Woke military leadership
The military has a job, its leadership should focus on ensuring that the military could do that job when called to do so. Unfortunately, even the military has been bit by the “woke” bug. Fox News interviewed three veterans to get their views on the wokeness that has taken root at the Pentagon and across the military.
From Fox News:
“The Pentagon has been infected with wokeism the same way so many other institutions have,” said Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who served as a U.S. Army platoon leader. Hegseth said under the Obama presidency certain generals were chosen “based on their political points of view, not based on their pedigree for killing the enemy” because they would comply with “new priorities.”
That sentiment was shared by former Army Ranger and founder of the Warrior Poet Society, John Lovell. “The military has a very specific and strategic job, and that’s to keep our country safe,” Lovell said. “And when you thrust them in to be the front line of a sociological experiment which has a pernicious ideology that makes people hate the United States, a soldier can very quickly start to despise the very thing he’s supposed to be protecting.”
Earlier this month the Air Force authorized — but did not require — the use of gender pronouns in electronic signature boxes for communications within the department, a move panned by the veterans.
Former Navy SEAL and 3 of 7 founder Chadd Wright reflected on when he joined the military, “It was Don’t ask, Don’t tell. There was none of this stuff,” he said. “It’s a weird environment … I think it is detrimental to mission focus.”
“[On] my Instagram profile, my pronoun is listed as attack helicopter, so you can let everyone know exactly where you are,” said Lovell.
Hegseth railed against the “upside-down priorities” and that while in the National Guard — which he only recently left — he said “the obsession of commands and command groups was compliance with the latest politically correct policy coming out of the Pentagon.”
The trio of troops also slammed military leadership focusing on race rather than building a cohesive force. This past June, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley defended his study of critical race theory before Congress.
Fox News has the rest of the story here.
Category: Military issues
Don’t be surprised if this site, along with sites such as GAB, Parler, Rumble and others, and as someone mentioned, membership in the NRA or GOA and any other organization listed by that execrable hate group Southern Poverty Law Center will be at the top of the DoD’s proscription list.
Austin, Milley, Gilday and the rest of that clown crew can plant a big wet kiss on my posterior.
This site is already blocked by Air Force NIPR.
And probably the Duffel Blog too…
Lovell misattributed a quote in the Fox story.
[Lovell bluntly stated he is worried about the military’s future under current leadership “because it’s going to lead to a lot of innocent lives being killed.”
He called upon the words of Ancient Greek general Thucydides who said,
“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”]
The ancient Greek never said it.
Apparently, no one did.
It’s paraphrased from a quote by a British officer. In 1889.
Not exactly ancient Greek times.
And apparently, neither Lovell nor anyone at Fox bothered to check.
(Like those around Honor Flights phony Maggie DeSanti
doing airport push ups, broadcast nationwide.)
It’s the 1st one on this list.
And if I can scrounge this up in about 3 minutes,
why can’t Lovell, or Fox, or Honor Flights?
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides#Misattributed
If anyone here can place the quote on the ancient Greek,
or one anyone from anytime before 1889,
or from anywhere outside of Twitter, Reddit, and the Book of the Fake…
By all means, put it up here, and correct history.
Not a good idea, to dis Woke using mis spoke,
which certainly gives the woke crowd (including Milly) more ammo.
Flashback to ABC News, October 2019.
And, it’s still up.
Who cares? Given ample ammo those retards will only manage to shoot themselves in the foot.
The essence of the quote is solid, arguing attribution if fking dumb.
Ranger Lovell is worth a thousand thousand wokerati even when ‘wrong’ on a technicality.
“40 percent of all quotes you see on the internet are wrong” -Charlie Chaplin
Roh-Dog,
Same thing happened on a fake Lincoln quote,
and someone in the GOP fell for it (in 2017).
This led to the now famous Lincoln internet quote meme…
“Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet
just because there’s a picture with a quote next to it.”
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/GOP-tweets-fake-Abraham-Lincoln-quote-Internet-10927247.php
I prefer the Lincoln quote with a picture of him holding a ghetto blaster:
Ditto. A guest on a TV show misattributes an obscure quote expressing a legitimate thought and MD61 equates that to the Maggie DeSanti massive fraud. He has become delusional. I guess he has moved on from GP and now he is going after Fox News like a Progda “fact checker.”
rgr769,
Cute.
Wrong again.
But nice try.
VG article #3 on ol’ phony Maggie.
Includes links to VG article #1 from 2014
and VG article #2, just after the push ups.
