Diversity Thursday

Today we return to the subject of the addition to the CNO's reading list of a book that openly calls for the most sectarian view of race. Worse, it calls for the official application of racism in to official policy.

For those who have not read his book, let me pull out how Ibram X. Kendi defines things in his book, "How to be an Antiracist," the book in question. 

Words mean things, and when people redefine words, you need to pay special attention;

 

Now operationalize that concept in your mind every time in our Navy you hear, "equity." From Flight Surgeons to Nuke Power School - operationalize the above concept and how, once people read this CNO recommended book, they move to reflect that in how we do business.

Outside our Navy, by that example everything is racist from medical school, to the NBA, cattle ranching, and the music world.

To accept that definition is to either encourage unending sectarian conflict and activated "one drop rule" discrimination based on race, creed, color, national origin, etc ... which naturally, will lead to sectarian conflict.

To inject Kendi's world view is to invite conflict. Indeed, that is exactly where it wants to go. Chaos and conflict are opportunities for those who desire power and control.

Now to yesterday's hearing. 

You can watch the full hearing here or here, but below is a cut specifically to the 01:08 point where the CNO is asked about the disgraceful addition of the divisive and sectarian Ibram X. Kendi to his reading list.

It is one thing to see the obviously flustered CNO try to maneuver around his own minefield, but I think it is much more revealing to read the transcript;

Congressman Lamborn (R-CO): "Admiral Gilday, I have to ask you about something first, that I'm concerned about and a lot of people in the civilian world. I sent you a letter with two dozen people on it concerned that you recently added several books to the Navy's professional reading list promoting Critical Race Theory and one of these books is Ibram X. Kendi's "How to be an Antiracist" and it argues that the entire American system is corrupted from top to bottom by racial prejudices which account for all differences in outcomes in out society and one sentence out of that book says that, "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." Now, I understand that this is a voluntary reading list, but how does exposing to our Sailors to the idea that they are either oppressors or the oppressed, and that we must actively discriminate to make up for past discrimination improves our Navy's readiness and lethality for great power competition?"

CNO Gilday: "Sir, initially you mentioned Critical Race Theory. I am not a theorist, I'm the Chief of Naval Operations, but I can tell you is factually on a substantial enough of time talking to Sailors there's racism in the Navy just like racism in our country and the way we're going to get after it is to be honest about it and that's what we're doing and that's one of the reasons that book is on the list doesn't mean I have any expectation that anybody believe or support everything that Mr. Kendi states in his book. I don't support everything that Kendi says, but the key point here is the Sailors in our Navy, we have to be able  to think critically. They have to be able to look outwardly at China and Russia and they have to understand what these societies, why those societies who are potential dangers to the United States inwardly. We have to understand ourselves and we have to understand critically that we value diversity, and I thought okay..."

Lamborn: "Admiral, I agree that we should have a robust and a great discussion and any racism uprooted and taken away. I absolutely agree and I endorse that, but should we have future discrimination? Do you, don't you disagree that particular statement, do you?" 

Gilday: "Sir, I have to look at the context of it. I'm not trying to be evasive, but I don't, as I mentioned, I don't support everything Kendi asserts, I don't believe everything that I read. I think that I hope, I think that everyone has to be in a position to weigh facts from fiction. Even our Sailors, they're bombarded every day from misinformation, much of it comes from China and Russia on this issue that's getting in our national psyche. I'm trying to get after it in the Navy."

Lamborn: "OK, well I hope that's one statement you don't endorse and maybe we can follow up on that."

There is so much to unpack here, and so much that is revealing. I can't cover it in one post, and if you've watched the clip and read the transcript, the problems with the CNO's response and understanding are self-evident.

Let me pick my top issues.

Theory: I'm sorry, but the CNO specifically and Flag Officers in general damn sure better be theorists. That is their job.

You have to understand and execute the practical application of theory; just war theory; deterrence theory; recruitment theory; etc. The oft mentioned, "Project Overmatch" is a theory. Alliances are based on theory. Most of what the late great Wayne Hughes taught us was theory.

Sorry, that dog don't hunt CNO.

Kendi: OK Admiral, now let's get to why of all authors you have Kendi on your list. If you don't support all of what Kendi asserts, what do you support that he asserts such that you would put it on your reading list? If you want Sailors to think critically, where are the books out there that provide a different view than Kendi on the topic of how to address racism so our Sailors can critically weigh his ideas against others? If that is your desire, then you've failed. If that isn't your desire, then it is clear what you are doing - endorsing political sectarianism - intentionally or unintentionally.

Misinformation: What specific examples of misinformation that our Sailors see daily on racism is coming from China and Russia that you think Kendi's work is helpful with? Are people entitled to state that the ideas, examples, and opinions about the USA - its people and institutions - in Kendi's book are themselves "misinformation?" 

This very revealing exchange - there have been more and I hope there will be more - clearly tells us we have one of two things, or both: 

1) Either the CNO is fully engaged in Kendi's view of our nation and it's people, or... 

2) ...he has decided to let the Navy's branch of the diversity industry bully him in to including his and similar works so they will not raise trouble and call him nasty names.

Either answer to the above is unacceptable.

Yes it matters. The United States of American is an experiment in self-governance by a gloriously polyglot people. The only way this will work is if the people see themselves as Americans first, and believe that their government will treat them as individuals; equal to all other citizens. We've spent the entire history of our republic striving to get better at this ideal and have been more successful in this regard than any other nation in the history of the world. 

As we approach the middle of the 21st Century, if we turn from the concept of judging people by the content of their character instead of their race, creed, color, national origin, or other sectarian divisions, and turning back towards lower-brainstem sectarianism, we are heading to a very dark place. No society that encouraged sectarianism amongst its people has ever survived. It always leads to division, and usually rivers of blood.

To inject that view in to a nation's military, as opposed to suppressing it, is the height of foolishness and greases the path towards self-destruction.

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UPDATE: Later on in the hearing, Rep. Banks (R-IN) also weighed in to the topic. 

The CNO comes off even worse.

