Go Woke and Go Up in Smoke?

Are these the end-times? There’s been a lot of speculation along those lines in the last few years.

Of course, there are always reasons to believe that our time is up. But the last three or four years have provided more than the usual amount of grist for the mill.

It’s difficult to capture the exact sequence of events because everything seemed to happen all at once: the advent of woke culture, followed by rioting in major cities, accompanied by the tearing down of statues in public squares and the trashing of history in public schools, followed by a worldwide pandemic, followed by…well, just one damned thing after another—including drag queen story hours and satanic Christmas displays.

But if you’re looking for a single sign that the world’s going to Hell, my candidate would be the queering of the U.S. military. I’m not talking specifically about the gaying of the Army—although that’s a large part of the problem. I’m speaking about the strange new priorities that the military has chosen for itself.

One might think that defending our country and winning wars would be the chief priorities. But these seem to be lower-order priorities in today’s military. Instead, the chief concerns are climate change, diversity, LGBTQ+ pride, white supremacy, and right-wing extremists. The chief concerns of today’s military are climate change, diversity, LGBTQ+ pride, white supremacy, and right-wing extremists, not defending our country and winning wars.Tweet This

Recently, for example, Carlos Del Toro, the new Secretary of the Navy, announced: “I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office.”  

Climate change? A top priority for the Navy? Even Dr. Strangelove wasn’t that crazy. Do Del Toro’s superiors know about this? Well, actually, they do. At the Leaders Summit on Climate held on April 22, 2021, Earth Day, Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, declared that “no nation can find lasting security without addressing the climate crisis.” He continued, “we face all kinds of threats in our line of work, but few of them deserve to be called existential. The climate crisis does.”

Climate change may or may not pose a long-term danger to our planet. But the word “existential” implies an immediate threat to our continued existence. Russia’s huge stockpile of nuclear weapons poses an existential threat. So does Communist China’s growing arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles.

Luckily, we have the Air Force Global Strike Command—the direct descendant of the Cold-War-era Strategic Air Command—to defend our country against whatever the Russians and the Chi-coms can throw at us.

Unluckily, it’s not at all certain that the Global Strike Command is in safe hands. Although the Global Strike Command controls dozens of nuclear-capable strategic bombers and over 400 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, the Command itself was, until recently, under the command of an outspoken racist.

Luckily, General Anthony J. Cotton is no longer in command of Air Force Global Strike Command. Unluckily, he has been promoted to head the United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), which is responsible for “strategic nuclear deterrence, global strike, and operating the Defense Department’s Global Information Grid.”

But is General Cotton a racist? That depends on your point of view. From one point of view, it’s impossible for Cotton to be a racist since he is black. And according to a theory subscribed to by some blacks and some whites as well, blacks can’t be racist. However, as Daniel Greenfield pointed out in a FrontPage piece, Cotton has made statements that, coming from the mouth of a white person, would certainly be considered racist. For example, in 2020 he told Air Force Magazine: “When I see what happened to Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks—and the list goes on and on…that could be me.”

Cotton is also a proponent of “diversity and inclusion training” because, he says, diversity is a “warfighting imperative.” Such training could conceivably create a bond between airmen of diverse backgrounds, but it could also lead to more divisiveness. And since the Air Force leans heavily on the critical race theory thesis that all whites are unconsciously biased, divisiveness seems the more likely outcome.

General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has also defended the teaching of critical race theory in the military because it would help him to better understand whiteness and “white rage.” “I want to understand white rage, and I’m white, and I want to understand it,” he said in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. Note that Milley takes it for granted that “white rage” is a widespread phenomenon and a well-established fact.

We could go on about Milley’s fear of white rage and white extremists, but that wouldn’t leave space to discuss another of the military’s chief priorities—namely, the advancement of the LGBTQ+ agenda.

I’ve already mentioned Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s concern over climate change, but Austin also concerns himself with the changing climate of social opinion. Not long after taking office, Austin gave the opening remarks at the Department of Defense Pride Month event. Here’s a sample:

Throughout American history, LGBTQ+ citizens fought to defend our rights and freedoms—from the founding of our nation to the Civil War, from the trenches of the World Wars to Korea and Vietnam, and from Afghanistan to Iraq.

