Let’s revisit my post from 25 months ago to see how USNA has operationalized their Diversity Zampolit, I mean Political Officers…oh, wait, my bad, “Dignity and Respect” cadre all the way through the Midshipmen experience.
It always occurred to me "This friggin' guy is running around having an affair while his country is going to absolute Sh$t and his wife did nothing to deserve it."
It's been asserted that Pasternak really did not understand women, but his sweeping novel covering 2 world wars, revolution, famine, with an interesting combination of predestination, determinism and fatalism, is a masterpiece of human resilience.
Lara is a muse and a symbol of what for many is "love untold." Also the mercenaries (Komarovsky) are always with us in different forms hence DEI in all its iterations.
Nonprofits are an important tool in the DEI kit as well as "woke" enterprises more broadly. They are not accountable through regular means of transparency. To cite an example that I am reporting on from the civilian world, a father who has been denied access to his children for five years found out that a nonprofit organization in the area was picking his children up from school, and could even put them up in a hotel, simply to deny him his court-ordered visitation. The CPS officer who arranged this scheme actually recorded herself(!) telling the mother that the nonprofit would refuse to cooperate with the court. As a result, the man has been lost his parental rights without a court order to remove them. Apply this basic principle to any DoD setting and you have endless possibilities for abuse.
I saw this on the horizon 20+ years ago when Canoe U instituted a mandatory "book club" featuring one of Cornell West's race baiting books - we had to sit around and "discuss" what we had "learned" about our inherent vices. A slightly awkward experience - nobody wanted to be there, including the O-3 facilitator!
TOTALLY in keeping with the Supe’s giddy brief about the Brigade’s “diversity” to us last month at my 45th reunion.
But the first shot across the bow for me was when I was a USNA Blue & Gold Officer and got the memo that the minimum SAT for minorities will be 500/500 - 1000, still 600/600 - 1200 for everyone else. I called the USNA Admissions Office, they verified it; I said you either have a standard or you don’t, and resigned on the spot.
Forget not giving up the USNA ship; the cowardly leftist administration has already scuttled it.
Wow... 1200? Call me old fashioned, but that seems like a very low number for an allegedly selective school. Esp a school with a core mission to turn out people who go into a highly technical service that involves mil-grade warships, missiles, airplanes & stuff. Change the name to US Soccer Trophy Academy.
Yeah…I still can’t figure out how they let me in. All I can figure is that my application must have been hung up on the paperclip of the application on top of mine, and when they threw his over into the “give an appointment to” stack mine got tossed over with it ;)
Gosh and they wonder why ships are running aground now or imploding on their own hardware at sea? Well, I suppose the contents of the body bags will be more diverse too. I suppose they'd put that in the positive column, right?
I did rather better on the test (was told I had a full ride to MIT if I wanted it) but had wanted USNA since I was 10 or so.
That said, I recall one friend, Caucasian, who came in through NAPS and no sh$t had an 840 SAT (back in 1600 max days; I had a 1440 but to be fair I was drunk; big party night prior). He wasn't stupid either. Not saying that's the rule, but it can happen.
Iʻve thought about this whole dignity and respect idea. Hereʻs what I think:
- every human being deserves to be treated with dignity -- we owe that to each other by virtue of being human
- I am ambivalent about whether or not a person can lose that right. I donʻt think I would support treating Adolph Eichmann with dignity or Dr. Mengele.
- Respect, however, is something that you earn, and something that you can lose. No has any right to be respected.
Don't for a minute, Guy, believe that the Cartman's beg to differ with regard to "respect". To them, it is a "Thou shalt" proposition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKJprZqU_oU
Oh, I know that. That doesnʻt mean that I donʻt have my own definition. I refuse to let some group of loud zealots kidnap the entirety of western civiliazation.