If only ABC, Honor Flights, and others put 3 minutes into the Fu of Google.
[UPDATE: Maggie DeSanti – Media Darling or Stolen Valor Con Artist?
Steve Balm | October 28, 2019]
https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=92182
If the ancient Greeks never said it, they certainly should have, because it’s true.
Asbo-f*cking-lutely!
UpNorth,
Of course, but that’s not the same
as sticking quotation marks and a wrong name on it.
See above about a fake Lincoln quote,
which embarrassed GOP national.
Target fixation will one day be the death of you.
Matthew 7:15-20 is clear, Lovell’s misquote has Biblical remedy: “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire”.
Let us axe him down and cleans him with fire.
(….ffs….)
Since we’re so off topic I lost sight of the OBJ, If we do not make our voices heard to those who are ostensibly paid to represent us, will they ever know the errors of their ways?
Once again, Marinedad, like his hero Lars, launches an an hominem attack, instead of refuting the merits.
Cute.
No attack, just pointing out the obvious on 1 bad quote.
Everyone here loves it when it’s a Stolen Valor phony
like Maggie, Les, and many others,
but then all of a sudden it’s rotten when it’s at someone you like?
Try again.
Witting versus unintended. Not even remotely comparable and by putting them in league it says more about you then the crime you espouse.
You should ‘try again’.
Roh-Dog,
Google is your friend. My friend. Our friend.
3 minutes on the Fu of Google prevents all this.
More who speak, appear, and report nationally
should do the 3 minutes.
That’s all this is about.
All this handwringing over a commonly misattributed quote by Mister Lovell while speaking -without prepared notes of any kind- that went uncorrected by Fox…..?
Wow. Just wow.
I was *attempting* to remain civil-ish; you know who you’re just like? He’s here often, and he’s perfect too.
Roh-Dog,
If Lovell memorized it,
and not going off notes (as I assumed),
then it’s worse than I originally thought.
I’d like to believe he’s using the notes,
but failed to do the 3 minutes.
But I don’t know.
Either way, he spit it out, and it’s out there now.
Dems will pick that apart much more than I have here.
The Dims can do whatever they’d like, kinda like you here. They don’t get to define the battlespace like the little bitches there are. Speaking of, I’m done.
You ain’t worth the time.
“MD61 is the self-declared right-leaning version of CommieTzard” -John Lovell
Another strawman, how “cute.” We do not like the stolen Valor phonies. It doesn’t matter hofake their quotes are. That is only further proof. You take a quote often mistakenly attributed to ancient Greeks that is mistakenly attribubated to an ancient greek as proof that the person and the general ideas espoused by the quote are all bunk. You then pull another strawman/an hominem attack against the people here pointing this out, instead of just acknowledging, regardless of the source, that the sentiment in the quote is true.
c99,
I never said all bunk, or even implied it,
or went anywhere above or beyond the fake quote itself.
That’s your mistake.
That’s on you.
I support the article as a whole,
but the appearance of a fake quote undermines it,
especially when a few driven Dems out there get their hands on it.
‘go undermine your own face’ -Dwight D. Eisenhower
Marine Dad and Lars are among my associates. Big Daddy is proud of them.
MarineDad61: FWIW, the quote to which you refer above isn’t what the British officer in question said – or more precisely, wrote – either.
The British officer in question was Colonel Sir William F. Butler. The quote comes from his biography of General Charles George Gordon. The actual quote (e.g., an image from the pertinent page of the biography) can be viewed at the link below.
https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2017/06/fools-cowards-and-thucydides.html
While what Butler actually wrote conveys much the same idea as the quote above (which has been quite widely mis-attributed to Thucydides) and may in fact be the first recorded instance of that particular idea, the wording is not the same.
My point? If you’re going to nit-pick, be precise and correct when doing so. Otherwise, you’re making a different variety of the same error.
(Quote previously deleted; I restored it since it was apparently replied to while being deleted.)
The reason I point out this Lovell (and Fox) gaffe,
is that this is going on right now in state level politics,
by supposed wise old men who want to become our next Governor or US Senator.
Not wise, for ambitious self appointed wise old men
(including veterans, who trot out their military service),
who want to be elected to high positions,
to fail to have someone on their staffs
deploy the Fu of Google,
or deploy the Fu themselves for 3 minutes,
because coming out with twisted historical quotes on the campaign trail
is easily caught, and turned against them.
This could be a new career opportunity for you.
SFC D,
Been nailing fake quotes (by both sides)
for years on the Book of the Fake,
mostly by plopping them with Abraham Lincoln’s internet quote meme.
