Of note; this existed under Reagan, accelerated under Bush41, boosted by Clinton, enabled by Bush43, high octane under Obama, almost nothing done under Trump, Biden picking up where Obama left off.
Yep. I think that the pendulum is slowly swinging back, however, and with the right people in charge most of the infection can be eradicated. It will take what my grandmother used to call "Gumption".
Perhaps so. Color me skeptical at 62 years of age. I spent the decade of the 90's in DC. My conclusion then, as it is now, is that America possesses a gift for kicking the can down the road when it comes to difficult and controversial subjects. Retail politics today best resembles a cold plate of SOS. Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of an ebb tide but we're still going to have to deal a generation of emotionally triggered, narcissistic, 20-something malcontents running about. They and their Zampolits are like a kudzu. Almost makes me yearn for the days of standing up against the Soviet Union...
So long as civics extends only to the end of someone's driveway, we will continue to see the kind of systemic malfeasance and corruption we are witnessning now more and more out in the open. We have an incumbency rate for Congress that basically exceeds 90% across the country - with few exceptions. You get what you vote for and that seems to be a cabal of 80 somethings that entered Congress when push-button telephones were just starting to be a thing. Go figure.
My only quibble is that I think we no longer even get what we vote for. A sufficient number of ballots are otherwise obtained and counted to make our own votes merely a hurdle, but no obstruction, to tyranny
I submit that this means the rot goes deeper than current office holders, and would point to the “petit foncttionaires”, as the French phrase it, those government employees who press on with their own agendas across party lines and administration and never seem to get fired.
100%. The Administrative State, Security State, Deep State, Fourth Branch, whatever we call it, they don't care about office holders except to move their agenda foreword more easily.
As I’ve stated elsewhere I think the FBI, and perhaps others, believe themselves to be a modern Praetorian Guard with the right to choose the next Caesar.
I presume your comment s meant as either irony or argument against my statement. If irony, text is sometimes a difficult media. If argument, I suggest that her lies got him impeached, if not removed.
You can't possibly believe that, Tom. Comey did everything he could to inoculate her against prosecution while other parts of our Security State worked to undermine, even spy on his campaign. The FBI and CIA took more concrete action to destroy our Republic in support of Mrs. Clinton than any previous government agents.
They very much act like it. I find it interesting that their mission as stated on TV, even back in the 60s was to "protect the innocent and identify the enemies of the Government of the United States."
I guess they gave up on the first part but they are 100% in on the second
A problem arises, of course, when an element of the Executive Branch is allowed to define the county’s enemies - a task defined in the Constitution as the responsibility of Congress. But that would require Congress to take action against illegal Executive Orders. <shrug>. I used to think it was a problem of a lack of backbone. I have since decided that both parties prefer a government consisting of one slender branch.
As Cdr noted below, since 1980 it has not mattered who is at the top, except Trump gave orders that were ignored anyway.
This should tell us something about whether we are truly a representative Republic any longer, or whether the All-Government League teams in DC (Repubs and Dems) are working together to row the rotting corpse of that Republic down river.
For the better part of this century I have stated USNA is a problem, maybe the core problem, and one the Navy cannot fix. Why don’t USNA grads make sound forward looking decisions. We, as citizens, place our trust in USNA graduates and the institution itself. They are failing us and have been for the last 30 years or so. Sal, gather your friends and speak to this from your front porch.
When I hear stories about CRT and DEI I begin to miss Admiral Rickover and what he had to say about education. He was worried about the lack of American STEM graduates as compared to the USSR. I can only imagine what he would say about not using "divisive" terms like "Mom" and "Dad." No wonder he used to review and correct every piece of paper that passed through his office. There used to be a saying in DC about "speaking truth to power." It should be rephrased to "speaking truth to ideology."
I had Rickover on the mind when I heard Ron DeSantis wanted to "shut down the Department of Energy." Really? Naval Reactors seems to be filling a pretty important roll. One could make the argument that Rickover's legacy is the best run unit of both the U.S. Navy and the government as a whole.
Then, there's the National Nuclear Security Administration. Seems like they do some useful stuff.
Worse DeSantus was a commissioned naval officer, granted he was not a line officer, or even a porkchop, but, still you'd think he'd have read somewhere that the DOE does some important work for the national defense.