 

Diversity Thursday

Today we're going to build off of last week's DivThu that was focused on the CNO, Admiral Giday, USN.

We are going to tie in the connection between Critical Race Theory, Antiracism, and Marxism - topics everyone is talking around for reasons best explained by them if you can get them to actually answer a question.

If you missed last week, click here and read it, watch the videos, then come back,

We'll leave last week at the House, and go to the CNO in the Senate in this remarkable exchange with Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR).

The CNO did not answer the question. He just repeated talking points from last week. He brings up unrelated topics ... as if Kendi's work has anything to do with critical thinking, China or Russia.

No other side contra to Kendi's world view is on the reading list that one can reference to have a discussion about the issue, or "think critically." There is no balance here at all. The CNO has chosen a side. He has become political on a domestic issue, dragging his Navy along with him. 

The CNO has read Kendi, I'll take him at his word, and by all indications is a true believer. Hoist that onboard and accept it. I have.

From here on out it is important to remember that when the CNO uses the words, "racism" and "equity," he does not define it as you and I do - but as Kendi does,

In his book,"How to be an Antiracist," Kendi defines racism as;

Racism is a marriage of racist policies and racist ideas that produces and normalized racial inequities. 

Next, equity: 

Racial equity is when two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing. An example of racial equity would be if there were relatively equitable percentages of all three racial groups living in owner occupied homes...

Apply that concept to nuclear power school, medical schools, as well as biathlon and NBA teams. You can only get there by using a 1920's KKK definition or race married with strict quotas.

That is the remedy being injected right in to the veins of our Navy.

What a shame. Many (D) oppose the Navy because a larger Navy was a Trump thing, and as such it must be opposed and resisted because orange man bad. Now we have many natural allies of our Navy on the (R) side not all that sympathetic to other issues the CNO may bring up because in word and action, the Navy now seems the most woke of all the services.

Then again, maybe not. Perhaps we have a savior.

Then this Wednesday we had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, USA up in the House. 

Again, we have unrelated talking points that clearly show that they do not know what they are reading, if they have read it in full. Mostly the Chairman and CNO sound like they are just repeating what their briefers from the DOD/DON branch of the diversity industry told them. "White rage?" That isn't in Kendi, and wasn't about the events of 1/6/21. There are all sorts of strange defections here. Watch it yourself.

He brings up Mao, Marx, and Lenin. Huh. Funny he should say that.

I want to bring to your attention a 4-minute segment from a podcast by Jonah Goldberg from last week. You can listen to the full podcast here if you want, but this segment from ~the 16-20 minute mark are germane. 

Here's the transcript;

“The Ibram X. Kendi, I think that’s his name, the foremost guy in this anti-racism stuff. That’s basically,  if that is what we are calling Critical Racism theory, right, which is that, this anti-racism thing that it doesn’t matter wether if you don’t bigotry in you heart, that if you don’t affirmatively support what he and his milieu of activists define as anti-racist policies, then you are objectively racist. 

And, people keep asking why does this has anything to do with, why do people call this Marxist, actually I was had a long conversation with my wife about this the other day. To the extent it draws on Marxism, which it does as a matter of intellectual history, even though I doubt one in a thousand people who talk about Critical Race Theory as a good thing could explain to you what its roots in Marxism are, but it goes back to this idea of Material Conditions that is in Marx and a lot of Marxist thought.

It’s very much like this anti-racism stuff in this way. It used to be Marxists when they had their conferences or  gave their speeches or whatever, that would say, “It is objectively true that…”, right, and they would argue that, “it is objectively true” because they liked to use the phrase “It is objectively true..” because it conjured, it drew upon the myth that Marxism was scientific. This has nothing to do with one person’s opinion or a contest of values, they always liked to steal authority on the cheap by claiming it was scientific. 

That’s largely gone now, but instead what’s left is this same sort of Marxist argument they used to make which is that if you were not with the program of the communists or the socialists or whatever, and you had a point of view that wasn’t for the revolutionary overthrow or radical revolutionary transformation of society, then you were objectively on the side of the ruling class, the aristocracy, the industrial class or what Randy Weinegarten called the ownership class. 

That’s where this whole thing about class consciousness comes out of in that is where you are part of the proletariate, the working class, the lumpen proletariate, all those kind of things, once you achieve class consciousness, once you actually see the exploitation inherent in the system, then of course you will act in solidarity with the other members of your class for the overthrow of the established order, and if you don’t agree with all of that, then you are objectively on the side of the oppressors. 

So that’s the psychological-rhetorical trick that Critical Race Theorists use or at least Anti-racist theorists use when they talk about race insofar that they say that we have a monopoly on the truth. We have a monopoly on what constitutes racist policy and not racist policy and if you don’t affirmatively side with us in pushing anti-racist policies, and philosophies, and ideas, then you are objectively on the side of racism and it doesn’t even matter whether you are personally racist, because you are on the wrong side of the defining Material Conditions of how society is organized. 

That would be wrong enough and bad enough except for the fact that because most of these people don’t actually understand that that they are mimicking Marxist arguments, they take it an step further in they say that not only are you on the side of racism, but you must actually be a racist in your heart if you disagree with us."

Interesting times we find ourselves in. You were warned here every Thursday.

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UPDATE: Highly recommend everyone take a time to listen to or read the transcript of the recent Hugh Hewitt interview with Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) on Chairman Milley's comments.

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UPDATE II - Electric Boogaloo: This Solzhenitsyn quote seems germane.

“And he who is not sufficiently courageous to defend his soul — don’t let him be proud of his ‘progressive’ views, and don’t let him boast that he is an academician or a people’s artist, a distinguished figure or a general. Let him say to himself: I am a part of the herd and a coward. It’s all the same to me as long as I’m fed and kept warm.”