And so on. But if you are a devout Christian soldier who believes that your faith prevents you from supporting the LGBTQ+ agenda, you’ll probably start counting the number of days left before your term of duty is up. Likewise, if you’re a devout Christian who is thinking about signing up for the Army, you’ll think twice. You may decide that you’d rather not fight and die for values that run strongly counter to your own.

You can see where this is going. By deliberately appealing to one group, the military risks alienating another group. Indeed, it risks alienating just about everyone. How many blacks and liberals want to fight and die for a nation that, according to critical race theory, is built on slavery and white supremacism?

As I wrote two years ago:

The question is, who’s going to be left? Just how large a pool of potential recruits does the Army brass think is out there? And how many woke people really want to fill the gap and thereby risk their lives defending a country they have come to detest?

As you might expect, the Armed Services have been falling short of their retention and recruitment goals for many years. And judging by recent recruitment campaigns, the top brass doesn’t have a clue about how to attract more enlistments.

Here’s a headline that encapsulates the problem: “The Navy, Unable to Find 6,000 Recruits, Turns to Drag Queen.” 

According to the report, “the Navy will likely miss its recruiting goals by 6,000 sailors for the current fiscal year, the vice chief of naval operations testified Wednesday.”

However:

In an effort to increase recruitment, the Navy has invited a drag queen, who is an active-duty sailor, to join its pilot “digital ambassador” program…Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley, whose stage name is Harpy Daniels, made an announcement about becoming one of the first “Navy Digital Ambassadors.”

Undoubtedly, that will draw them in by the thousands. What gay man isn’t willing to sacrifice four years of his life in order to be entertained by drag queens? And, of course, lesbians will be absolutely delighted by the prospect of watching men in makeup mocking women.

It all seems bizarre. But it gets worse. Remember General Anthony Cotton? Well, his boss, General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the Air Force Chief of Staff, is focused more on diversity and inclusion than Cotton is.

However, in his haste to include individuals of every race, religion, nationality, and gender known to man, General Brown seems to have forgotten that air forces need planes. An article in The Defense Post reports that the USAF’s fleet of F-35s suffered a “massive decline in readiness” from 2021-2022. The availability rates fell from 65 percent to 54 percent, meaning that barely one in two F-35s is ready to fly.

According to The Defense Post piece, the readiness rate has been kept down by a lack of “operating engines.” But an even more serious problem is the lack of “operating” pilots to fly them. In a piece for FrontPage, investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield points out that General Brown is calling for what amounts to a purge of white officers and airmen.

According to Greenfield, Brown’s new quotas would reduce the number of white male pilots from 86 percent to 43 percent while increasing the percentage of Black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian, and Hispanic/Latino pilots. The new quotas also aim to increase the number of female pilots.

General Brown’s directive aims at “achieving a force more representative of our Nation.” But as Greenfield observes, the new diversity quotas “would cripple the service and wipe out generations of talent.”

General Brown seems to be the gung-ho type of officer one sees in old World War II films. Unfortunately, he’s gung-ho about turning the Air Force into an experiment in wokeness. What’s worse, it’s widely thought that President Biden intends to elevate Brown to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making him the highest-ranking military officer.

Viewed from a humorous perspective, the “woke” military is laughable. One can imagine a late-night comedy routine in which an Air Force recruitment officer tells a Tom Cruise look-alike, “Sorry son, you’re the wrong color and the wrong gender, plus you’re too short. However, there might be an opening in one of our drag queen chorus lines.”

Of course, in the ultimate analysis, a woke military is not a joking matter. When generals are more concerned with a critical shortage of drag queens than a critical shortage of F-35s, we might well wonder if the last times aren’t closing in on us. Whether by intent or stupidity or a combination of the two, national security is being sacrificed to leftist ideology. Thousands, perhaps millions of lives are being put at stake as our enemies grow stronger and our fighting forces grow woker and weaker.

During the Cold War, Hollywood films such as Dr. Strangelove warned that the end of the world would be ushered in by right-wing generals with loony ideas. But it’s now beginning to look like the end-times might be ushered in by left-wing generals with loony obsessions about white supremacy, climate change, and LGBTQ+ pride.Unfortunately, they’re not characters in a funny film. They are real-life fanatics who control armies, fleets, and nuclear arsenals.