The pay sucks.
SFC D,
But getting our local state assembly rep to delete his post,
and then get caught with denials and deleting comments,
and then being forced to publicly acknowledge (and apologize),
feels really good.
I’m sure it does. Personally, I think you enjoy the limelight and attention that derailing a thread brings, and that’s enough for you.
“All the world’s indeed a stage and we are merely players”
-Neal Peart
“I’m too drunk to taste this chicken” -The Professor from The Waterboy
SFC D,
Big fan, since the 70s.
Nailing the Fly by Night album was my advanced self training as a future rock drummer.
RIP Neil Peart.
Woops.. Lyric is here.
Finally… something Marine dad and I have in common. Rush fans.
The exact quote appears to be:
“A nation that draws too broad a difference between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting done by fools.”
Said by Thucydides
https://www.quotes.net/quote/38537
So the sentiment, if not the direct quote, was correct. A simple 30 second check of Google would have come up with this.
BTW – Thucydides (c. 460 B.C. – c. 395 B.C.) was a Greek historian and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C.
That puts it way before your self imposed point in time of 1889.
But it’s so much more fun to argue a trivial point in the article rather than the actual content. You’ve rained all over someone’s parade. Santa is watching…;)
SOP of some here.
“By use of feint you will draw out the enemy and stick things in their bum” -Winston Churchill
gitarcarver: actually, that quote indeed appears to be paraphrased from a bio written by a British officer published c. 1889. See my restored comment above, which links to an image of the original source.
That quote (or a variation) apparently does not appear in any of Thucydides’ surviving writings. (Disclaimer: I haven’t searched Thucydides’ writings myself to determine that fact personally, hence the “apparently” here. However, verifiable quotes from Thucydides generally include a reference in “Book Chapter:verse” format to one of his surviving works – and I’ve never seen such for this quote.)
That quote (with variations) has, however, been quite widely mis-attributed to Thucydides – just as the “Only the dead have seen the end of war” quote actually by Santanya was for decades quite widely mis-attributed to Plato.
gc,
THAT’S THE FAKE QUOTE.
lol
“The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.” –William Francis Butler (in his book Charles George Gordon, 1907)
It’s actually quoted in The Challenge of Command, by Roger H. Nye, found at most MCSS book sections (where I did for this) too.
P.S. Try finding Butler’s book on “Chinese” Gordon; everybody just does secondary citation because it’s too frickin’ hard.
Yep.
Confirmed that it’s memorized, not new.
Lovell’s spouting of this fake quote goes back to a
July 2020 post on the Book of the Fake.
So avoidable.
Kinda puts crabs and crawfish in your craws.
(paste)
[Warrior Poet Society
“The state that separates its scholars from its warriors
will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”
⠀
One of the most definitive quotes of the Warrior Poet ethos, spoken by the great Athenian general and historian Thucydides.
⠀
It is our passion and our conviction to use our bodies AND our minds in order to protect others, in turn creating safer communities and a safer world.]
(end paste)
https://www.facebook.com/warriorpoetsociety/posts/2940362899419502
“And if I can scrounge this up in about 3 minutes”
Apparently you are under the delusion that the function of ‘journalists’ is to publish facts and truth. The true function of ‘journalists’ is to provide enough written and spoken words to fill a quota (time or quantity). And, like all systems built on quotas, quality is at best a secondary concern.
Like you, I once spent a few minutes ‘fact checking’ so-called ‘journalists’. As you say, it doesn’t take many. I used to use the reference section of a library until I found that a copy of the “Statistical Abstract of the Unite States” (paperback, less than $10 in olden times) allowed me to fact-check in the comfort of my own home. Then came CSPAN, and then the internet. Then the realization that anybody who gets a C or better in *Freshman English has all necessary qualifications to be a journalist.
*At one time it would have been a passing grade in High School Senior English, but inflation is not just a monetary phenomena.
Aristotle and William Butlet Yeats also said it. Lots of folk probably have.
P.S. Misattribution to Thucydides probably stems from Aristotle (“some old dead Greek guy”) and Thucydides sounded cooler to have said it.
This came via Thucydides (not Aristotle) of course:
That seems to happen quite a bit. Seems like there has been more than one observant and intelligent person in the 5,000 years or so of written history.
“Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose”.
“What’s past is prologue.”
“There is nothing new under the sun”.
“Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it”.
“History began on July 4th, 1776. Everything before that was a mistake”
The strangest thing….