I believe Rickover pre-dated the Dept. of Energy by at least a couple of decades. The Coast Guard filled an important role long before the DHS was formed. Even the Dept. of Education does some important work. I am also sure even the Ministry of Silly Walks has made worthwhile contributions to British society. But the fact that I have a few muscles remaining, even at my age, does not mean that I cannot afford to get rid of a substantial amount of my gross tonnage.
The institutions Rickover created are within the Department of Energy, frankly they ought to call it the Department of Atomic Energy.
But, the point is, we have a Presidential candidate who proposes getting rid of our national laboratories, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and the others. He proposes shutting down the USN’s naval reactors, and the group which designs and manages our atomic weapons. Surely such a person is unqualified for the office of President.
In some of the communities ravaged by fentanyl the state is taking kids, often babies, from unfit parents and putting them up for adoption. Adoptive parents are real parents even though neither of them birthed the baby.
I would remind any moles out there that electrons never go away. Your social media contacts (whether received or sent) will last forever. I remember seeing a meta data analysis of the pre-Revolution Committees of Correspondence. If the British had had the tools of today, they could have rolled up our founding fathers before they even got started.
Blind drops to Sal from disposable phones, perhaps?
I live in Anchorage, Alaska, which is functionally the most diverse city in the nation and likely in the world. There is no majority population in any zip code. It has the highest rate of cross cultural marriage in the US and likely the world. It is normal to be in mixed company. More than that, I personally am active in many communities - and deliberately so to maximize and promote cross cultural connections. 30 years ago my 100% Asian wife asked "you are white, I am Asian, so why do we spend most of our time in the Black community." Having immigrated from China, she was more race conscious than I am - I do NOT notice if I am the only white man in the room. Nor do I believe you can tell by looking the ancestry of most people - witness frequent surprise with personal genetic test results. What matters is what you were taught and the choices you make. In Anchorage, at least, it is not common to use different pronouns for most people. We have a sort of "don't offend and don't be offended" SOP which is to use what seems to be the most appropriate traditional pronoun and let the listener(s) correct you if it is important to them (without disputing their correction). In my view this is a secondary issue and it is unwise to either offend or to easily be offended.
I'm married to a 100% Asian wife and over my lifetime have worked for and with a diverse group of people too. Never had a problem. I believe it was because we were all mission focused and were loathe to be captured by distractions. The "don't offend and don't be offended" SOP is a good one. But pronouns? Never encountered this new pronoun phenomenon. Hope I never do. But am pretty sure I could find a polite and civil way to either handle it or to disengage. I suspect that I'd decline to play the pronoun game, though. Kind of set in my ways with standard English and my own values.
As a due honorific? Maybe, I am 6'0". Mrs Flowers is 4'10". As a pronoun? Nope. "Your Highness" is a possessive pronoun coupled to a noun that used to be an adjective, much like verbs can be made into nouns by adding "-ing" ...Gerunds, I think they call them. Gerunds, Germans, Nazis. Godwin's Law. "-ing"....INGSOC. See the connections? If you think that triggering me by some fancy Jeddi mind trick into a spluttering incoherence, Kevin, think again, please. Mi devintus tajpi ĉi tion en Esperanto, por pli da klareco.
Partly, Tim. Hey would be an interjection and you, a pronoun. Don't much care for the hijacking of grammar. The Wokesters like to repurpose words and use them as cudgels to pummel that which they hate. They can invent all the new pronouns they want, but they have no right to criminalize or punish the non-acceptance of their foolishness by we normies. If I am ever bullied into memorizing some dysfunctional dhimwit's designer pronouns and commanded to use them as silly appellations, my plan is to toss venomous protopronouns of own at xe/xer like they were Lawn Darts. Used to be a sailor in Deck Group. Got a million of them. No s___, a f_______ m______ of them.
To be fair, they are not the only ones to do so. My pet peeve is the redefinition of the word "kinetic". It seems to me that all groups develop their own jargon, and some of it is done by "borrowing" words & terms already in use.
You make a good point, Tim. I meant to impute that the Wokesters seem (to me) to re-purpose words in a such a way that obfuscates, denies reality, furthers a wicked agenda of madness rather than like some professionals do with jargon that excludes outsiders from their own special elite group and makes them feel good about themselves. On the one hand it is an attempt at mind control, dominance and the winnowing of vocabulary to delimit thought. On the other hand it is feel-good jargoning or technical job-speak.
"We have a sort of "don't offend and don't be offended" SOP"
Many years ago that used to be called "good manners" and was instilled into young humans by their "caregivers" and the village, including religious (Oh, the horror!) institutions, they lived in. That was before the great enlightenment of "wokeness" and the discovery of the importance of pronouns to the maintainance of civilization.