Respect is the degree of worth one places in another. It is an expression of merit and authority. It is not earned by an actor, it is held by an observer
This is so tiresome. I see it daily in my gooberment office... so many hours wasted on this expensive timesuck nonsense. Do entire classes of workerbees need their own workstream? And a committee to ensure it? How about just showing up and doing your job? (No, can't have that either. NO ONE SHOWS UP!) "Dignity and respect..." Hmmph! A cursory review of war since the dawn of time will prove that once the spears/bullets/bombs start flying, dignity and respect evaporate rather quickly. In fact, a case can be made that dignity and respect go out the window even before war commences. As for the sea? Dignity and respect? Hah! The Sea just wants to kill you 24/7, and all the creatures below the surface are eager to help and they don't give a flying frog what color or religion you are or how you entertain your body parts. Broken boilers and punctured steel and fires don't care about your DNA or fetishes either. The sooner we fill our Navy with people who understand these hard facts, the better. We used to be a country with common sense.
I think we are all owe the basic dignity to each other that we (those of us worthy of the label 'man') would give to any dog or cat or any of God's creatures.
“I’ve redacted identifying information below, as the Midshipman referred to—and those in similar positions further down the post—are not at fault.”
Not at fault? I respectfully disagree. No single snowflake believes it is responsible for the avalanche. Yet, given the requisite conditions, the destructive power of the latter is unleashed. This is one reason the USN finds itself mired in a death spiral of its own making—the attitude of individuals throughout the ranks that they are simply conforming to the institution’s culture and following orders, regardless of the deleterious effects of those directives and policies.
A major objective of the military academies is to develop individuals of character. A key aspect of integrity—a significant character trait—means doing the right thing regardless of personal or professional consequences, including circumstantial incentives or disincentives (N.B. that “right” and “correct” are not necessarily equivalent terms in this context).
These midshipmen have the relative luxury of time and place to consider how their decisions will affect themselves and others. Being unwilling to stand up for long-standing institutional values vs short-sighted priorities (e.g., DEI) will sow the cognitive seeds that allow them to bend to the figurative winds at subsequent phases of their careers and rationalize any decisions that rely on a character gut check—much like individuals ranging from Quisling to the Fat Leonard cadre.
They are in training to become commission officers and need to convert that theoretical training to practice and take a stand. This does not mean disregarding the lawful orders of their seniors, but through actions supporting ADM Rickover’s assertion that, “Good Ideas are not adopted automatically.They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience.”
I concur completely. I will go a step beyond your reference to the Fat Leonard crowd to say that the decisions made by flag officers and ship COs to push ships’ crews beyond reasonable levels of endurance led to the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions and loss of life. In my not so humble opinion, these decisions were mired in a lack of moral courage. Any Midshipman accepting one of these positions is either a boot-licker, an unrepentant cultural Marxist, or lacks the moral courage to stand up for their own individual right to disagreeing with a morally defunct view of life. And I don’t want any of those to lead honest American Bluejackets.
Then again, I suspect that the admissions committee -- or at least, some subcommittee -- screens for people who will gladly seek out, pursue and excel at such lines of work.
I don’t think that accepting one of these positions falls under the purview of following a lawful order. Any Midshipman accepting one of these positions is either a boot-licker, an unrepentant cultural Marxist, or otherwise lacks the moral courage to defend the 14th Amendment and therefore live up to his oath of office. My view of the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions is that they began with a lack of moral courage on the part of ISIC flag officers and ships’ COs in that the crews were pushed to fulfill an op schedule the ships and crews could not reasonably support. Though it may seem heartless to say so, I believe this zampolit approach to shaping the thoughts of future naval officers will cause greater loss to the nation than a bit of needed ship repair and a few lives lost in these collisions. This will gut the Navy. But then, that may be its real goal.
I, as many of us, had a particular upperclassman who choose to make our misery his mission in life. Said Firstie got it into his head that I was in need of humbling (probably not an unreasonable assessment, in hindsight).