Diversity Thursday

A foundation stone of DivThu for over a decade and a half is this simple concept: in a multi-ethnic and multi-racial nation, the most destructive thing that can be done by leaders who value it is to encourage people to divide themselves along racial, ethnic, or other sectarian lines. No society in human history has ever prospered by doing so,

Martin Luther King Jr. was right, the only solution is to judge someone by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

We once extended this concept to include race, creed, color and nation origin. Not only is that the only way to promote unity, and from that unity receive national strength and cohesion, but also it is fair. Regardless of what you personally do in the course of your life, you cannot change your race, creed, color or national origin. Well, honestly you can't.

It is bad enough when division is done on a personal basis, but what if it is done on a government directed basis? We've seen that before. It was ugly and hateful then, it is ugly and hateful now.

What if such discrimination isn't just promoted by your government, but is considered one of the most important things your military should be focused on?

We know that promoting sectarianism does not produce unity and peace in a nation, why would it be thought of as something that would promote good order and discipline in a military?

It doesn't, but people promoting it don't care. They have other agendas to pursue. There is a small cohort in it as well meaning but wrong people - but the vast majority are in it for the most crass reasons; a paycheck, status, or power, all woven in with resentment and grievance. The most pitiful are those who are scared of people with status and power, or are terrified they might be called a name. We've discussed at length here. New readers can click the Diversity tag below to catch up if they need to.

In the last year, as things have gone pear shaped in this area, some good news and leaders have started to appear to push back. Slowly but firmly some political leaders are stepping forward. These include Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AZ) is one, and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI).

Both of these gentlemen are deeply involved in defense issues, and served as officers in the Army and USMC. They get the danger. They know the terrain.

I'd like you to take in Rep. Gallagher's recent speech on the topic he recently gave at Hillsdale College.

Here are a few pull quotes from the transcript. He's taking no prisoners;

...in his first week on the job, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered a 60-day stand down to confront “extremism,” forcing all commanding officers to spend a day discussing extremism using a PowerPoint presentation prepared by the Joint Staff that included Ted Talks asking “What is up with us white people?.” Austin also created a new position, “Senior Advisor for Human Capital, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” He hired a man named Bishop Garrison for the position and to run his “Countering Extremism Working Group.” And though Secretary Austin could not define extremism when questioned by the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) five months after his extremism stand down, Bishop Garrison can. Rather than focusing on violent or illegal behavior, his past Tweets brand all those who voted for former President Donald Trump as extremists and racists. 

Well get back to Garrison at the end of the post;

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point likewise required cadets to attend a seminar on DEI and promoted presentations on “White Power at West Point” and “Understanding Whiteness and White Rage.” When questioned about this by HASC members on June 23, 2021, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley said he was personally offended by the accusation that the military is woke and he defended DEI instruction, saying: “I wanna understand white rage, and I’m white, and I wanna understand it...I’ve read Mao Zedong, I’ve read Karl Marx, I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist.” 

Admiral Mike Gilday, the Chief of Naval Operations, recently included Ibram X Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist on his “Professional Reading Program,” which is supposed to help sailors “outthink our competitors.” Kendi, a “leading historian” according to one Ted Talk included in Secretary Austin’s PowerPoint on extremism, has called Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett a “white colonizer,” argues that capitalism is “essentially racist,” and warns “racism has spread to nearly every part of the body politic…threatening the life of human society with nuclear war and climate change.” Kendi also calls for the creation of a Department of Anti-racism “comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees…empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.” When questioned by HASC members on June 15, 2021 about why he included Kendi on his professional reading list, Gilday accused his critics of “trying to paint the United States military, in this case the United States Navy, as weak, as woke…I do know this: our strength is in our diversity and our sailors understand that.”  

Milley’s and Gilday’s comments get to the heart of the matter. When Chairman Milley compared reading Woke texts to reading Mao and Lenin, he unwittingly gave away the game. We read Mao and Lenin to understand our enemies and their tactics. We do not read Mao’s Talks at Yan’an for ideas of how to better run our military. Yet that is precisely how Milley and Gilday are approaching these Woke texts: as useful tools to help better run the Pentagon because of platitudes such as “diversity is our strength.” 

Bingo. Exactly correct. We have two options here with CJCS and CNO:

    1. They don't know this, in which case they are woefully out of their depth and are being malignantly supported by their staff.

    2. They do know this, in which case they are incredibly destructive people holding responsibilities outside any sane nation would allow them to have.

It should be noted that here Milley and Gilday are not simply pointing out that America’s e pluribus unum melting pot is an asset for U.S. military recruitment and that we should be proud that we live in a diverse nation with a diverse military. Nor are they making the narrower argument that, as the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan illustrate, a dearth of specialized linguistic and cultural skills can cause death on the battlefield, and there are certain diverse competencies such as fluency in Mandarin or facility with cyber warfare that we must further develop so we are better prepared to beat the CCP in a future war. They are instead asking us to embrace a brand of identity politics that is fashionable on the Left right now, one which judges people explicitly by the color of their skin rather than on their merits as individuals. 

Yes, it is that simple.

Remember Task Force 1 Navy?

They are also making specific and dubious claims about racial and gender diversity based on bad social science. To illustrate this point, consider the recent comments of the chief of Navy personnel, Vice Admiral John Nowell, Jr., who suggested we need to reinstate photos for selection boards so skin color can factor into promotion. Nowell also asserted “we know that diverse teams that are led inclusively will perform better.” This claim appears to come from a “Task Force One Navy (TF1N)” report commissioned after the death of George Floyd. Though TF1N concedes the Navy is more diverse than the U.S. population, it offered approximately 60 DEI recommendations, including de-emphasizing the use of standardized academic tests for Navy recruits, “bias awareness training” for all promotion board members, and developing a “subjectivity mitigation tool” to combat unconscious biases. 

TF1N even quantifies the assertion that “diversity is our strength”, saying “diverse teams are 58 percent more likely than non-diverse teams to accurately assess a situation.” Here TF1N cites a 2014 article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences studying price bubbles in experimental markets. The experiment used 180 strangers “trained in business or finance” whose exposure to “diversity” meant briefly sitting white traders in a waiting room with other traders, where “at least one of the [other traders] was an ethnic minority.” These test subjects then made fake stock trades alone in their “separate cubicles” through a computer terminal. So contrary to TF1N’s portrayal, the study says nothing about teams (decisions are made alone by individuals) and nothing about assessing “situations” (it is about pricing and purchasing decisions).