SCOTUS opinion today puts this diversity crap in DOD up for scrutiny and hopefully termination.
However, with the incoming CJCS an affirmative action appointee, having a track record of fanatical devotion to DEI, I fear compliance with the Constitution within DOD may be slow to come.
Might be time to review the concept of "lawful orders" and it would not surprise me to find that just about everything from the DEI zampolits and their sycophants is counter to SCOTUS definitions of what is permissible.
Are there UCMJ articles relating to issuance of unlawful orders which might be used to reverse, block or mitigate the crap being thrust upon our forces?
DEI is certainly prejudicial to good order and discipline, and while endorsed by DOD leadership, its continuation in blatantly obvious contradiction to Constitutional requirements should support strongest possible challenges to such continuation, using all the tools available.
Diversity is NOT our strength, but the destruction of cohesive unit integrity, trust in our comrades in arms, and advancement of the best qualified individuals to better lead our forces.
They really should name those DIE courses because it will kill the Navy/Army/Air Force academies, as well as the services themselves.
Our Military can not afford to go woke, but that battle is already lost since the navy has an official "Drag Ambassador" and celebrates the Marxist Trans ideology.
They aren't my Father's and GrandFather's Services, they are now glorified social clubs.
The Marxists won't be happy until we've turned into the Soviet Union or China.
They don't seem to realize, or maybe they just don't care that Marxism/Communism kills ... every .... damned .....time.
I'm not ashamed that I had to look up Antonio Gramsci. It's sad that he fell into Communist ideology. He seemed to be a well-read man and a scholar as well.
Ironically, he was using left-wing authoritarianism to fight right-wing authoritarianism.
And yet, here I am, sitting and listening to @KarlynBarysenko talking about Marxism and definitions of words.
Thanks for the new name to take us down the rabbit hole.
It appears his Marxist DEI friends are working to transition us into his theory about a political society, which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society, where leadership is constituted through consent.
Do we even need West Point? It's just about as screwed up as the Naval Academy.
Why can't they go to the service branch of their choice, and then when they've earned a promotion to the higher elevations, they go to an academy that will teach them not to piss in the potted plants?
Why should anyone go straight into the military as a Lieutenant when they've never been in the military and/or know things work?
I mean, people don't go to the police academy go into the force as a swat captain. They go in at the entry-level position and earn their way upwards.
I'm sure many of you will recognize some of the names that VDH drops, while he also refrains from naming others. Rather surprised that the facility composition is heavily civilian, while most have military backgrounds, they are not AD like the other academies. I've always known USNA to be the least martial of the military academies, however the pendulum swing to be more ideologically aligned with elite civilian universities is disturbing.
The Navy will always be “less martial” than the Army. The skills and attributes of a mariner are different from a warrior. A sailor has attributes of both. An Infantryman can devote all his training to combat in a way the Boatswain’s mate cannot.
Regarding "STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE ". Read the syllabus (about 9 pages) then read Thomas' concurring opinion. Starting on page 49, Justice Thomas offers an opinion.
USAFA grad many decades ago. This service wide institutional slide has been a long time in the making, and yes, this youngster needs to be very, very careful if he wants to stay in the AF. While I've seen a couple of cultural events lately that appear hopeful, the difference between votes and ballots may fatally wound the nation's ability to change direction via the electoral process. Not to mention 30 years of K-12 education promoting the same information. Direct involvement in a major conflict can only highlight and worsen the cultural divisions. Can't help but wonder what's on the other side of a military disaster a couple of orders of magnitude worse that the Afghanistan retreat / withdrawal / debacle.
Sixty six years since Ike desegregated the schools. Fifty nine years since the Civil Rights Act.
The number of people graduating with degrees has increased, yet test scores have decreased and colleges still needed affirmative action.
If only the people running the schools had concentrated on their customers instead of their collective bargaining power.
Social promotion was a failure. Only 3% of African-American men have STEM degrees and African-American women are overrepresented in low paying occupational fields.
I would go so far as to say that African-Americans/blacks/colored/etc. children were better off (and safer) going to those bad old segregated schools than they are now going to "integrated" schools. For some reason I have always thought that black kids did not need to hang around white kids in order to learn. My bad.
I am not convinced we actually disagree. If we do, I am blaming you (insert smiley or goofy emoji here), because I agree with everything you wrote in that comment.
