Again, we come to senior officers - after being promoted, holding senior billets, and commanding ships - ushered out for "loss of confidence in their ability to command". Tell me again that this is not a purge of people who don't agree with this BS.
Read an article just the other day how the FBI has been completely purged from people who hold “conservative” or “nationalist” views.
The United States as a free republic is over.
Doesn’t matter who gets elected because the bureaucracy is the real government.
Individual States will have to secede if the populace wants to remain free and that could mean civil war.
Otherwise everyday that goes passed the US is on the slow march towards the “Chinese model” as mr Klaus Schwab head of the World Economic forum calls it.
To get equity in outcomes you must discriminate in favor of some folks (they are willing to admit this), AND discriminate against other folks (this anti-male, anti-white/asian bias never makes it to paper)
It is telling that while negative personal knowledge cannot be provided by members, but must be in the official records, they are free to add positive things.
Especially damning is the guidance that:
"Board members SHOULD share their personal knowledge of the diversity of eligible officers when appropriate to the process."
So, does that mean that members should reveal that some officers under consideration might be merely "passing" as a member of a (despised but unnamed) category, but are likely member of one or all of the favored oppressed minority groups? If it must all remain secret within the tank, who would know?
It has been rumored that some people have gamed the system and committed racial block checking or cultural appropriation to burnish their brilliance.
Is there a "one drop rule" which blesses a person's eligibility to be on the good boy/girl/non-binary list, or does a single drop condemn them to the naughty list?
The entire Diversity establishment is "detrimental to good order and discipline" as well as being a hive of racism, scum and villainy. They put no ordnance on target, add no value, only cost, and are a cancer destroying our already weakened country.
If you ever have the opportunity to serve on a board at Millington be it as a member or even as an assistant recorder then do so. Then take an evening tour of the Fedex HQ in nearby Memphis and imagine what out Navy would be like if it Absolutely, Positively had to win our nation's wars.
The only way to fix these obvious problems will be to fight, and lose, a war. The survivors (if any) may be able to get back to understanding that success is what actually matters, and that "equity" is simply another word for "failure".
We certainly need to change the incentives toward command in our system. It produce chameleons who can cater to their boss until they become the boss, but they lost their backbone long ago. We saw it with COVID. Commanders were just “obeying orders” as they repeated the errors of the DOD with the anthrax mandate.
Again, until the FOGO address the root cause of this and fix public schools this will only get worse. It would be interesting to view officer accession rates from various areas. My bet is most urban areas with high diversity provide very few diverse candidates.
So you are saying that reading and math are needed to be a leader? Clearly a racist assumption. And besides, the passing score is based on melanin content. If you have to have x% of candidates represent racial group z and 18 are going to promoted, well, what do you call the worst and least competent graduate from Med school?
As with every “rights” group (minorities, women, etc), their goal is not equality but power. They aren’t interested in being equal or gaining equal opportunity or even equal outcomes. They want power over all those not in their group.
By definition, selection board members with a DEI thumb on the scale fail the “good order and discipline” requirement for any officer, much less a selection board member.
Thank you Sal. An excellent primer on how injurious the DEI commissariat is to warfighting capabilities, leadership capacity, and trust in military institutions.
Nov 16, 2023·edited Nov 16, 2023Liked by CDR Salamander
One look at that equity definition on the blue background is enough to say "as long as you are not a straight while male who speaks English, we've got your back."
Seriously, I think you are on to something, Alexander. Ticket sales stop after the win. A tie and infinite play-off's and grudge re-matches rake in more apparel & merchandise sales by spendy fans in addition to the traditional divvying up the pork by the MIC.
• Treating immutable and morally immaterial characteristics (like ethnicity or skin color) as if they're relevant for choosing the best qualified candidates for promotion; or
• Treating voluntary behaviors (like choosing one's sexual partners or claiming to be the opposite sex) as if they're immutable characteristics, and then lumping them in with the bullet point above
~50 years by my reckoning. Back in 1973 there was a Navy survey that asked members what race they identified as. I was on a worn out WWII-built CVA with race relations problems typical of the era and hating it, so I picked "Black", though in truth I am mostly "Welsh"(the proof is in my uncle, Evan Evan Evans). Made Chief the next year at 8 years.
Yes, you are right as usual Dale. This has been going on for a while. Reason I cited 20 years, someone confided to me, more than 20 years ago, that he had been instructed before the board convened, to select only specific race or sex.
I served from 1970-1991. Looks like you entered in 1965. Back in the day, you could make rate just as fast as your time in service allowed if you had good evals, all your PQS signed off, and you scored above the cut-off on the test.