TF1N also claims “gender-diverse organizations are 15 percent more likely to outperform other organizations and diverse organizations are 35 percent more likely to outperform their non-diverse counterparts.” This claim is completely inconsistent with the extant literature on gender,  as recent meta analyses show 0 to negative effects for gender. Yet TF1N selectively cites a single 2015 McKinsey study called “Diversity Matters.” McKinsey’s study uses a modified version of something called “the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI)” to quantify the racial composition of company boards and claim racial diversity correlates with greater Earnings Before Income and Taxes (EBIT). Yet McKinsey’s HHI formula is such that a company with one white, one Native American, one Latino and seven black members would score as less diverse than a board with six white and four black members. McKinsey’s correlation is also likely weak because they lump their data on 366 public companies into quartiles, comparing only the bottom quartile to the top quartile and thereby conveniently omitting half the data set. 

How any serious person in uniform can support TF1N again after this simple but fact filled take down, I have no idea. I guess they can try, but I don't recommend they try it on The Hill,

It should alarm us that the same military leaders we trust to train our sons and daughters for war are building their DEI agenda upon a foundation of fringe history and shoddy social science. Their underlying assumption that we can generalize (questionable) findings from academia and the private sector to the specific business of asking young men and women to kill and be killed for their country is an assault on common sense. Furthermore, those who view DEI as a harmless addition to the many annoying, administrative things the military must do ignore recent evidence demonstrating initiatives such as implicit bias training either are ineffective or actually intensify inter-group hostility. 

There you go. One of the top people in Congress on military issues. He gets it. 

In summary;

With such a poor empirical and methodological foundation, at best DEI will waste servicemember time and taxpayer money. At worst, DEI will undermine the foundation of our modern, all-volunteer force. This force is by design an exclusive, not inclusive, organization. We are lucky to draw from a diverse population, but we do not want the U.S. military to look like a representative sample of the population. We want it to be the best and the brightest. The U.S. military is an elite and meritocratic organization where only the most fit, disciplined, and lethal individuals should thrive, regardless of skin color. For this reason, the military obsessively measures things like pullups, marksmanship, and a general ability to endure pain. Put differently, diversity may be a strength for America, but it cannot be an organizing principle for the Pentagon. Actual strength—physical strength, mental strength, and overall end strength—is our strength. 

The above are only a few paragraphs from a much longer speech. Lucky for you, we have the video.

Freshen up your coffee or adult beverage of choice, or set it up it so you can listen to it on your commute today, and watch it for yourself. As the cool kids say, "like and share."

This needs broad distribution and support. There are lot more battles to be fought to get to where we need to be. We need to reward bravery and good behavior, and support every friend we have.

A couple of additional items. Our friend Kristina Wong is writing on the same topic. Take time to give it a read.

Also, back to this Bishop Garrison character. It looks like he sees a shadow on his rice bowl. Give this summary a read, you paid for a it.

Diversity Thursday

The last few Thursdays we've pushed back rather hard on the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gilday, USN. 

To be frank, he's earned it not just from me, but from Congressmen, Senators and commentators all over. 

If you recall, we tried to warn him back in February that his addition of the book "How to be Anti-Racist" by the highly problematic Ibram X. Kendi was a mistake.

In the end, his defense of his choice and the excuses he gave - and those of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, USA - have been hollow mostly because their is nothing on the list that promotes the "critical thinking" they say they want, or attempts to get a full view of the challenge. Instead, there is just one partisan and sectarian side of the argument provided and defended. That is the essence of advocacy, not inquiry. 

That is not shocking when one considers the diversity industries taxpayer funded permanent nomenklatura they injected in to staff and advisory positions. Senior leaders foolishly take their advice, mostly out of fear.  

The USN and US military senior leadership has, rightfully, been seen as taking sides - and in so doing, taking a side that assumes the worst of them, their service, and the nation we all serve.

If they were really interested in an objective discussion - and an argument could be made this is highly counter productive exercise regardless of how they do it reading list wise - then their would need to be balance.

What could have been done to provide at least an attempt of neutrality? Another world view.

Better yet - and Kendi is mostly emotion driven - a view based on fact and scholarship.

If Kendi must be on the list, then he should be balanced with the like of Charles Murray. The book, his latest, Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America.

This book is presently the #1 Best Seller in Discrimination & Racism

What is the book about?

The charges of white privilege and systemic racism that are tearing the country apart float free of reality. Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have different violent crime rates and different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The allegations of racism in policing, college admissions, segregation in housing, and hiring and promotions in the workplace ignore the ways in which the problems that prompt the allegations of systemic racism are driven by these two realities.

What good can come of bringing them into the open? America’s most precious ideal is what used to be known as the American Creed: People are not to be judged by where they came from, what social class they come from, or by race, color, or creed. They must be judged as individuals. The prevailing Progressive ideology repudiates that ideal, demanding instead that the state should judge people by their race, social origins, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.

We on the center left and center right who are the American Creed’s natural defenders have painted ourselves into a corner. We have been unwilling to say openly that different groups have significant group differences. Since we have not been willing to say that, we have been left defenseless against the claims that racism is to blame. What else could it be? We have been afraid to answer. We must. Facing Reality is a step in that direction.

If you are not familiar with Charles Murray, he holds the F. A. Hayek Emeritus Chair in Cultural Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and is an author of multiple books.

As you ponder another book, while you are driving to work and back today, I would offer to you a recent podcast by Matt K. Lewis where he interviews Charles Murray for a little over 45-minutes. They get to the book a little more than halfway through the show, but I encourage you to listen to the whole thing.

You can listen to it at this link, or use the embedded show below.

 

Diversity Thursday

Most who have had their kids enter college in the last couple of decades - especially the last decade - have seen the sociopolitical indoctrination of our kids in the world view of the diversity industry. They don't just get informed about how racist their nation is, they are told that their college, their classes, even they themselves are "problematic."