Back in the old days we had moles among us who told the Captain everything we grunts did. He then picked out the ones he did not like and put our names on a list with labels, the most common were Bad attitude to the Corps, Instigator among the troops (That was mine LOL I was a 17 year old skinny kid no one paid attention to except to bust rank on me) Instigator LOL what a moron, We found it one day on the Captains desk while cleaning his Office.
Really changed our whole respect for our Leaders to zero.
Then we had CID they took SSgt's and made them PFC and inserted them in the ranks to tattletale.
on the dopers, juicers, the KKK, Latino gangs and De Mau Mau.
You had to second guess every Marine you came upon and trust was shot.
Life was interestingly boring.
End of the Vietnam war and they looked for reasons to cut manpower.
Sounds like East Berlin, Feldwebel Bear. The 70s, after the Vietnam War ended, were a horrible time for our Navy too. The Peace Dividend, drug abuse, old timers throwing in the towel "Becuz Zumwalt done stolt our Authoritay!"(he didn't), soured race relations, capped by Jimmy Carter and his malaise. I was on an CVA (commissioned in WWII) and assigned a 100 day tour as an MAA section leader because all my equipment had gone to the Depot for repair during a yard period. How bad was it? We were assigned to the Quarterdeck at Liberty Call to check for haircuts, grooming and dress infractions so that LPO's, Chief's, DIVO's didn't have to do that at morning muster and the OOD didn't have to get his hands dirty on the Quarterdeck. During the day we were to patrol the ship and hand out chits for haircuts and uniforms and to remind Chief's and LPO's that they owed us a body for a previously announced working party. We were supposed to wear some surplus police helmets and carry billy clubs. We never did, just looked too damned Stasi. At night we patrolled looking for dopers. You could follow your nose, but they were hard to catch. We put drunks to bed. Night was the time I went through all those infraction chits that were 72 hours old and had not been responded too and placed those sailors, who I did not even know, on report for failure to______. Every duty night, I wrote up ~20 shipmates. We MAA's were hated. No matter..."I vas chuss followink orders". What I saw: Looking for dope and contraband but found turds; 5 arson fires (post office, starboard refueling station, port forward 5" magazine, Supply berthing...one was not on my duty day), argumentative males in need of a shave but had no shaving chit for the "bumps" from the Corpsman, responded to a "shots fired" but found only surly minorities who ain't seen nothing, 1 death by falling 80 feet onto a bollard, innumerable XOI's and Captain's Mast's, most fun: rousting out people for 2130 Sweepers and trying to figure out where the bags of trash in the Hanger Bay came from so we could get their owners to take them to the dumpster on the pier. Completed my 100-day tour hating my Navy and myself, had decided to get out after 9 years service. As luck would have it, I got word that I was promoting to Chief on about day 95 of that MAA tour. My BM1 boss who used to rag on me became my new friend and I transferred back to Frigates and stayed for 26. Yeah, Bear, I was there in East Berlin too. Solidarität.
Root. And. Branch.
..and then salt the earth.
You can counteract salting. Strategic nuclear bombardment.
from Orbit. It's the only way to be sure
And. Law. Civil Rights Act has to go.
This comes from the very top, and can only be changed by changing who is at that top.
Of note; this existed under Reagan, accelerated under Bush41, boosted by Clinton, enabled by Bush43, high octane under Obama, almost nothing done under Trump, Biden picking up where Obama left off.
Yep. I think that the pendulum is slowly swinging back, however, and with the right people in charge most of the infection can be eradicated. It will take what my grandmother used to call "Gumption".
you hope it is
Perhaps so. Color me skeptical at 62 years of age. I spent the decade of the 90's in DC. My conclusion then, as it is now, is that America possesses a gift for kicking the can down the road when it comes to difficult and controversial subjects. Retail politics today best resembles a cold plate of SOS. Perhaps we are seeing the beginning of an ebb tide but we're still going to have to deal a generation of emotionally triggered, narcissistic, 20-something malcontents running about. They and their Zampolits are like a kudzu. Almost makes me yearn for the days of standing up against the Soviet Union...
Unfortunately i think those days of standing up to an evil empire are with us now .
I only hope we can
So long as civics extends only to the end of someone's driveway, we will continue to see the kind of systemic malfeasance and corruption we are witnessning now more and more out in the open. We have an incumbency rate for Congress that basically exceeds 90% across the country - with few exceptions. You get what you vote for and that seems to be a cabal of 80 somethings that entered Congress when push-button telephones were just starting to be a thing. Go figure.