One day fall plebe year, he got it into his head that I needed to stand on my chair at noon meal and "Test my lungs for Hitler." I decided this was an inappropriate order, and informed him (standing on my chair) that this would not be happening. Good times.
Sadly, I was not always as cool and collected, and later that semester during a "come around" I pushed him into a wall and informed him that I was "stronger than him, smarter than him, and his girlfriend told me I f___d better than him, and he should leave me be." [I'd never met his girlfriend, but I was rolling].
As I hard leftist, I am not enthusiastic about my nation's Marine Corps officers getting "deconflicting training." I think we should leave that to the folks studying to be in the foreign service. I want Marine Corps officers engaged in conflict training. Some George Patton type conflict training.
"All through your army career you men have bitched about what you call 'this chicken-shit drilling.' That is all for a purpose—to ensure instant obedience to orders and to create constant alertness. This must be bred into every soldier.
I don't give a fuck for a man who is not always on his toes. But the drilling has made veterans of all you men. You are ready! A man has to be alert all the time if he expects to keep on breathing. If not, some German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit."
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
Agreed. I think one of the simpler and worse things we have done is allow political party affiliation to be shown on ballots. People should vote for a person, not a party.
Sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Just shut the place down. Since diversity is exalted and would not be an acceptable grounds, blame it on the lagacy of Matthew Fontaine Maury's racist connections.
USNA serves no valid purpose any more. We can get more and better officers from NROTC, OCS or enlisted commissioning programs. (Even pint size journalism majors from Podunk U would be better than someone exuding USNA diversity crap.)
Use the money to hire pro football players to wear "Navy" uniforms to satisfy the alumni.
USNA is no longer an asset for our ability to fight and win wars at sea, but a detriment. Shut it down and use the money to buy missiles and better quality paint.
We’ve gotta stop redacting names from posts that are public. Let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps public ridicule will aid in the elimination of this abominable policy…
Eric Prince, during his interview by Tucker Carlson (tuckercarlson.com) stated that he left USNA after two years “because of the (woke) BS” you revisit today, here. Prince then proceeds to elaborate specifics) before the interview moves on. It was worth - to me - watching. It would not surprise me if all here, reading, have seen the interview I mention, but I will recommend it anyway.
For what it's worth, I had the very same internal dialog prior to "2 for 7 night" and decided to stay as the most convenient path to spec war. Otherwise I was very near bailing and jumping on the initial MIT offer.
Then I stuck it out, went Spec War, found out I was egregiously claustrophobic when restrained, got kicked out (too stubborn to quit) and ended up SWO anyway, LOL.
Former Midshipman/now Dr. Zhivago returns to USNA to find some changes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq__Z-Z_Ofs
Byron: I still cannot bring myself to read the book. It's been sitting in my Amazon cart for a long time.
Dr. Zhivago was the perfect movie to watch with your sweetheart.
Omar and Julie were just such a lovely couple.
Who could imagine that it was a warning of what could happen here, too.
It always occurred to me "This friggin' guy is running around having an affair while his country is going to absolute Sh$t and his wife did nothing to deserve it."
I guess I have no romance in my soul
It's been asserted that Pasternak really did not understand women, but his sweeping novel covering 2 world wars, revolution, famine, with an interesting combination of predestination, determinism and fatalism, is a masterpiece of human resilience.
Lara is a muse and a symbol of what for many is "love untold." Also the mercenaries (Komarovsky) are always with us in different forms hence DEI in all its iterations.
Nonprofits are an important tool in the DEI kit as well as "woke" enterprises more broadly. They are not accountable through regular means of transparency. To cite an example that I am reporting on from the civilian world, a father who has been denied access to his children for five years found out that a nonprofit organization in the area was picking his children up from school, and could even put them up in a hotel, simply to deny him his court-ordered visitation. The CPS officer who arranged this scheme actually recorded herself(!) telling the mother that the nonprofit would refuse to cooperate with the court. As a result, the man has been lost his parental rights without a court order to remove them. Apply this basic principle to any DoD setting and you have endless possibilities for abuse.