For many who have not been in the military recently, you might think that this issue is mostly a problem at civilian liberal arts colleges and maybe it creeps in to STEM programs at public universities, but surely our nation's service academies are not wasting time injecting disunity and division in to our military's next generation of leaders?

If you think that ... I am so sorry.

As we have been told over and over, if you are not all in - an open postalizing "anti-racist" - then you are, well, 

I think two quotes from one of the Chief of Naval Operation's favorite authors will set the tone.

As we've documented often here, Kendi did not show up on the CNO's reading list by accident. Even though earlier this year he took it off the list after a firestorm in Congress ... the point was made.

You have to buy in. You know what happens if are not an "anti-racist."

Let's look at what is going on at the US Naval Academy. 

Thanks to the well documented work by Legal Insurrection's project Critical Race Training in Education, they've done all the hard work for us.

Read it all, but here are a few nuggets that your next nugget will have injected in to their brainstem;

As part of the Naval Academy's Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan, the academy will "develop and maintain a comprehensive cultural awareness and bias literacy training framework that includes annual training for all USNA leadership, faculty, staff, and midshipmen with specialized modules for key areas of emphasis as they concern admissions, leadership positions, and members of selection panels."

It is the end part that is important. We know what they mean by "equity" and you can follow the bouncing ball to what that means for who gets in (admissions), who get's the best positions (leadership positions), and who gets selected for competitive programs/positions (selection panels). There it is; red in tooth and claw.

USNA’s Center for Teaching and Learning has several faculty resources including PowerPoint Presentations on topics such as “You Don’t Have to Go Far: Cross-Cultural Competence through Experiential Learning” and “How to Create an Anti-Racist Classroom: Developing and Implementing an Anti-Racist Pedagogy,” Video Presentations on “Teaching Race,” and books such as “How to Be an Anti-Racist” by Ibram X. Kendi and “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo.

So balanced. Such unity.

The USNA Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI) supports the Naval Academy’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan Imperative One, which is “to recruit, admit and graduate a diverse and talented Brigade of Midshipmen by providing an inclusive community and environment with a number of diversity events, trainings, and resources."

Not everyone at USNA is supposed to bring people together to unite as one it appears, but some are to remind everyone at every turn their differences.

According to The Hill, Task Force One Navy's final report recommended "using artificial intelligence to reduce potential bias when selecting sailors for promotion."

Oh...and what variables will this "AI" be programed to consider?

The Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Awards consist of a couple of dozen awards which are bestowed annually based on many types of affinity groups.

"Affinity groups" are organizations based on separating people based on race, ethnicity, etc. Again, promoting sectarianism.

Oh, did I mention that the leadership at USNA thinks the Naval Academy is racist?

The Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy said, "In short, diversity, equity, and inclusion are more vital than ever to our mission here at the Naval Academy of developing leaders to serve our Nation." The superintendent also announced, "Our Faculty Senate recently passed a resolution with overwhelming support to investigate and address any practices at the Naval Academy that perpetuate systemic racism."

I encourage you to read the whole thing and then ponder this statement;

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in June 2021, "We do not teach critical race theory, we don’t embrace critical race theory and I think that’s a spurious conversation...We are focused on extremist behaviors, and not ideology, not people’s thoughts, not people’s political orientation."

The clawback from this unacceptable mindset will be hard and ugly. 

Diversity Thursday

After a summer where more and more people’s eyes have been opened to the divisive, sectarian, and even racist nature of Critical Race Theory and have risen in opposition to it and similar race-essentialist world view in to our schools, the next logical step is how people feel about it becoming an essential part of taxpayer supported public education.

As we’ve discussed it in detail here, we know there is a problem in the US Navy where the Chief of Naval Operations has enthusiastically supported the works of one of the most high-profile advocates of the most cancerous forms of Critical Race Theory, Ibram X. Kendi. With that top cover, it was only a matter of time until its advocates came out of the shadows to inject it elsewhere in our Navy.

As we covered last week, one of the fellow travelers of Kendi has become rather popular at the United States Naval Academy. Could it get worse? 

Of course it could get worse. With the Diversity Industry, that is their job. Remember, they have paychecks and world views to justify. No one wants to solve anything – indeed – the goal is to not only continue the crisis they describe, but to create it if it does not exist and to grow it if they can.

What would you think about USNA, 

“…integrating Claudia Rankine’s work into the USAN teaching and learning community?”

Oh yes … and there will be theater.

BEHOLD!

Sadly, we missed it and there doesn’t seem to have been a recording made of this glorious event. If any readers here saw it, drop me an email … I’d love to hear how it went.

I can’t seem to find a full reading, but I have something better. Here is the author discussing her play.

Is this really the mindset we want Midshipmen to bring to the fleet? Is this how we foster good order and discipline?

 

I'm not sure what is in her heart, but it isn't healthy.

The Failure of the Institutions

If you believe the threat from China is overblown, our Navy is well led, and that our fleet is big enough, then this is not the post for you. If you are concerned for all of it, grab a fresh drink and dive right in.

We are facing of something our nation has not had to seriously consider in well over three decades; we do not have free and unfettered access to the sea.

Even when Soviet submarines roamed the world’s oceans at will – though closely watched – and the Red Banner Fleet could send battle groups on cruises through the Gulf of Mexico, we had fair confidence in one thing – the Pacific was an American lake.

No more.

Even when the Soviet Union’s navy gave the US Navy and her allies pause to consider how to deal with her, we always had more and better combatants.

No more.

Depending on how you measure things – globally or regionally – we are on the cusp or just past the cusp of being the world’s second largest blue water navy.

As there is a lot of ruin in a nation, there is a long-dwell nature to apparent power – an inertia of power. In certain areas such as naval aviation and submarines, we maintain a substantial qualitative and capabilities edge, but that gap in narrowing. When you take into consideration sheer numbers, the gap is even narrower. When you take into consideration interior vs. exterior lines of operation and the required length and width of the logistics tail for the US Navy to sustain operations west of Wake … it’s OK to get a bit of flop sweat. You aren’t the only one to see it. You have good company.