My only quibble is that I think we no longer even get what we vote for. A sufficient number of ballots are otherwise obtained and counted to make our own votes merely a hurdle, but no obstruction, to tyranny
Only a gut bustin' peer to peer war will change it completely.
I submit that this means the rot goes deeper than current office holders, and would point to the “petit foncttionaires”, as the French phrase it, those government employees who press on with their own agendas across party lines and administration and never seem to get fired.
100%. The Administrative State, Security State, Deep State, Fourth Branch, whatever we call it, they don't care about office holders except to move their agenda foreword more easily.
As I’ve stated elsewhere I think the FBI, and perhaps others, believe themselves to be a modern Praetorian Guard with the right to choose the next Caesar.
The Director of the FBI sure did all he could to help Trump beat Mrs. Clinton.
I presume your comment s meant as either irony or argument against my statement. If irony, text is sometimes a difficult media. If argument, I suggest that her lies got him impeached, if not removed.
You can't possibly believe that, Tom. Comey did everything he could to inoculate her against prosecution while other parts of our Security State worked to undermine, even spy on his campaign. The FBI and CIA took more concrete action to destroy our Republic in support of Mrs. Clinton than any previous government agents.
They very much act like it. I find it interesting that their mission as stated on TV, even back in the 60s was to "protect the innocent and identify the enemies of the Government of the United States."
I guess they gave up on the first part but they are 100% in on the second
about 10 seconds in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65opq9cJi4w
A problem arises, of course, when an element of the Executive Branch is allowed to define the county’s enemies - a task defined in the Constitution as the responsibility of Congress. But that would require Congress to take action against illegal Executive Orders. <shrug>. I used to think it was a problem of a lack of backbone. I have since decided that both parties prefer a government consisting of one slender branch.
This existed under Nixon too. Maybe even worse.
As Cdr noted below, since 1980 it has not mattered who is at the top, except Trump gave orders that were ignored anyway.
This should tell us something about whether we are truly a representative Republic any longer, or whether the All-Government League teams in DC (Repubs and Dems) are working together to row the rotting corpse of that Republic down river.
Rowing? Together? Not likely. The SOB's are letting the current take them down river without a care in the world about the waterfall.
Sadly
Sad, but excellent article, & you are quite correct cadets should be encouraged to report on this to congress.
thank you for all the hard work CDR !
For the better part of this century I have stated USNA is a problem, maybe the core problem, and one the Navy cannot fix. Why don’t USNA grads make sound forward looking decisions. We, as citizens, place our trust in USNA graduates and the institution itself. They are failing us and have been for the last 30 years or so. Sal, gather your friends and speak to this from your front porch.
SCOTUS brought us a merry christmas early
When I hear stories about CRT and DEI I begin to miss Admiral Rickover and what he had to say about education. He was worried about the lack of American STEM graduates as compared to the USSR. I can only imagine what he would say about not using "divisive" terms like "Mom" and "Dad." No wonder he used to review and correct every piece of paper that passed through his office. There used to be a saying in DC about "speaking truth to power." It should be rephrased to "speaking truth to ideology."
Ah, Rickover. A man who never had to contend with the difficulties that immigrant children face or who expereience discrimination of any sort. TIC.
Heh. Good one.
I had Rickover on the mind when I heard Ron DeSantis wanted to "shut down the Department of Energy." Really? Naval Reactors seems to be filling a pretty important roll. One could make the argument that Rickover's legacy is the best run unit of both the U.S. Navy and the government as a whole.
Then, there's the National Nuclear Security Administration. Seems like they do some useful stuff.
Worse DeSantus was a commissioned naval officer, granted he was not a line officer, or even a porkchop, but, still you'd think he'd have read somewhere that the DOE does some important work for the national defense.
I believe Rickover pre-dated the Dept. of Energy by at least a couple of decades. The Coast Guard filled an important role long before the DHS was formed. Even the Dept. of Education does some important work. I am also sure even the Ministry of Silly Walks has made worthwhile contributions to British society. But the fact that I have a few muscles remaining, even at my age, does not mean that I cannot afford to get rid of a substantial amount of my gross tonnage.
The institutions Rickover created are within the Department of Energy, frankly they ought to call it the Department of Atomic Energy.