2016 – Here is Lovell on the Tube of You,
introducing the SAME fake quote as his opening line.
Yes, that’s 5 years ago.
2017 – On a share of this video podcast on podchaser, he admits the mistake,
and even correctly credits with the names Butler & Gordon.
2020 – He’s back to the ancient Greek name again with the fake quote.
2021 – Unchecked, he goes on Fox News, doing the ancient Greek fake quote again.
Why admit the mistake in 2017,
and then go back to making the same mistake again and again and again,
and now doing so on national news media?
[Fighting like FOOLS / 135,928 views / Dec 3, 2016]
2017 self correction.
Now it’s a total head scratcher.
https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/warrior-poet-society-podcast-513863/episodes/fighting-like-fools-or-why-you-15006709
While I now finish up planning an 8 day trip to wrap up 2021,
I sit here laughing my ass off at the irony
of the title of the YouTube video.
And don’t forget, your dotgov is forcing the best of us to take an illegal ‘medication’ for ‘reasons’ unknown.
Enjoy the show!
Hondo,
Correct.
However, I pointed you right to it myself.
Double however, I am not speaking up in an MSM article,
nor pulling out quotes for national exposure,
just pointing out an obvious (easy to find)
quote gaffe for a blog VG SV followers.
Thanks.
Any bird can build a nest but not anyone can lay an egg. Stan Laurel Quote. This stuff was unheard of when I served.
First it was Commissar who hijacked virtually every thread here at TAH.
Now MarineDad61 hijacks virtually every thread here at TAH.
Which then inevitably results in endless ridiculous bickering over the accuracy of quotes, reliability of cited sources, who is “smarter” than who, etc.
These are several of the main reasons that some of us rarely even stop in here anymore, let alone post anything.
Please knock it off.
Merry Christmas to Team TAH.
Word! Thanks Mick, glad to see that you aren’t still afraid to fly into a danger zone, haven’t lost that loving feeling for some of us, and told him to put that sh^t on ice, man! He trying to ruin my ball at the beach. BTW, you seen that new Ford Truck yet? It’s the Maverick Model.
How ’bout, if you get a chance, snag a Jump Jet and scoot down heah near Tampa and give me a ride back up towards God’s Country come Monday. That no flying wingwiper that got me down here couldn’t land a fish with both hands and a net, much less that 757-300.
I always wanted to take a ‘73 Maverick, remove the badges, put in the T-Bird/Shelby sequential taillights, rear deck and chin spoilers from the ‘69 Mach 1, Magnum 500 wheels, and a 351 Windsor 4-barrel. Allegedly, there was a prototype Mustang built on the Maverick platform but it lost out to the Pinto-based Mustang II. This modified Maverick would be my interpretation of such a vehicle.
The Mustang II was an abomination before the Lord. Except for the one that Farrah drove in Charlie’s Angels.
There was a mustang II back in day, ran around Detroit with a 460 under the hood. Hot rod magazine had an article on it a couple years(?) back. IIRC, it had no more than a cobra hood scoop. Apparently quite the street terror at the time.
Don’t remember if they ever said what happened to it.
Probably twisted itself into a pretzel, or rusted out if more than 3 or 4 years old.
He obviously does not have a JOB, but has a great deal free time to post his prolific drivel here.
None of this shit will matter once we are all comrads.
Ask Lars if that’s before or after “re-education” camps and firing squads.
So, misquoted quotes aside, if the US military doesn’t get back to focusing on killing our enemies and quit worrying about the feelings of everyone, we are in for trouble around every corner.
Yeahhhh it’s good to remember that a military exists to kill people and break shit. They used to teach that.
*INSERT PITHY QUOTE HERE*
A quote from a non-woke, former Military (and Merchant Marine) Captain (since this Thread is about quotes now, right?):
“Frankly My Dear, I don’t give a damn!”
Rhett Butler.
I’d have to say my favorite quote from a former Merchant Marine was from Mr. Alvin Dalley (educator, championship winning wrestling coach, assistant football coach, driver’s ed instructor, longtime mayor of Driggs, Idaho, and all around awesome guy), bellowed loud enough to rattle the windows during 8th Grade PE:
“I’m gonna kick your ass so hard you’ll have to take your shirt off to take a crap!”
Glad I am out.
All that wasted energy on Marine Dad. Write your fucking congressman instead. While it is only marginally less useful there is the tiniest of chances that the aide reading the mail might pass it along and paddle the raft a little harder in the right direction.
Not sure which is the bigger waste of time.
Maybe I’ll just punch myself in the junk. Lot less painful and I learn faster not to do it again.
