Whenever controversy breaks out over some new Progressive lunacy, a daily occurrence of late, the normal community struggles to explain what is happening, without writing it off to insanity. Usually, the old tropes are deployed as a way of labeling it as nuts so everyone can move on. “Marxism!” “They just want power!” “It’s the radical Progressive agenda!” “The Chicago way!”
Frankly, I think the next person who mentions Saul Alinsky should be pushed up against the wall and shot. But, that’s why I refrain from watching Fox News or listening to talk radio. I know those people are, for the most part, on my side of the fight, but I just can’t take the repetition of catch phrases that has become what passes for Conservatism these days.
That aside, the more thoughtful outside the fever swamps struggle to come to grips with what’s going on. After all, the people hooting and bellowing about the use of pronouns with regards to Bruce Jenner seem like sensible people. They went to college. They have respectable jobs in the media. They function in their day-to-day lives without a custodian. How can they not see the madness of our age?
Take for example this story about Ranger School. The short version is, in the name of fairness, girls were allowed to enter Ranger School and all twenty washed out the first time. Eight were invited back and they washed out again. Three were invited to give it a third shot. Strongly hinted, but not explicitly said, is the plan to maybe lower the standards so the girls can pass and become Rangers.
The Rangers are the best of the best, and being a Ranger means passing a physical test that pushes body and mind to the breaking point. If women can’t do it, the argument goes, then they shouldn’t be Rangers.
But there is another opinion quietly being voiced as well: that Ranger School is more akin to a rite of passage – an opportunity for men to “thump their chest,” as one Ranger puts it – than a realistic preparation for leading in war. That women can actually make Ranger units more effective. And that the standards that keep them out are outdated.
This, of course, is an attempt to move the goal posts. Ranger school was designed to cull the weak from the strong, both physically and mentally, so the remainder is an elite corp of fighters. This is not unique to the US military or to modern militarizes. Germanic tribes utilized a form of special forces against the Roman Legions. The Spartans organized their society around segregating their elite warriors into special units.
The question, therefore, is why in the world would the military want to risk degrading these units in an effort to include women. You’ll note that it is just assumed that inclusion of women would make the units more effective. Nowhere will you find anyone providing a reason why that is so. It is just a given like the laws of thermodynamics or gravity.
The question remains. Why?
Normal people would look at this and conclude the obvious. That is, point of the spear soldiering is the most physically and mentally demanding thing a human can do. Men are larger, stronger and possess greater cardiovascular capacity so men will dominate women in the physical aspects. Men are also more aggressive and violent, characteristics that come in handy when trying to kill people.
The members of the New Religion, however, believe biology is an illusion and that sexes are an artifact from a bygone era. There are no “men” or “women” in a strict sense. People are “assigned” a sex at birth and that colors their development into what we think of as men and women. That’s why the “women” are failing Ranger School.
Further, perfect equality is the optimal result of humanity, the true nature of man. Therefore unequal results must mean we’re doing something wrong. Our society is arranged in an immoral or unjust way causing these variations in results. That’s key to understanding the worldview of these people. They have a mystical vision of the perfect human society, which drives them to keep rearranging things in order to achieve it.
That’s why Ranger School will eventually be turned into diversity seminar. It’s effectiveness as a fighting unit is of no concern to the New Religion. What is of ultimate concern, the all consuming concern, is that the unit is perfectly equal and there is no difference between the members, regardless of what “sex” they were assigned at birth. If it is impossible to achieve such a thing, then it must be destroyed. An offense to the great spirit cannot be tolerated.
That’s the other part of the New Religion. Their destruction of social institutions without the slightest idea of how to replace them is not nihilism. Much like fanatical Muslims, fanatical Progressives see the elimination of that which offends their beliefs as part of the march to perfection. The Mohammedan thinks that end is to dwell with Allah for eternity. Progressives see the end as the eschaton, which can only come about when the imperfections are removed.
As an old Special Forces Intelligence Analyst, I will go against all the laws, rules, and logic about predicting anything. Here, I will predict that at least two of the female candidates who will participate in the Ranger Class commencing on June 21, 2015, will pass the Benning, Eglin, and the Dahlonega phases. One might become injured, but at least two will pass- barely, but enough to be given the highly regarded Ranger Tab.
You will not believe be pressure the Ranger “Lane Graders” will be under to change scores and observations. I feel for each of the officers and NCO’s who have anything to do with the evaluations. No problem with the 40 % of male candidates who fail, and have their bags packed ASAP. The sights are zeroed in on the Ranger School Commander.
RS, USA Special Forces,(Ret)
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There was a time when the merest mention of the female in the Q Course was all it took to get an SF type to drop his cool guy demeanor and sputter and curse like the infantryman he probably once was.
What is to be done. I think that the only choice left for Europe is Putinism (fascism, really)… a strong man surrounded by some oligarchical political system. Some one was carping on another blog about Putin’s annexation of the Crimea. My response was to come back in ten years and tell me what the Russian birthrates, mortality rates, suicide rates, etc. are. People like to be on the winning team. Even Reagan’s little invasion of Grenada did much to boost U.S. morale.
I think we still have more options left on the table in the U.S. and there are still politicians that “get it” and who, unlike the few limited government conservatives in Europe, are fairly close to the mainstream. One option is to start saying “no.” Ed in Texas brought up the Marines, and since we went to an all volunteer force, they have been the masters of saying no. They have fewer women in their corps, have hung on to more of the old traditions, and say to hell with jointness when it is to their advantage. I am not sure why this is so hard for the rest of us. I guess we all just want to fit in. So we join all of our friends on Facebook and say, “Sure, gay marriage is great. We can’t discriminate against ‘love,’ right?”