But, the point is, we have a Presidential candidate who proposes getting rid of our national laboratories, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, and the others. He proposes shutting down the USN’s naval reactors, and the group which designs and manages our atomic weapons. Surely such a person is unqualified for the office of President.
or speaking ideology to Power
Color conscious sounds like certain people usually described as something else in the past. Who'd have thought David Duke was ahead of the times?
And the last time I checked, still needed a biological father and mother to produce human children.
That raised my eyebrows. How can you exist, without having had a Mom and Dad?
In some of the communities ravaged by fentanyl the state is taking kids, often babies, from unfit parents and putting them up for adoption. Adoptive parents are real parents even though neither of them birthed the baby.
And I would bet the adopted children refer to their adoptive parents as "Mom" and "Dad", not "Caregiver 1" and "Caregiver 2".
I would remind any moles out there that electrons never go away. Your social media contacts (whether received or sent) will last forever. I remember seeing a meta data analysis of the pre-Revolution Committees of Correspondence. If the British had had the tools of today, they could have rolled up our founding fathers before they even got started.
Blind drops to Sal from disposable phones, perhaps?
"they could have rolled up our founding fathers before they even got started."
I wouldn't be surprised if that were shown to have happened to some people in the 21st century already
For the(ir) record, I have no comment on that.
I believe this is the article you were referencing about metadata analysis.
Using Metadata to find Paul Revere
https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metadata-to-find-paul-revere/
A real eye opener.
Bingo! Thanks for doing the leg work. Imagine how easy the research will be with AI.
Already happening with Apple-iPadOSiri (AIbot) dependence in K-20 virtual classrooms.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-ai-bots-and-voice-assistants-reinforce-gender-bias/
I live in Anchorage, Alaska, which is functionally the most diverse city in the nation and likely in the world. There is no majority population in any zip code. It has the highest rate of cross cultural marriage in the US and likely the world. It is normal to be in mixed company. More than that, I personally am active in many communities - and deliberately so to maximize and promote cross cultural connections. 30 years ago my 100% Asian wife asked "you are white, I am Asian, so why do we spend most of our time in the Black community." Having immigrated from China, she was more race conscious than I am - I do NOT notice if I am the only white man in the room. Nor do I believe you can tell by looking the ancestry of most people - witness frequent surprise with personal genetic test results. What matters is what you were taught and the choices you make. In Anchorage, at least, it is not common to use different pronouns for most people. We have a sort of "don't offend and don't be offended" SOP which is to use what seems to be the most appropriate traditional pronoun and let the listener(s) correct you if it is important to them (without disputing their correction). In my view this is a secondary issue and it is unwise to either offend or to easily be offended.
I'm married to a 100% Asian wife and over my lifetime have worked for and with a diverse group of people too. Never had a problem. I believe it was because we were all mission focused and were loathe to be captured by distractions. The "don't offend and don't be offended" SOP is a good one. But pronouns? Never encountered this new pronoun phenomenon. Hope I never do. But am pretty sure I could find a polite and civil way to either handle it or to disengage. I suspect that I'd decline to play the pronoun game, though. Kind of set in my ways with standard English and my own values.
You won't use "Your Highness" as your pronoun?
As a due honorific? Maybe, I am 6'0". Mrs Flowers is 4'10". As a pronoun? Nope. "Your Highness" is a possessive pronoun coupled to a noun that used to be an adjective, much like verbs can be made into nouns by adding "-ing" ...Gerunds, I think they call them. Gerunds, Germans, Nazis. Godwin's Law. "-ing"....INGSOC. See the connections? If you think that triggering me by some fancy Jeddi mind trick into a spluttering incoherence, Kevin, think again, please. Mi devintus tajpi ĉi tion en Esperanto, por pli da klareco.
Is "Hey, you!" a proper use of pronouns?
Partly, Tim. Hey would be an interjection and you, a pronoun. Don't much care for the hijacking of grammar. The Wokesters like to repurpose words and use them as cudgels to pummel that which they hate. They can invent all the new pronouns they want, but they have no right to criminalize or punish the non-acceptance of their foolishness by we normies. If I am ever bullied into memorizing some dysfunctional dhimwit's designer pronouns and commanded to use them as silly appellations, my plan is to toss venomous protopronouns of own at xe/xer like they were Lawn Darts. Used to be a sailor in Deck Group. Got a million of them. No s___, a f_______ m______ of them.
"The Wokesters like to repurpose words"
To be fair, they are not the only ones to do so. My pet peeve is the redefinition of the word "kinetic". It seems to me that all groups develop their own jargon, and some of it is done by "borrowing" words & terms already in use.
