an example in establishing healthy, inclusive and team-oriented environments. I pledge to constructively share all experiences and information gained from activities above to inform the development of Navy-wide reforms.”

The most disconcerting part of this is that it was apparently written on purpose. Is the next thing we’ll see some sort of mandatory woke Space Force interpretive dance?

No, I do not recommend anyone subject themselves to this sort of four-year camo sociology seminar in which they must “pledge to advocate for and acknowledge all lived experiences and intersectional identities of every Sailor in the Navy” or any other branch. My intersectional identity is “America,” and I am utterly uninterested in any other identity.

Maybe the brass should focus on killing America’s enemies, and maybe not running ships into other ships? Both those things would be totally awesome.

War is a serious business, even for guys like me who ran heavily armed carwashes. But this current tail-chasing is not serious. The military is hollowing out as people vote with their combat boots. Word from inside is that it can’t keep troops from ETSing – that is, leaving the service when their obligation ends. If our troops want their thoughts controlled and to be programed into little lefty conformobots, they can go off to college – the Dems want to give it away to slackers for free anyway, so who needs to ruck march and attend Bill Kristol’s latest war to get the G.I. Bill?

The military used to be a welcoming safe space for patriots. But no more. With this insane babbling about “internal enemies,” does anyone think that potential recruits do not understand that this slur is what the liberal elite that the military brass obeys calls people like them and their families? Why would you join an organization that sees you as an enemy?

I wish I could believe that the generals and admirals will en masse reject this sack race to failure, but it may be too late, at least until we get a real president determined to unscrew this cluster. It will be hard. The academies and war colleges are already full of the same kind of liberal hacks that civilian education is infested with. Michael Walsh’s hardcore new book Last Stands: Why Men Fight When All Is Lost should be required reading for every military leader, but some professor at the Army Command and General Staff College (I’m a graduate, sigh) reviewed it and found it – I’m not kidding – “problematic.” You know what’s really problematic? Turning the military into a cauldron of neurotic SJW obsessions while our foreign enemies circle our senile CINC like vultures.

We can laugh at the antics, but the terrible reality is that this crap is going to get a bunch of our young people killed. Let’s be very clear – when your priority is social justice nonsense instead of preparing to fight and win, you are opening up a lane for the enemy and the enemy is going to drive right through it.

But look on the bright side. When something horrible happens – maybe the Chinese will send a carrier to the bottom, for example – we can all take comfort in the fact that our sons and daughters, because it’s us patriots’ sons and daughters who usually fight and die in America’s wars, perished because our leadership failed to prepare, but at least they died fully aware of trans intersectionality.

See what happens if things get worse in my newest novel Crisis, and catch up with my other four novels of America splitting apart into red and blue nations, People’s Republic, Indian Country, Wildfire, and Collapse!