My dad enlisted in 1939 as an E-1 and retired as an O-4 pilot with 21 years in the USAF. His promotions as a high school grad were slow and included a temporary RIF back to E-5 after WWII until the Korean War came along. At the <2 year, <4 year and >8 year points I called home to dad reporting promotions to E-5, E-6 and E-7. I was an RD and EW, ratings with good opportunities for an eager youngster. I thought myself just normal. Dad thought otherwise and was so proud. Yeah, Harry, those were the salad days. We served in the Golden Era. Pretty sad to me to see that there is seemingly no really "right place at the right time" now for folks who look like me. Looks shouldn't matter unless you have a very severe underbite overshadowed by a 4" nose. But they can become CT's and stay locked away in a basement somewhere in Fort George Meade looking for steganography in Farsi comic books.
Dale, You are so right, the 70s and 80s were a Golden Era. When the draft ended and we transitioned to a professional force, my pay doubled. We were privileged to serve with the last of the WWII vets still on active duty. We also benefited from a revolution in electronics. I worked on the first airborne navigation computer (it had a core-rope memory). We went from vacuum tubes to integrated circuits, from loran to GPS.
Regarding draw-down after WWII, my Dad enlisted in JAN 1942, went ashore at Normandy as an O-1 in JUN 1944, promoted to 0-2 and 0-3 by attrition during the following 12 months. In SEP 1945, he reverted to his "permanent rank" of E-5.
Regarding "lookism," the first time my present wife was on a military base (2005) it was a location where we do surveillance and analysis. After visiting the Credit Union, exchange, and commissary, she remarked how strange-looking all the military personnel were. I explained to her that some rates just select for that.
Ah, Elex. Crystal video receivers, super-het receivers, vacuum tubes, 200lbs TWT's, 350 lbs loop TWT's, swappable 500 lbs closed circuit amplifiers, more vacuum tubes, diodes, the new stuff that replaced vacuum tubes, repairable printed circuit boards, soldering irons, radioactive vacuum tubes, 120 pin connection cables, -10KV, 5KV, 20KV, 6V, ad infinitum power supplies, 115V/60~, 440V/400~, heat exchangers (chill water to FC77 to oil/PCB's) with a hundred press-fit copper tubes, pre-amps, blankers, D/F and omni antennas, steerable antennas, a bewildering amount of GPETE, deception repeaters, blip enhancers, chaff mortars, intermittent connection on a 5000 connection backplane, your waveguides getting flooded by your dry air system and the most fun "What's the ETR, dammit?" every 15 minutes. Gah!!! Thought I left all that behind when I became an OpTech Warrant. Nope. Was sent to an ElexTech billet on an FFG-9. The TDS computers were started with a WW-II TTY klacker made of thousands of moving parts. When that failed there was a long spool of paper tape with IBM-type holes punched in it to start up the computers. WRT to "lookism", a mean-spirited anthropologist could have great fun doing phrenology and somatotyping on the various rating groups, individual ratings, NEC's, officer designators, etc. Were I to do it I have some expertise in the good, the bad and the ugly in the TACAN and Submariner ET, Radiomen, CTM shop stewards wearing a purple suit wishing she or he was working for NSA instead of me and the defunct TD rating. I "present" as a deckish type though I did mostly ops and some twidgitry. Sometimes I am mistaken for a boor. Techs, mechs, cooks, head cleaners and janitorial/support of all stripes are sometimes underappreciated. And, yeah, the pay...$56 every payday and beer at 25¢. Times were hard until those Zumwalt pay raises.
The community college I used to work at opened in 1966 and had courses in soldering and building/repairing printed circuit boards, among other now esoteric subjects. They still had (hopefully still have) a lot of the materials , equipment, manuals, test instruments, etc. from those courses stashed in a back room (where I spent a fair amount of time). Fascinating. I miss it.
Ironic how they want diversity of experience yet expect everyone to shoehorn into the same golden career path that hasn’t really changed in 80 years.
The don't really want diversity of experience, and especially not of opinion.
Again, we come to senior officers - after being promoted, holding senior billets, and commanding ships - ushered out for "loss of confidence in their ability to command". Tell me again that this is not a purge of people who don't agree with this BS.
Yeap, happening at every level of government.
Read an article just the other day how the FBI has been completely purged from people who hold “conservative” or “nationalist” views.
The United States as a free republic is over.
Doesn’t matter who gets elected because the bureaucracy is the real government.
Individual States will have to secede if the populace wants to remain free and that could mean civil war.
Otherwise everyday that goes passed the US is on the slow march towards the “Chinese model” as mr Klaus Schwab head of the World Economic forum calls it.
Equality of opportunity
Equity of outcomes
To get equity in outcomes you must discriminate in favor of some folks (they are willing to admit this), AND discriminate against other folks (this anti-male, anti-white/asian bias never makes it to paper)
It is telling that while negative personal knowledge cannot be provided by members, but must be in the official records, they are free to add positive things.
Especially damning is the guidance that:
"Board members SHOULD share their personal knowledge of the diversity of eligible officers when appropriate to the process."