Or do you?

At this moment in time when, for the first time in over two decades, the security environment and clear requirements to meet the most pressing national security challenge – the People’s Republic of China – are in bold relief, you would think the rising tide would lift the maritime argument and a nice following wind fill the sails of the navalist position … but it isn’t.

Why?

The answer is fairly straightforward, hard to correct, and multi-causal; our institutions have failed us.

In a nation as large as ours, individuals must combine their efforts and hopes in institutions to effect change for those things which are important to them. One person can only do so much. Organizations representing tens to hundreds of thousands get attention. 

With government entities, those organizations and institutions provide supporting fires for the uniformed and civilian leadership given a charter by the American people via the Constitution and the laws enacted by their elected representatives to take responsibility for a specific area.

In all times these organizations are expected to advocate – aggressively – for the position and interests they were founded to support and serve. We have an adversarial system where ambition checks ambition; agenda checks agenda; ideas check ideas. Argument, creative friction, and debate are essential for a healthy and effective system.

In rough times when the seas and wind are counter to your desired station, one suffers a holding action against others who are stronger. You struggle, compromise, give some ground, but you don’t stop. Others will take all you are willing to give. That is a feature, not a bug. It is how, when led and executed properly, weak ideas are worked out of the system regardless of the ebb and flow of the POM cycle.

When the environment demands more from your areas of interest and responsibility, and the table is set such that you have the easiest argument, it is expected that you will take advantage of the moment. Not just because it will make it easier for you to advance your argument – which it will – but in the big picture, the nation you support needs you to do this. “The moment” is a manifestation of a real-world problem,

Nothing is granted. You are not entitled to anything. As Papa Salamander told me all the time growing up, “No one owes you a living.”

You have to earn it. If you feel the Navy needs a larger share of the budget to meet the challenge of China, then you need to advocate for it. You need to fight for it…and when I say “you” I mean “we” and the most important and powerful parts of that “we” are our institutions; our maritime power institutions dedicated to seeing the USA remain the premier seapower.

Let’s start with the most obvious. Our uniformed Navy is itself an institution. It reports to its civilian leadership in the Executive Branch with oversight from the Legislative Branch. There are your big pixel maritime governmental institutions; the uniformed and civilian leaders in the Department of the Navy.

As reviewed yesterday, the CNO is engaged in a rather low-energy talking point about 500-ships, but in 2022 that is not even remotely achievable. He knows it, you know it, Congress knows it as well. A number is not an argument, and yet he is investing personal and institutional capital on this line that is almost immediately ignored if it is heard at all. Why?

In the last year one of his highest profile public appearances was when he shoveled heaping piles of personal and institutional capital in a fight defending a red in tooth and claw racial essentialist Ibram X. Kendi  against who would normally be the US Navy’s natural allies in Congress. Ultimately he lost that battle and removed Kendi’s racist book and others from his reading list, but in the face of everything else going on in the maritime world, why?

What about the Vice CNO, Admiral William K. Lescher, USN? Maybe he could throw some sharp elbows for the maritime cause? Sadly, not. Just look at his exchange with Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) back in March. He seems to be the “Vice Chief of Joint Force Operations” more than anything else. He is focused on something, but advocating for sea power is not it.

With the night orders from the CNO and VCNO as they are, if you expect any significant advocacy from the uniformed Navy leadership who report to them for --- checks notes --- the Navy, you are going to have to wait for a long time, time we don’t have. It isn’t going to happen.

What about the civilian leadership of the Navy, the SECNAV and the Under? Will they lead the charge? 

First of all, again I would refer you to yesterday’s post. If you have not read it yet, give it a read and come back. 

SECNAV Del Toro is first of all a political appointee who, though a former naval officer, is mostly known as a political fundraiser for the Democrats and as such you need to understand that is his reference point; he is a party man. A party man can do a lot at a certain moment in time where history calls, but I don’t think that is going to happen here with the SECNAV. He will follow the signal from above. Nothing more.

Take a moment and ponder – when was the last time you heard the SECNAV or Under out front on The Hill or to the greater public about our maritime requirements? Yes, I fully understand what goes on behind closed doors, but that slow roll in an ever-slower bureaucracy infested with scoliotic nomenklatura is well past being of use. The American people must be provided the information and motivation to understand how their entire standard of living – and to a great extent their freedoms – is guaranteed by our mastery of the seas. Is even a rudimentary effort being made in this regard? 

Just look at the USN’s YouTube feed – a primary communication device for the American people. What has the SECNAV talked about there this year?  LGBTQ+ Pride Month, Juneteenth, Army birthday, Asian-Pacific Islander Month, Mental Health Awareness Month, Women’s History Month, carrier air birthday, and Black History Month. 

There you go. There’s your communication. Dig harder if you want … but if you read CDRSalamander and you are not readily aware, then imagine the general population’s situational awareness of the dragon just over the horizon.

To raise the profile of what our nation needs to get the maritime services ready for the fight in WESTPAC,  the civilian leadership will be less help than the uniformed leadership.

They both are both smart people in hard jobs doing their best – but they are not acting like they know what time it is. 

What about the Naval War College? Good question, what about it? Love the place, has some great people there, but it is mostly internally focused … and talking amongst ourselves is not going to impact all that much – especially when in recent years a lot of institutional capital has been going towards things not all that related to sea power.

That leaves concerned navalists to look outside government.

If you are looking for influence operations inside the beltway, then you have to address think tanks. Quick, without going to google, tell me what DC think tanks have been pounding the drum about sea power?  

Not that easy, is it? In 2020 Craig Hooper looked at this challenge and the situation has not improved all that much. There are good places with good people, but outside of a commute of DC, who is hearing and reading? How many people in Congress know them outside a usual-suspects handful?

They are there, but they are not upping their game, have the ability to reach outside their bubble, or influence people already sold.

Outside government, who do navalists rely on or defer to in order to pursue their goals? There are two old stalwarts that at first blush seem to be natural fits.