And the Nonprofits trafficking kids at the border on behalf of the government.
The Athletic Association is the slush fund that pays for Big Football at Canoe U.
That is one of the long-time stated purposes of the Athletic Association.
Camp Severn has found the courtesy of the Hall somewhat lacking of late.
I saw this on the horizon 20+ years ago when Canoe U instituted a mandatory "book club" featuring one of Cornell West's race baiting books - we had to sit around and "discuss" what we had "learned" about our inherent vices. A slightly awkward experience - nobody wanted to be there, including the O-3 facilitator!
Midshipman Gilday loved that book club.
TOTALLY in keeping with the Supe’s giddy brief about the Brigade’s “diversity” to us last month at my 45th reunion.
But the first shot across the bow for me was when I was a USNA Blue & Gold Officer and got the memo that the minimum SAT for minorities will be 500/500 - 1000, still 600/600 - 1200 for everyone else. I called the USNA Admissions Office, they verified it; I said you either have a standard or you don’t, and resigned on the spot.
Forget not giving up the USNA ship; the cowardly leftist administration has already scuttled it.
Wow... 1200? Call me old fashioned, but that seems like a very low number for an allegedly selective school. Esp a school with a core mission to turn out people who go into a highly technical service that involves mil-grade warships, missiles, airplanes & stuff. Change the name to US Soccer Trophy Academy.
They used to tell me it was harder to get into than Harvard. But then again, Harvard ain't what it used to be either.
We've entered a time warp and are reliving Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Nothing is what it used to be.
Yeah…I still can’t figure out how they let me in. All I can figure is that my application must have been hung up on the paperclip of the application on top of mine, and when they threw his over into the “give an appointment to” stack mine got tossed over with it ;)
:)
Gosh and they wonder why ships are running aground now or imploding on their own hardware at sea? Well, I suppose the contents of the body bags will be more diverse too. I suppose they'd put that in the positive column, right?
It's not just the service academies. Medical schools, too.
Optimism springs eternal
I did rather better on the test (was told I had a full ride to MIT if I wanted it) but had wanted USNA since I was 10 or so.
That said, I recall one friend, Caucasian, who came in through NAPS and no sh$t had an 840 SAT (back in 1600 max days; I had a 1440 but to be fair I was drunk; big party night prior). He wasn't stupid either. Not saying that's the rule, but it can happen.
Take all the Zampolits to "tea".
We have too few willing to be Captain 1st Rank Ramius. Besides, doing things with one's hands is icky for many URLs.
Well, if some of them want to be SEAL officers...
Iʻve thought about this whole dignity and respect idea. Hereʻs what I think:
- every human being deserves to be treated with dignity -- we owe that to each other by virtue of being human
- I am ambivalent about whether or not a person can lose that right. I donʻt think I would support treating Adolph Eichmann with dignity or Dr. Mengele.
- Respect, however, is something that you earn, and something that you can lose. No has any right to be respected.
Don't for a minute, Guy, believe that the Cartman's beg to differ with regard to "respect". To them, it is a "Thou shalt" proposition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKJprZqU_oU
Oh, I know that. That doesnʻt mean that I donʻt have my own definition. I refuse to let some group of loud zealots kidnap the entirety of western civiliazation.
Good. People should have a meet & greet plan for when that 2 A.M. knock comes at the front door.
Respect is the degree of worth one places in another. It is an expression of merit and authority. It is not earned by an actor, it is held by an observer
Since it is an expression or merit, then it must be earned by the person to whom the respect is given.
This has been my view as long as I can remember, and that goes back to "hey! I can wipe my own butt" days.