You make a good point, Tim. I meant to impute that the Wokesters seem (to me) to re-purpose words in a such a way that obfuscates, denies reality, furthers a wicked agenda of madness rather than like some professionals do with jargon that excludes outsiders from their own special elite group and makes them feel good about themselves. On the one hand it is an attempt at mind control, dominance and the winnowing of vocabulary to delimit thought. On the other hand it is feel-good jargoning or technical job-speak.
"We have a sort of "don't offend and don't be offended" SOP"
Many years ago that used to be called "good manners" and was instilled into young humans by their "caregivers" and the village, including religious (Oh, the horror!) institutions, they lived in. That was before the great enlightenment of "wokeness" and the discovery of the importance of pronouns to the maintainance of civilization.
SCOTUS opinion today puts this diversity crap in DOD up for scrutiny and hopefully termination.
However, with the incoming CJCS an affirmative action appointee, having a track record of fanatical devotion to DEI, I fear compliance with the Constitution within DOD may be slow to come.
Might be time to review the concept of "lawful orders" and it would not surprise me to find that just about everything from the DEI zampolits and their sycophants is counter to SCOTUS definitions of what is permissible.
Are there UCMJ articles relating to issuance of unlawful orders which might be used to reverse, block or mitigate the crap being thrust upon our forces?
DEI is certainly prejudicial to good order and discipline, and while endorsed by DOD leadership, its continuation in blatantly obvious contradiction to Constitutional requirements should support strongest possible challenges to such continuation, using all the tools available.
Diversity is NOT our strength, but the destruction of cohesive unit integrity, trust in our comrades in arms, and advancement of the best qualified individuals to better lead our forces.
Huzzah!
They really should name those DIE courses because it will kill the Navy/Army/Air Force academies, as well as the services themselves.
Our Military can not afford to go woke, but that battle is already lost since the navy has an official "Drag Ambassador" and celebrates the Marxist Trans ideology.
They aren't my Father's and GrandFather's Services, they are now glorified social clubs.
The Marxists won't be happy until we've turned into the Soviet Union or China.
They don't seem to realize, or maybe they just don't care that Marxism/Communism kills ... every .... damned .....time.
Antonio Gramsci is looking up from Hell, smiling.
I'm not ashamed that I had to look up Antonio Gramsci. It's sad that he fell into Communist ideology. He seemed to be a well-read man and a scholar as well.
Ironically, he was using left-wing authoritarianism to fight right-wing authoritarianism.
And yet, here I am, sitting and listening to @KarlynBarysenko talking about Marxism and definitions of words.
Thanks for the new name to take us down the rabbit hole.
It appears his Marxist DEI friends are working to transition us into his theory about a political society, which dominates directly and coercively, and civil society, where leadership is constituted through consent.
Forced lookup 👀
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci
Do we need an Air Force Academy? They should just go to West Point.
Do we even need West Point? It's just about as screwed up as the Naval Academy.
Why can't they go to the service branch of their choice, and then when they've earned a promotion to the higher elevations, they go to an academy that will teach them not to piss in the potted plants?
Why should anyone go straight into the military as a Lieutenant when they've never been in the military and/or know things work?
I mean, people don't go to the police academy go into the force as a swat captain. They go in at the entry-level position and earn their way upwards.
Victor Davis Hanson, in a recent podcast, states that wokeness had infected the USNA by the early 2000s. His podcast can be found here.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-victor-davis-hanson-show/id1570380458?i=1000618472652
I'm sure many of you will recognize some of the names that VDH drops, while he also refrains from naming others. Rather surprised that the facility composition is heavily civilian, while most have military backgrounds, they are not AD like the other academies. I've always known USNA to be the least martial of the military academies, however the pendulum swing to be more ideologically aligned with elite civilian universities is disturbing.
The Navy will always be “less martial” than the Army. The skills and attributes of a mariner are different from a warrior. A sailor has attributes of both. An Infantryman can devote all his training to combat in a way the Boatswain’s mate cannot.
Regarding "STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE ". Read the syllabus (about 9 pages) then read Thomas' concurring opinion. Starting on page 49, Justice Thomas offers an opinion.
