It must be a challenge to be military recruiters in our day. Their job is to balance putting the best spin on their branch of service, while not creating a distorted reality for the recruit. The constantly changing environment of the military makes this tricky.
Friday is Veterans Day. For us old timers, the past rules for military life seemed pretty clear. Do what you're told. Do it well. Or get out. For those candidating to be officers, I would guess the dropout rate was different from enlisted draftees of my era. Plenty begrudged their call to service.
Two classes of enlisted personnel emerged during the Vietnam era. There were the ones drafted who accepted the choice of Uncle Sam for a two year commitment. Usually that meant the Army or Marines. Guys like me opted for the service branch that they believed was the best match. That “choice” extended the term of service.
So the greatest number of grudge holders seemed to be those who were drafted and let the government decide. But not always. Resentment arises whenever our choices are taken away. And the military takes LOTS of choices away.
Times in the military have changed. To grasp to what degree these changes have impacted our various branches of service, I recommend reading an article by Thomas Spoehr, a retired Army lieutenant general who now serves as director of the Center for National Defense at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. The article is titled, “The Rise of Wokeness in the Military.”
The earliest usage of the word “woke” in a political sense first appeared in a 1962 New York Times Magazine article by William Melvin Kelley. It was titled “If You’re Woke You Dig It.” By the 2010s, being woke included an awareness of social inequalities and now involved identity politics and social justice. White privilege and slavery reparations are commonly discussed.
As General Spoehr explains, various forms of “wokeness” have been advancing in the military for several years. He believes the ideology undermines military readiness, saying “It undermines cohesiveness by emphasizing differences based on race, ethnicity, and sex. It undermines leadership authority by introducing questions about whether promotion is based on merit or quota requirements. It leads to military personnel serving in specialties and areas for which they are not qualified or ready. And it takes time and resources away from training activities and weapons development that contribute to readiness.”
As for recent examples of the wokeness problem? In January 2021, President Biden signed an executive order that opened military service to all transgender individuals. Since then, the Biden administration has decreed that active members of the military can take time off from their duties to obtain sex-change surgeries. All related hormones and drugs are at taxpayer expense.
General Spoehr cites changing fitness standards of the military, purportedly with a woke goal “leveling the playing field.” He writes, “The Army recently lowered its minimum passing standards for pushups to an unimpressive total of ten and increased its minimum two-mile run time from 19 to 23 minutes. The new Space Force is considering doing away with periodic fitness testing altogether.”
In 2021, Navy sailors had to watch videos to understand the proper way of using personal pronouns. Service members were instructed to create a “safe space for everybody” by using “inclusive language.” Gender-neutral job titles may follow.
Last summer, multiple media outlets reported on training materials featuring the problems of “whiteness.” These were found at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. One training slide read: “In order to understand racial inequality and slavery, it is first necessary to address whiteness.”
(A link to the article from General Spoehr is below.)
The prophet Hosea wrote, “Let whoever is wise understand these things, and whoever is insightful recognize them. For the ways of the LORD are right, and the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them.” (Hosea 14:9, CSB)
I’m hoping our country’s military finds it way back to the rightf way. It is then I will offer my salute…to sanity.
That’s Forward Thinking.
You can find a number of YouTube episodes and podcasts of Mark’s program, Moving People Forward at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCosyuBzdSh1mXIas_kGY2Aw?
For more information on the Elfstrand Group, please visit www.elfstrandgroup.com
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