No Time for Woke Name Games at Sea

everyone will be dumber for reading this post

There are times when you read something that you simply cannot believe is NOT parody…but then you realize we are dealing with the soft-headed, Anglosphere academic left.

One of the worst cadres of this politicized approach to discussion the left bring in to the policy space are the self-appointed ‘word police’ Zampolits. These people, in a constantly spiraling cycle of virtue signaling, seem to like nothing more than declaring that this word or phrase is now verboten, only used by backward, mean, retrograde personalities (which is everyone else in their mind), and if you wish to be seen as intelligent, progressive, and part of the preferred friend-group in the middle school lunchroom, then you must use their more enlightened phrases. (…as they wait to feel the warmth of unearned power wash over their intellectually insecure selves)

This academic fetish has leaked into industry and the military over the last few decades, ruining some people in the process, promoted by bullies in the fight, and enabled by cowards in positions of leadership.

This example is gobsmackingly infuriating because it attacks a friend of the Midrats Podcast, and silly because…well…BEHOLD!

We’ve used the word ‘seablindness’ as one word or two since at least 2010. Seven months ago, we did a Midrats podcast with Dr. James W.E. Smith actually titled, Seablindness with Dr. James W.E. Smith. Serious people have used this very serious term for decades in order to clearly define a critical weakness in the drive to secure seapower’s access to secure seas.

From the UK’s Naval Review…just look at this pile of pants, bunch of a55, from Callum O’Connell. I’ll let you google him yourself.

Hard to believe but, yes, this is real.

To summarize:

1. “Seablindness” (that every serious person I know uses and understands) is negative, pessimistic, has no positive vision, and is intellectually arrogant.

2. “Ocean Literacy” (that I have never heard mentioned, ever, by people serious or not) is UN approved (like Hamas), optimistic, and clear visioned.

Ummm…no it isn’t. First of all, it has twice as many syllables, as often happens when leftists want to replace good words for their words. It obscures the topic, identifies no problems, and makes you wonder if we are talking about novels, biology, or trivia.

It gets worse.

I’m not sure referencing increasingly disgraced and functionally ineffective International Organizations, Governmental Organizations, and Non-Governmental Organizations is the way to convince anyone the utility of your point. Appeals to authority is cring-worthy enough. Appeals to disgraced and ineffective authority is just embarrassing.

It is also clear, along with concepts such as “Integrated Deterrence” and its fellow travelers, that this is simply a way to try to wedge away the icky military people from national security issues that would be much better put under the primary world view that All the Right People™ experienced the summer before their senior year of high school while attending Model UN.

Of course, because we are dealing with academic leftists here, you knew this was coming:

Of course, we must be sensitive to inclusivity. Of course.

Also, is it just me, but does this have to be read in a slightly sexualized heavy breathing voice?

I wish AI could read that in her voice.

At the end, what this really is about is … not words, but thought. It isn’t really about changing words, but like all Marxist-infused efforts, at the end it is about control. If you control language, you control thought.

A direct word like seablindness describes a condition that needs fixed and if not fixed, has consequences. Ocean Literacy does not describe a condition positive or negative. You can act or not act on it. You can broaden or narrow it, but one thing you can’t do is define a condition to be met or finished. It means what those who speak it want at the moment.

Worse, by his own admission, it is “not a major shift in action.” So, this is just saying,

“Happy is a word used by the good people, glad is a word used by bad people. I use happy and so should you if you want to be a good person. Please credit me for helping make you an enlightened person. Now, join me in attacking and smearing people who use the word glad. Today is Day Zero.”

Just on a matter of principle because of Callum’s ham-fisted, passive-aggressive, not subtle smear of the good Dr. James W.E. Smith and…every navalist (in the American context) of worth their salt in Christendom, another word that I am sure leads Callum to his fainting couch, needs to continue to use seablindness.

Callum should apologize and repent.