USAFA grad many decades ago. This service wide institutional slide has been a long time in the making, and yes, this youngster needs to be very, very careful if he wants to stay in the AF. While I've seen a couple of cultural events lately that appear hopeful, the difference between votes and ballots may fatally wound the nation's ability to change direction via the electoral process. Not to mention 30 years of K-12 education promoting the same information. Direct involvement in a major conflict can only highlight and worsen the cultural divisions. Can't help but wonder what's on the other side of a military disaster a couple of orders of magnitude worse that the Afghanistan retreat / withdrawal / debacle.
Sixty six years since Ike desegregated the schools. Fifty nine years since the Civil Rights Act.
The number of people graduating with degrees has increased, yet test scores have decreased and colleges still needed affirmative action.
If only the people running the schools had concentrated on their customers instead of their collective bargaining power.
Social promotion was a failure. Only 3% of African-American men have STEM degrees and African-American women are overrepresented in low paying occupational fields.
Progressive Jim Crow is alive and well.
Used final phrase above to lookup related articles.
Picked one of three (3) without much critical thinking...
Listen to Wood’s interview with WGLT's Charlie Schlenker below:
https://www.wglt.org/show/wglts-sound-ideas/2019-06-17/isu-professors-new-book-reveals-jim-crows-legacy-alive-in-todays-justice-system
I would go so far as to say that African-Americans/blacks/colored/etc. children were better off (and safer) going to those bad old segregated schools than they are now going to "integrated" schools. For some reason I have always thought that black kids did not need to hang around white kids in order to learn. My bad.
We'll have to agree to disagree.
I am not convinced we actually disagree. If we do, I am blaming you (insert smiley or goofy emoji here), because I agree with everything you wrote in that comment.
Back in the old days we had moles among us who told the Captain everything we grunts did. He then picked out the ones he did not like and put our names on a list with labels, the most common were Bad attitude to the Corps, Instigator among the troops (That was mine LOL I was a 17 year old skinny kid no one paid attention to except to bust rank on me) Instigator LOL what a moron, We found it one day on the Captains desk while cleaning his Office.
Really changed our whole respect for our Leaders to zero.
Then we had CID they took SSgt's and made them PFC and inserted them in the ranks to tattletale.
on the dopers, juicers, the KKK, Latino gangs and De Mau Mau.
You had to second guess every Marine you came upon and trust was shot.
Life was interestingly boring.
End of the Vietnam war and they looked for reasons to cut manpower.
Sounds like East Berlin, Feldwebel Bear. The 70s, after the Vietnam War ended, were a horrible time for our Navy too. The Peace Dividend, drug abuse, old timers throwing in the towel "Becuz Zumwalt done stolt our Authoritay!"(he didn't), soured race relations, capped by Jimmy Carter and his malaise. I was on an CVA (commissioned in WWII) and assigned a 100 day tour as an MAA section leader because all my equipment had gone to the Depot for repair during a yard period. How bad was it? We were assigned to the Quarterdeck at Liberty Call to check for haircuts, grooming and dress infractions so that LPO's, Chief's, DIVO's didn't have to do that at morning muster and the OOD didn't have to get his hands dirty on the Quarterdeck. During the day we were to patrol the ship and hand out chits for haircuts and uniforms and to remind Chief's and LPO's that they owed us a body for a previously announced working party. We were supposed to wear some surplus police helmets and carry billy clubs. We never did, just looked too damned Stasi. At night we patrolled looking for dopers. You could follow your nose, but they were hard to catch. We put drunks to bed. Night was the time I went through all those infraction chits that were 72 hours old and had not been responded too and placed those sailors, who I did not even know, on report for failure to______. Every duty night, I wrote up ~20 shipmates. We MAA's were hated. No matter..."I vas chuss followink orders". What I saw: Looking for dope and contraband but found turds; 5 arson fires (post office, starboard refueling station, port forward 5" magazine, Supply berthing...one was not on my duty day), argumentative males in need of a shave but had no shaving chit for the "bumps" from the Corpsman, responded to a "shots fired" but found only surly minorities who ain't seen nothing, 1 death by falling 80 feet onto a bollard, innumerable XOI's and Captain's Mast's, most fun: rousting out people for 2130 Sweepers and trying to figure out where the bags of trash in the Hanger Bay came from so we could get their owners to take them to the dumpster on the pier. Completed my 100-day tour hating my Navy and myself, had decided to get out after 9 years service. As luck would have it, I got word that I was promoting to Chief on about day 95 of that MAA tour. My BM1 boss who used to rag on me became my new friend and I transferred back to Frigates and stayed for 26. Yeah, Bear, I was there in East Berlin too. Solidarität.
Fun times LOL!