Another technique is Eisenhower’s “expand the playing field” dictum. The climate change “deniers” have done quite a good job of this. While the climate change warriors have relied on the easily manipulable weather station data, the “deniers” keep throwing tree ring data, the data from the pesky satellites that were supposed to “prove” global warming once and for all, even measurements of ice caps on Mars. Two things have prevented their success. First, no one ever expected that the climate change warriors would just start lying and falsifying data on a truly Stalinist scale. Second, deniers are preaching to the converted. The Cult considers even listening to the denier arguments to be heresy. The broad middle is too busy searching the innerwebs for nekkid pictures and cat photos to really care.
We’re stalemated all around. Nobody wants to contemplate violence. In a black mood, I once wrote that a 2nd American Civil War would be ((911+Baghdad c.2007)*Gettysburg)^Nukes (with apologies to Team America). I’ve also contemplated that Conservatives will simply outbreed the Cult. But the Cult has preempted that by importing millions of very fertile 3rd World communalists who don’t share the Cult’s worldview but will vote for the handouts. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the the Amish and Mennonites I see buying up less productive farm land in the Northeast and increasingly in the Midwest. Maybe that’s the answer. Colonize the depopulated rural areas. The Cult’s writ doesn’t extend much past the cities and the suburbs. So leave the populated areas and build a new civilization in the hinterlands. Think of it as a civilizational Walmart strategy. Unlike every other discount chain that challenged Kmart, Walmart built its strength in the outlands before moving into the suburban markets. Kmart missed Walmart’s rise and was doomed before it could react.
The funny thing is that Alinskyite tactics of ‘character assassination’ are extremely well used among modern conservatives (neocons, zionists).
Character assassination has been used since the dawn of time. The upside of killing a man’s name is that if you’re wrong, you can always rehabilitate him when needed. Character assassination as a way to settle disputes is a great leap forward in human relations. Otherwise, our elections would end with the murder of the losing candidate and his followers.
Might explain one reason why the US Govt. is so keen to use private combat contractors in its War on Something.
They can hire who they please and don’t have to appease anyone.
I think you’ve hit on the answer. Privatize the Armed Forces! This would not only eliminate all the issues with diversity but could even stop the slow starvation of the forces as their budgets are being squeezed by the Democrats to feed their core constituents.
Privatized military would be able to present countries like Saudi Arabia and Iraq with a cost-plus bill for services rendered. Long term military commitments such as South Korea could be converted to a very profitable annual maintenance contract. The Baltic states being menaced by Russia wouldn’t have to deal with a recalcitrant State Department or White House, begging for a few crates of MRE. But, instead, the finest examples of Air and Ground Military Might would be at their beck and call. At very reasonable rates (compared to outright conquest or annexation).
What’s informative is a couple of months ago the Marines had a similar experience, in a number of women (the entire group enrolled) failing out of the Basic Officer’s Course at Quantico. There was a collective gasp, and it sort of died away, mostly because the Marines have really good PR.
Evidently the Social Justice Warriors then set out looking for a softer target. BTW, this is all happening now so that the guys with all the stars at the five sided funny farm can show that they’re committed to diversity.
I think I have a solution to the Ranger problem which would also address the Navy Seal problem, the Firefighter problem etc. We need trans gender recruits for these positions. Men transition to women and they they could pass the physical requirements while satisfying the cultural requirements. A younger Bruce Gender would have had little trouble in Ranger school as a tranny.
Believe it or not, we went through something similar to this 30 years ago, only then the school was SF Q School. I don’t remember all the details but at least one woman was foisted on the spooks because of equal opportunity. I think she failed and that was the end of that for a time.
Part of the Army’s problem is badge collectors. One would think that admission to the demanding school for Infantry would be restricted to, the Infantry. But no, you can walk down any aisle in the PX and run into numerous non grunt types who have earned their tab. And the do earn it, that’s not my point. This applies 95% of the time to officers. You see, Ranger School is also touted as a leadership school, which is why tankers, engineers, aviators and cadets are awarded slots. Now comes the rub with the women. In the days when the WACs were disbanded, they were integrated in the basic branches. Suddenly they had to compete for promotion with men who had greater opportunity for command and senior leader slots.
Women don’t get promoted to general unless they meet the same criteria as men. But to the women and their allies the lack of opportunity was a high hurdle. One way to show your cred is to have a chest full of qualification school badges, like the Ranger Tab, airborne wings, pathfinder, air assault etc. Notice anything about those badges, yup you guessed it infantry centric. If a woman makes it through Ranger School, she is now technically more qualified to lead an infantry platoon than 50% of the lieutenants in the infantry, because they didn’t get the chance to go to Ranger School.
That’s what’s going on.
Full disclosure, I was not in the infantry and did not go to Ranger school.
I was going to get into that a bit, but it probably deserves a post of its own. It’s a great example of how reformers, particularly Progressive reformers, not only fail to scan the horizon, but often carry on as if there is no horizon. When soldiering was a male business, the rules for developing and maintaining the hierarchy were primarily based on merit. The best leaders of men in combat rose to the top. Politics was always there and loads of bad leaders slithered to the top, but eventually the need to fight and win culled them from the service.
Once they integrated women, all of the old rules became a problem. No one bothered to think about how incongruous it was to have female generals. People who have never led and were physically incapable of leading men into battle would need some other way to seek promotion. If instead of women we were talking about amputees, everyone would say the obvious solution is to bar amputees from the service, at least the war fighting side of it.
“Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history.”
― Will And Ariel Durant