So, does that mean that members should reveal that some officers under consideration might be merely "passing" as a member of a (despised but unnamed) category, but are likely member of one or all of the favored oppressed minority groups? If it must all remain secret within the tank, who would know?
It has been rumored that some people have gamed the system and committed racial block checking or cultural appropriation to burnish their brilliance.
Is there a "one drop rule" which blesses a person's eligibility to be on the good boy/girl/non-binary list, or does a single drop condemn them to the naughty list?
The entire Diversity establishment is "detrimental to good order and discipline" as well as being a hive of racism, scum and villainy. They put no ordnance on target, add no value, only cost, and are a cancer destroying our already weakened country.
If you ever have the opportunity to serve on a board at Millington be it as a member or even as an assistant recorder then do so. Then take an evening tour of the Fedex HQ in nearby Memphis and imagine what out Navy would be like if it Absolutely, Positively had to win our nation's wars.
If you're taking the tour in Memphis, make sure to bring a sidearm and perhaps body armor.
These highlighted sections would be a great enticement for recruiting purposes.
The only way to fix these obvious problems will be to fight, and lose, a war. The survivors (if any) may be able to get back to understanding that success is what actually matters, and that "equity" is simply another word for "failure".
I've been telling people all this nonsense goes away when the power goes out for a few months. Unfortunately so do a lot of people
We certainly need to change the incentives toward command in our system. It produce chameleons who can cater to their boss until they become the boss, but they lost their backbone long ago. We saw it with COVID. Commanders were just “obeying orders” as they repeated the errors of the DOD with the anthrax mandate.
You think they will blame the people responsible for the disaster for the disaster? Really?
Again, until the FOGO address the root cause of this and fix public schools this will only get worse. It would be interesting to view officer accession rates from various areas. My bet is most urban areas with high diversity provide very few diverse candidates.
Sadly the teacher's unions and far left governments seem to be adopting a policy of abandoning standards entirely in urban areas
Then the DoD officer corps will eventually become less diverse simply due to a lack of accession..
Like BLM, if the DEI commisariat was really interested in promoting people of color they'd be addressing increasing the candidate pool.
100 percent
You think they wont just keep reducing the standards to maintain their numbers? It will be the emperors new clothes generation of 'leaders'.
Eventually the diversity candidate pool will dry up.
"Oregon again says students don’t need to prove mastery of reading, writing or math to graduate, citing harm to students of color."
https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2023/10/oregon-again-says-students-dont-need-to-prove-mastery-of-reading-writing-or-math-to-graduate-citing-harm-to-students-of-color.html
So you are saying that reading and math are needed to be a leader? Clearly a racist assumption. And besides, the passing score is based on melanin content. If you have to have x% of candidates represent racial group z and 18 are going to promoted, well, what do you call the worst and least competent graduate from Med school?
I know your response is made in good faith.
I surely love being called racist.
As with every “rights” group (minorities, women, etc), their goal is not equality but power. They aren’t interested in being equal or gaining equal opportunity or even equal outcomes. They want power over all those not in their group.
"b. Today's Navy is composed of men and women representing dozens of different ethnic groups and literally hundreds of cultural heritages"
This is 2023 and the Navy is still allowed to use the binary "men and women"? Sheesh!
Triggered! :)
By definition, selection board members with a DEI thumb on the scale fail the “good order and discipline” requirement for any officer, much less a selection board member.
Thank you Sal. An excellent primer on how injurious the DEI commissariat is to warfighting capabilities, leadership capacity, and trust in military institutions.
One look at that equity definition on the blue background is enough to say "as long as you are not a straight while male who speaks English, we've got your back."
We wonder why we have recruiting problems.
I’d be concerned if the purpose of our military were to win wars. But that hasn’t been the purpose since 1950.
I get why we had problems in Korea and Vietnam; look like we're actually winning and get our forces there nuked. GWOT, not so much.
We don’t want to win anymore. No one buys bullets for won wars or wars not engaged.
Seriously, I think you are on to something, Alexander. Ticket sales stop after the win. A tie and infinite play-off's and grudge re-matches rake in more apparel & merchandise sales by spendy fans in addition to the traditional divvying up the pork by the MIC.
I read something recently which showed the insanity of the Vietnam war.
Enemy aircraft were only allowed to be attacked in the air. They were not allowed to be attacked on the ground.
I wonder what's worse?
• Treating immutable and morally immaterial characteristics (like ethnicity or skin color) as if they're relevant for choosing the best qualified candidates for promotion; or
• Treating voluntary behaviors (like choosing one's sexual partners or claiming to be the opposite sex) as if they're immutable characteristics, and then lumping them in with the bullet point above
Why wonder? Embrace Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer. Do some PM on your SKS.
Lost it in a tragic canoeing mishap.