This is so tiresome. I see it daily in my gooberment office... so many hours wasted on this expensive timesuck nonsense. Do entire classes of workerbees need their own workstream? And a committee to ensure it? How about just showing up and doing your job? (No, can't have that either. NO ONE SHOWS UP!) "Dignity and respect..." Hmmph! A cursory review of war since the dawn of time will prove that once the spears/bullets/bombs start flying, dignity and respect evaporate rather quickly. In fact, a case can be made that dignity and respect go out the window even before war commences. As for the sea? Dignity and respect? Hah! The Sea just wants to kill you 24/7, and all the creatures below the surface are eager to help and they don't give a flying frog what color or religion you are or how you entertain your body parts. Broken boilers and punctured steel and fires don't care about your DNA or fetishes either. The sooner we fill our Navy with people who understand these hard facts, the better. We used to be a country with common sense.
The sea, as all nature, cares naught.
I think we are all owe the basic dignity to each other that we (those of us worthy of the label 'man') would give to any dog or cat or any of God's creatures.
Respect is a different matter entirely.
“I’ve redacted identifying information below, as the Midshipman referred to—and those in similar positions further down the post—are not at fault.”
Not at fault? I respectfully disagree. No single snowflake believes it is responsible for the avalanche. Yet, given the requisite conditions, the destructive power of the latter is unleashed. This is one reason the USN finds itself mired in a death spiral of its own making—the attitude of individuals throughout the ranks that they are simply conforming to the institution’s culture and following orders, regardless of the deleterious effects of those directives and policies.
A major objective of the military academies is to develop individuals of character. A key aspect of integrity—a significant character trait—means doing the right thing regardless of personal or professional consequences, including circumstantial incentives or disincentives (N.B. that “right” and “correct” are not necessarily equivalent terms in this context).
These midshipmen have the relative luxury of time and place to consider how their decisions will affect themselves and others. Being unwilling to stand up for long-standing institutional values vs short-sighted priorities (e.g., DEI) will sow the cognitive seeds that allow them to bend to the figurative winds at subsequent phases of their careers and rationalize any decisions that rely on a character gut check—much like individuals ranging from Quisling to the Fat Leonard cadre.
They are in training to become commission officers and need to convert that theoretical training to practice and take a stand. This does not mean disregarding the lawful orders of their seniors, but through actions supporting ADM Rickover’s assertion that, “Good Ideas are not adopted automatically.They must be driven into practice with courageous impatience.”
moral courage. personal courage.
I concur completely. I will go a step beyond your reference to the Fat Leonard crowd to say that the decisions made by flag officers and ship COs to push ships’ crews beyond reasonable levels of endurance led to the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions and loss of life. In my not so humble opinion, these decisions were mired in a lack of moral courage. Any Midshipman accepting one of these positions is either a boot-licker, an unrepentant cultural Marxist, or lacks the moral courage to stand up for their own individual right to disagreeing with a morally defunct view of life. And I don’t want any of those to lead honest American Bluejackets.
Then again, I suspect that the admissions committee -- or at least, some subcommittee -- screens for people who will gladly seek out, pursue and excel at such lines of work.
It would be interesting to see if there are correlations between specific pre-admission extracurricular activities and acceptance rates.
“Moral courage.” That’s a term we don’t hear very often. And, sadly, some today prolly find it “triggering.” 🥴
I don’t think that accepting one of these positions falls under the purview of following a lawful order. Any Midshipman accepting one of these positions is either a boot-licker, an unrepentant cultural Marxist, or otherwise lacks the moral courage to defend the 14th Amendment and therefore live up to his oath of office. My view of the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions is that they began with a lack of moral courage on the part of ISIC flag officers and ships’ COs in that the crews were pushed to fulfill an op schedule the ships and crews could not reasonably support. Though it may seem heartless to say so, I believe this zampolit approach to shaping the thoughts of future naval officers will cause greater loss to the nation than a bit of needed ship repair and a few lives lost in these collisions. This will gut the Navy. But then, that may be its real goal.
cadres
Some additional thought on mandatory DEI statements and their effects on educational (and other) institutions:
https://www.betonit.ai/p/diversity-statements-violate-institutional?r=2iyojj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
WRT "Mandatory statements."
