Woke Military

I believe it was last summer when I first ran across an article highlighting what the Navy is planning.

It appears that the Navy "leadership" has let the cat out of the bag when it comes to diversity.

I am old enough to remember when promotion boards, performance reports, and quarterly and annual awards packages* included photographs. I am also old enough to remember these photos were eliminated from said packages so the people rating performance, promotion qualifications, and so forth could focus solely on the content contained in the packages. It was done for the express purpose of eliminating any bias board members may have had. Kind of a content of character type of thing.

It seems the Navy now wants to go backwards by including photographs within the packages. And they doing this for the sole purpose of diversity.

Typically, when a promotion board, or awards board, gathers, they will assign point values to various categories. Leadership. Job performance. Extracurricular activities. It is subjective. Often times the difference between an award winning package will come down to how well the author (the supervisor) expresses their thoughts about their subordinate. But other than that, scores were given in an unbiased manner. Now the Navy wants to give points based solely on diversity. I am not aware of how many diversity points a package will receive. But when you consider there is often just a point or two difference between first and second, a couple of diversity points will make a difference.

One thing I will give the Navy, it is leading the way in DoD's whole woke movement. Not too long ago it was leaked that the briefings being given to naval personnel contained content that stated basically white, Christian, conservative men were to be considered undesirables.

The one area that I do fault Trump: He was a poor judge of character. That might be a bit too harsh to say about a guy who has earned, lost, and earned again billions of dollars over the years. And he did this working with people that could help him make that money. He had to be sure that when he got involved in a business venture the people around were good at what they did, and that goals aligned. It really does boil down to his inexperience with government and military personnel. He had to depend on swamp denizens to recommend, to him, people that were "worthy" of promotion and higher levels of responsibilities. In doing so, he left the door open for people like Gen Milley, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He too often saw in the general staff what he saw in the regular troops: patriotic American men and women who only wanted to serve and do what is best for this nation. As it turns out, with rare exceptions, the people who preside over the military are not your "run of the mill" Americans. They do not have America, and the military men and women best interests at heart. But Trump is an optimist, and wants to see the best qualities in people. I'm sure in his mind his thoughts were how could these generals not love America as much as he does. In the troops he saw this love and devotion. He most likely thought the generals were cut from the same cloth. As it turns out, he was wrong. These generals do not love America the patriotic people do.

So now we have what we have in the senior leadership positions in the military and other government departments. People more focused on how they can be more woke than the next guy. It is an unmitigated disaster for our military and the men and women who serve honorably. Gen Milley has turned out to be nothing more than a "woke" do gooder.

I am most certainly glad I am no longer in the military. Not sure it would go well for me. Actually, I know for a fact it would not go well for me. My promotion chances were effectively ended because I wasn't sufficiently woke enough, although that wasn't the term used back then. I had told a young troop that if I said "drop and give me twenty", that is exactly what they would do. Apparently that didn't sit well with her, she snitched me out to my supervisor. It was recommended that I apologize. I refused. And that was that. On my next performance evaluation, I was docked on leadership. Looking back, do I regret not apologizing? Sometimes I do. But I was fighting an uphill battle for promotion already. I could have adjusted some of my attitude, but at what cost? Knowing what I know now, I'm fairly certain I wouldn't change.

*Packages (or jackets) are what is submitted to evaluation boards. These packages contain performance narratives on which these personnel boards judge whether an individual (or individuals) deserves promotion or to be selected for performance awards (i.e. quarterly and annual awards).