First the Navy League of the Unites States. Here you see a budding of what may help in the Center for Maritime Strategy … but boy-howdy it is having trouble getting in gear. It isn’t easy to find on NLUS’s website and its Dean, Admiral Foggo, USN (Ret.) recent comment signals that sadly it does not know what time it is. 

The Navy is not broken, and the acknowledged challenges it faces won’t be helped by yet another layer of bureaucracy. What the Navy needs is more support and more focused missions.

There is still an opportunity for a mindset change and to find its footing, but time is short. The CMS is not there to “support” the official Navy position, but to promote sea power. Not to reinforce what the Executive Branch puts out, but to encourage the nation’s leaders and people to support the navy it needs. Those two items, as is in stark relief this year, may not be the same thing.

Then you have the United States Naval Institute. On its homepage it says it is, “The home of influential debate since 1873.” – but is it still? What have they done so far this year outside their publishing house?

They started off the year with the regular “Maritime Security Dialogue” where usually someone on USNI’s staff sits down and chats with a guest. In essence, a closely controlled, inhouse podcast co-produced with the think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies and sponsored by Huntington Ingalls Industries, the USA's largest shipbuilder. 

In January it was with the 4-star commander of USCENTCOM. In April, the 4-star CNO. In May, a 3-star Marine. In July a gaggle of USN 2-stars from the aviation side of the house, and then with a 4-star Marine. In essence, General and Flag Officers talking about themselves and their jobs underwritten by a primary player in the naval side of the military industrial complex our guest on Midrats Sunday is concerned about.

Again, internally focused.

Of course there was the annual “West” events in San Diego which is effectively a trade show for the military industrial complex with nice little side events sponsored this year by L3Harris and USAA. 

There was a discussion about cyber with an Army 4-star at the USCG Academy in New London, CT, sponsored by the William M. Wood Foundation – the same foundation who sponsored the annual meeting at the Jack C. Taylor Conference Center in Annapolis that you read about in almost every mailing you receive from USNI or the USNI Foundation.

DC. Annapolis. New London. San Diego.

Again, internally focused.

Are we really “getting the message out” or are we simply talking to each other about what we put on our FITREP and CV?

We are not selling sea power. We are not telling out story. We are not evangelizing to the heathen masses. We are selling each other to each other. Telling personal stories about each other. Evangelizing ourselves to each other’s institutions.

Does this promote sea power at the national level, or just the people responsible for it?

None of our institutions – outside a few people hidden in corners and speaking out of turn – are acting like they understand where we are in time and place.

Inertia. Entitlement … and in some cases base self-interest.

The institutions are not turning in to the coming storm. They are not even running away. They are just staying on PIM set out years ago and hoping if something does happen, it will blow up on some else’s watch.

Where does a nation turn? Good question. I don’t have a good answer. 

These times do not come up very often, but we are in one. Where is today’s OP-23, Admiral Denfield and Vice Admiral Brogan of Revolt of the Admirals fame? Where is Vice Admiral Tom Connolly of F-111B renown? I don’t know who they are or even if we have such people in the shadows. So far, silence.

We need to tell a story, but all the higher institutions we would rely on are failing their moment. It isn’t that they won’t tell our story, they are actively avoiding it in favor of other priorities while hoping for the best.

Our institutions are failing the nation at a critical juncture. From both the uniformed and civilian side of the house, the established, comfortable, well-funded, and large navalist institutions are letting our nation down.

As a result, it isn’t jobs, income, sponsorship, or friendships that are at stake – but the strategic position of the United States and the international order we underwrote since the end of WWII. 

Those are the stakes of the battle over providing and maintaining a navy to meet the challenge of China’s rise.

Our present leadership and institutions are failing us. They either need to change – and change quickly – or we need to promote and support new leaders and new institutions to do the job that must be done.

The only entity that seems to be rising to the challenge happens to be the one with the lowest national approval rate; Congress.

The Legislative Branch’s House of Representatives and Senate, from both parties and independents, are starting to produce Members who desire to dust off their oversight responsibilities and are growing more comfortable being confrontational with underperforming uniformed and civilian leaders from the Executive Branch.

Unless something changes soon, there is the navalists' best friend; Congress.

Diversity Thursday

One of the things we like to do on DivThu is to give those who believe that people should be seen as individuals who deserve to be judged by the content of their character, not by immutable characteristics people are born with and can do nothing about some facts to push back against the emotion laden DEI commissariat diktat thrown at them on a regular basis.

One of the auto-generated comments we hear so often extruding from the diversity nomenklatura is that something – especially our officer corps – must “look like America” and that exceptional efforts must be made to force-mode such results.

Is this even possible without actions no one would be proud of? Probably not.

The big-lie here is in 2022 that somehow the US military in general, and the US Navy in particular, is racist at both an institutional level and at an individual level. This accusation is not shocking, really, as this is the exact world view of the public intellectual that CNO Gilday expended so much personal and institutional capital promoting and defending, Ibram X. Kendi.

The commissariat don’t like to acknowledge the fact that the US military’s intake is society’s outflow valve when it produces an ~18-year old young adult for enlistment or, after college, an officer program.

The various segments of our society do not have the same results in various objective criteria for success. Any brief review of the data shows this, but the commissariat insists on only looking at their specific claims and freeze them in aspic without any vulnerability to examination or question. 

Another supporting lie to the main effort is, naturally, a word game. When it comes to the word “diversity” they will throw up a smoke screen embedded with clouds of chaff that they value “diversity of viewpoints” and “diversity of perspectives” etc when we all fully know that those metrics are not tracked, are not measured, and unquestionably are not briefed. 

As we’ve discussed on previous Thursdays, that means one of two things: 1) They are gaslighting you; 2) They believe in racial determinism with regards to how the human brain works. One should insult you, the other should be recognized for what it is – a racist view of humans that belongs in an early 20th Century eugenics book. Neither is acceptable, and I’ll let you decide which sounds right to you.

Thanks to our friends in the FAO community we have an opportunity to show how simple it is to destroy the gaslighting and lies of the diversity industry.

Let’s dive in to see what spot of bother they are picking at today.