Excellent
Now we have it in writing, but selection by race and sex has been in place for more than 20 years.
That is how we ended up where we are today.
~50 years by my reckoning. Back in 1973 there was a Navy survey that asked members what race they identified as. I was on a worn out WWII-built CVA with race relations problems typical of the era and hating it, so I picked "Black", though in truth I am mostly "Welsh"(the proof is in my uncle, Evan Evan Evans). Made Chief the next year at 8 years.
Yes, you are right as usual Dale. This has been going on for a while. Reason I cited 20 years, someone confided to me, more than 20 years ago, that he had been instructed before the board convened, to select only specific race or sex.
I served from 1970-1991. Looks like you entered in 1965. Back in the day, you could make rate just as fast as your time in service allowed if you had good evals, all your PQS signed off, and you scored above the cut-off on the test.
My dad enlisted in 1939 as an E-1 and retired as an O-4 pilot with 21 years in the USAF. His promotions as a high school grad were slow and included a temporary RIF back to E-5 after WWII until the Korean War came along. At the <2 year, <4 year and >8 year points I called home to dad reporting promotions to E-5, E-6 and E-7. I was an RD and EW, ratings with good opportunities for an eager youngster. I thought myself just normal. Dad thought otherwise and was so proud. Yeah, Harry, those were the salad days. We served in the Golden Era. Pretty sad to me to see that there is seemingly no really "right place at the right time" now for folks who look like me. Looks shouldn't matter unless you have a very severe underbite overshadowed by a 4" nose. But they can become CT's and stay locked away in a basement somewhere in Fort George Meade looking for steganography in Farsi comic books.
Dale, You are so right, the 70s and 80s were a Golden Era. When the draft ended and we transitioned to a professional force, my pay doubled. We were privileged to serve with the last of the WWII vets still on active duty. We also benefited from a revolution in electronics. I worked on the first airborne navigation computer (it had a core-rope memory). We went from vacuum tubes to integrated circuits, from loran to GPS.
Regarding draw-down after WWII, my Dad enlisted in JAN 1942, went ashore at Normandy as an O-1 in JUN 1944, promoted to 0-2 and 0-3 by attrition during the following 12 months. In SEP 1945, he reverted to his "permanent rank" of E-5.
Regarding "lookism," the first time my present wife was on a military base (2005) it was a location where we do surveillance and analysis. After visiting the Credit Union, exchange, and commissary, she remarked how strange-looking all the military personnel were. I explained to her that some rates just select for that.
Ah, Elex. Crystal video receivers, super-het receivers, vacuum tubes, 200lbs TWT's, 350 lbs loop TWT's, swappable 500 lbs closed circuit amplifiers, more vacuum tubes, diodes, the new stuff that replaced vacuum tubes, repairable printed circuit boards, soldering irons, radioactive vacuum tubes, 120 pin connection cables, -10KV, 5KV, 20KV, 6V, ad infinitum power supplies, 115V/60~, 440V/400~, heat exchangers (chill water to FC77 to oil/PCB's) with a hundred press-fit copper tubes, pre-amps, blankers, D/F and omni antennas, steerable antennas, a bewildering amount of GPETE, deception repeaters, blip enhancers, chaff mortars, intermittent connection on a 5000 connection backplane, your waveguides getting flooded by your dry air system and the most fun "What's the ETR, dammit?" every 15 minutes. Gah!!! Thought I left all that behind when I became an OpTech Warrant. Nope. Was sent to an ElexTech billet on an FFG-9. The TDS computers were started with a WW-II TTY klacker made of thousands of moving parts. When that failed there was a long spool of paper tape with IBM-type holes punched in it to start up the computers. WRT to "lookism", a mean-spirited anthropologist could have great fun doing phrenology and somatotyping on the various rating groups, individual ratings, NEC's, officer designators, etc. Were I to do it I have some expertise in the good, the bad and the ugly in the TACAN and Submariner ET, Radiomen, CTM shop stewards wearing a purple suit wishing she or he was working for NSA instead of me and the defunct TD rating. I "present" as a deckish type though I did mostly ops and some twidgitry. Sometimes I am mistaken for a boor. Techs, mechs, cooks, head cleaners and janitorial/support of all stripes are sometimes underappreciated. And, yeah, the pay...$56 every payday and beer at 25¢. Times were hard until those Zumwalt pay raises.
" repairable printed circuit boards, soldering irons,"
The community college I used to work at opened in 1966 and had courses in soldering and building/repairing printed circuit boards, among other now esoteric subjects. They still had (hopefully still have) a lot of the materials , equipment, manuals, test instruments, etc. from those courses stashed in a back room (where I spent a fair amount of time). Fascinating. I miss it.
"Evan Evan Evans"
LOL.
"...so I picked "Black" "
So much Chutzpah for a Welshman.