You've got to have some moral courage.
I, as many of us, had a particular upperclassman who choose to make our misery his mission in life. Said Firstie got it into his head that I was in need of humbling (probably not an unreasonable assessment, in hindsight).
One day fall plebe year, he got it into his head that I needed to stand on my chair at noon meal and "Test my lungs for Hitler." I decided this was an inappropriate order, and informed him (standing on my chair) that this would not be happening. Good times.
Sadly, I was not always as cool and collected, and later that semester during a "come around" I pushed him into a wall and informed him that I was "stronger than him, smarter than him, and his girlfriend told me I f___d better than him, and he should leave me be." [I'd never met his girlfriend, but I was rolling].
Good times ensued, as always.
As I hard leftist, I am not enthusiastic about my nation's Marine Corps officers getting "deconflicting training." I think we should leave that to the folks studying to be in the foreign service. I want Marine Corps officers engaged in conflict training. Some George Patton type conflict training.
"All through your army career you men have bitched about what you call 'this chicken-shit drilling.' That is all for a purpose—to ensure instant obedience to orders and to create constant alertness. This must be bred into every soldier.
I don't give a fuck for a man who is not always on his toes. But the drilling has made veterans of all you men. You are ready! A man has to be alert all the time if he expects to keep on breathing. If not, some German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit."
Tom, if you are truly a "hard leftist" then you know that political loyalty is the highest virtue.
I don't think you are as far left as you think.
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.
There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.
Agreed. I think one of the simpler and worse things we have done is allow political party affiliation to be shown on ballots. People should vote for a person, not a party.
Sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
I think it was sooner, probably 100 years ago or we wouldn't have 16 and 17 Amendments:)
“As a hard leftist”. Thanks for finally being honest. You might want to look reenlisting, the military seems to be welcoming of your kind lately.
Just shut the place down. Since diversity is exalted and would not be an acceptable grounds, blame it on the lagacy of Matthew Fontaine Maury's racist connections.
USNA serves no valid purpose any more. We can get more and better officers from NROTC, OCS or enlisted commissioning programs. (Even pint size journalism majors from Podunk U would be better than someone exuding USNA diversity crap.)
Use the money to hire pro football players to wear "Navy" uniforms to satisfy the alumni.
USNA is no longer an asset for our ability to fight and win wars at sea, but a detriment. Shut it down and use the money to buy missiles and better quality paint.
Eliminate all the non STEM degrees. No more poly sci and fly.
Eliminate the requirements for nomination by politicians might help!
I have always shaken my head when considering that every member of “The Squad” is allowed the same number of appointments as an American politician.
We’ve gotta stop redacting names from posts that are public. Let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps public ridicule will aid in the elimination of this abominable policy…
This! Name the names. Bad policies persist in part because the anonymization of the responsible individuals.
Eric Prince, during his interview by Tucker Carlson (tuckercarlson.com) stated that he left USNA after two years “because of the (woke) BS” you revisit today, here. Prince then proceeds to elaborate specifics) before the interview moves on. It was worth - to me - watching. It would not surprise me if all here, reading, have seen the interview I mention, but I will recommend it anyway.
For what it's worth, I had the very same internal dialog prior to "2 for 7 night" and decided to stay as the most convenient path to spec war. Otherwise I was very near bailing and jumping on the initial MIT offer.
Then I stuck it out, went Spec War, found out I was egregiously claustrophobic when restrained, got kicked out (too stubborn to quit) and ended up SWO anyway, LOL.
What do the honor officers do? And the character officers?
Make sure that when asked “you support diversity and respect don’t you comrade?” That you answer correctly or else….
Eat a bag O' D?