The emphasis there is theirs, not mine – but that fits the pattern.

The entering problem is that they assume on Day-1 of the military’s opportunity to intake new people, that objective criteria are all the same for each self-described sectarian groups. The reality is they are not, and I’m going to give you a brief example. The reasons are multi-causal and are well beyond the ability of the military to control. 18-yr olds show up as they are.

Specifically, we are going to look at officer numbers in, as best one can do during a coffee break, the specific metrics they choose to track. We are going to look at one simple variable of objective criteria which is required to be even considered for an officer program; you have to have earned a college degree.

NB: this is simply an opening argument exercise. There are a lot of nuances to this variable that can adjust the numbers a few percentages here and there. Not all institutions are the same or are looked at the same. Not everyone has the same GPA. Not every degree is as desirable to the Navy as another. Performance in one objective area does not necessarily get reflected in another … but they are objective criteria. Having a college degree is just one variable but is arguably one of the most significant and rigid ones. It, like the others, has significant differences in results based on sectarian divisions of race and ethnicity that the Navy’s branch of the diversity industry likes to track in order to justify its job.

As per the above and the fact that these data sets are not all from the same year (each year can be a percentage point or two from another), these are not the perfect numbers – but they are good numbers. I would put a +/- 5% margin of error if you held a gun to me.

I believe the spreadsheet is self-explanatory, but let me kickstart if for you.

Let’s assume you have a population of 18-yr olds we would like to be officers. In order to make the smaller numbers work as we run through results, let’s say that population is 400. I make no difference here in male and female, just on the racial and ethnic sectarian lines the Navy does, and this population of 400 exactly matches the racial and ethnic makeup of the USA.

Our single objective criteria we’re going to run is college graduation. I almost used 4-years, but that would make the differences even more stark. Instead, I would used 6-years as many NROTC, OCS, and USNA athletes take more than 4 years to graduate. It rounds the numbers a bit. 

Take a look.

So, tell me what you see here that screams that the Navy suffers from institutional racism? This is only one variable. There are others which make it clear there are other reasons - especially when done under a proper regression analysis - for differences.

The US military and its Navy is one of the least racist places not just in the USA, but in the world. This is something we - and our senior leadership - should be proud of and defend at an institutional level. We live it, we know it. And yet, we accept the worst smears from the worst people for reasons best understood by those whose spirit is broken or have soaked in DC’s swamps too long.

Never forget this is a zero-sum game when it comes to selection and promotion. There are only so may places, so to give to one person you must take from another. Fair minded people will accept this if they see the system as fair based on objective criteria. When the system is seen as worm-ridden with favoritism and corruption, it destroys the entire performance of the system. That is why we got rid of segregation and race-based assignments in the middle of the 20th Century.

We are better than this. Our new Sailors – officer and enlisted born in the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century deserve an inheritance better than this.

The commissariat defines an excess of a minority group in an area as “more diverse” – a positive. The other side of that coin is that if the majority group in an area is in excess, then that is “problematic” – a negative.

That is a rather blatant position of favoring one racial group over another simply for their self-identified status. One sectarian group is favored, another is regretted. We should talk clearly with each other on this topic and call this was it is – official, sanctioned bigotry. 

To add insult, it is all based on a view of Americans that is retrograde in the extreme. A much higher percentage of people listed with that not even 20th but 19th Century “one drop rule” view as one specific race who are that glorious American mixture of the best of this or that. Each year more and more people are biracial or multiracial … yet our system has incentives and disincentives for them to force to choose one group or another. Forced division and strife. Who can support that?

The almost farcical “Hispanic” category that means nothing anywhere else in the world is also sloppy. We know of people whose parents were from Germany who immigrated to Puerto Rico but were raised in CONUS calling themselves “Hispanic,” while I know people whose parents were from Spain with Spanish last names who classify themselves as “white.” We all know people who exercise a graduate level of racial self-identification fraud. 

All these bring these numbers being used to make life altering decisions in to question. If you really need to move this or that group up or down 10% … are you really?

What are you doing besides corrupting a system and the nation it serves, all the while sowing the seeds of division and strife?

---

Data sources: 

- governing.com 

- insidehighered.com

- americanprogress.org

- research.com

- nces.ed.gov and again

Diversity Thursday

Are you ready for this fight in your Navy?

As we have covered here in previous Thursdays, the CNO is an enthusiastic supporter of one of the primary advocates of the divisive "anti-racism" socio-political philosophy - Ibram X. Kendi.

The CNO created conditions where the Diversity Maoists will take the his support as top cover to take their divisive and sectarian secular religion in to your workspace.

What is "anti-racism?"

I highly recommend that everyone read the letter by Paul Rossi, at least at the time he wrote the letter, a teacher at Grace Church High School in Manhattan.

“Antiracist” training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising. It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race.

...

(anti-racist doctrine) induces students via shame and sophistry to identify primarily with their race ...  Students are pressured to conform their opinions to those broadly associated with their race and gender and to minimize or dismiss individual experiences that don’t match those assumptions. The morally compromised status of “oppressor” is assigned to one group of students based on their immutable characteristics. In the meantime, dependency, resentment and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered “oppressed.”

...

Every student at the school must also sign a “Student Life Agreement,” which requires them to aver that “the world as we understand it can be hard and extremely biased,” that they commit to “recognize and acknowledge their biases when we come to school, and interrupt those biases,” and accept that they will be “held accountable should they fall short of the agreement.” A recent faculty email chain received enthusiastic support for recommending that we “‘officially’ flag students” who appear “resistant” to the “culture we are trying to establish.” 

When I questioned what form this resistance takes, examples presented by a colleague included “persisting with a colorblind ideology,” “suggesting that we treat everyone with respect,” “a belief in meritocracy,” and “just silence.” 

...

I find it self-evidently racist to filter the dissemination of an idea based on the race of the person who espouses it.

What happened to Rossi and how did his leadership react? 

Read the whole thing.

Are you ready when this comes your way? How will you respond? How will you deal with your Sailors who come to you like Rossi's students came to him?