MD61, ol’ Poe searched your favorite online authoritative source for Thucydidies quotes and found nothing; however he did find this article:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/12/us-air-force-focused-wokeness-russia-china-make-threats-country/
Which, in ol’ Poe’s opinion, is more relevant to this thread than your obsessive fault-finding and self promotion.
Oh, and by the way, the self-described, “The Web’s Largest Resource for Famous Quotes & Sayings” also misattributes the quote in question to Thucydidies so it’s not difficult to see how Lovell made his mistaken accreditation.
Which of course you would have found on your own if you had followed your own too-frequently offered advice to others here to Google Fu. In this case, a little deeper than you did.
Perhaps you should Google Fu that biblical thing about stones and glass houses, hmm?
Super MD61
Able to cut and paste faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap to high horses in a single bound.
I have been skipping over his crap more than I skip over Major Berkley’s.
Me too. Or, to quote a famous dead white male,
“Who the fuck cares?!”
Lou Costello
It’s not over until the fat mans quoted.
Yogi Berra
This quote too shall be debated 😏
Or attempted to be proven false.
Just you wait.
“We need a military full of Type-A men who want to sit on a throne of Chinese skulls.” –Jesse Kelley
Prefer this one better.
I, for one, eagerly await the long-overdue inclusion of blind snipers in the military to counteract the predominance of ably-sighted persons with that expertise.
In my opinion what the military and a great many organizations get wrong about diversity and inclusion (I’ll leave equity off since I have more severe problems with it) is that it’s a fine principle to have… that comes secondary to the mission. There are certainly places where it intersects with mission readiness, especially when it comes to intelligence. Having a burly white dude from Texas try to blend in and recruit assets in China is a tough sell. Getting input from people who understand a culture like Afghanistan to inform command decisions is incredibly useful, and a more diverse military helps you recruit people like that.
But when leadership of any organization takes this shit to the extreme in an effort to thump their chests while simultaneously refusing to engage their brain, putting the mission focus at risk, that’s a big fucking problem. That ain’t just true for those in the national security space, it applies to schools, jobs, you name it. Take the good, throw out the bad. This doesn’t need to be a ‘package deal’.
Okay, who are you really? We know you’re not LC writing common sense (even conservative) stuff like this.
C’mon, fess up now and we’ll go easy on you…😜
He’s being facetious. I would advise against making such statement, however, as actual left/libtards take such stuff seriously and wonder why they hadn’t thought of such cool “equity”-type sh*t before.
Gotta agree 100%. Diversity is a wonderful thing, but it can’t be the primary or only thing. Forced diversity (quotas, affirmative action, etc.) never produces a good result, mainly it produces resentment, questionable hires, and does nothing to help under-represented groups advance. But it feeeels good, and that’s all that matters.
Progressives, you bet. Got their number.
“Forced diversity (quotas, affirmative action, etc.) never produces a good result, mainly it produces resentment, questionable hires, and does nothing to help under-represented groups advance.”
But it sure makes brainwashed liberal college-edupicaketed “intellectuals” feel good about themselves as they force that shit down everyone’s throats in their quest for advancement with no thought to consequences!
I always love asking people who are pushing for quotas what their target is. For example, Boulder, Colorado is 90% white (including Hispanic), 1.2% black, 5% Asian, and the rest other/mixed. If a business in Boulder seeks to hire to a quota, do they aim for 1.2% of their workforce to be black, being representative of the county? Or do they aim for numbers representative of the state, at 4.5% black? Or do they aim for numbers representative of the country, at ~13%? Or even global demographics, which is different yet again, and less well-defined?
Nobody has given me a good answer to that yet. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg. How to evaluate hiring a gay white dude vs a straight black dude for ‘diversity’ is another thing people tie themselves in knots over, when the answer is obvious: whichever one can do the job better.
I do have hope things will improve, as I’ve seen more and more pushback on this within organizations I’m connected to.
Who is this sockpuppet posting as our beloved LC?
LC: If you can see this, blink twice.
Before I shipped for Basic, I worked for a custom furniture company in Idaho. My boss was a crusty but awesome retired CSM. He’s getting interviewed by a stuffy lady from the Small Business Association. She asks about our hiring policy for minorities. Boss says we don’t hire minorities. Lady blows a head gasket, and asks why not. Boss says there aren’t any here to hire. If there were, we’d hire them.
How about deaf tactical radio operators (05B’s), or maybe quadraplegic tank drivers?
Woke politics will fill up body bags the next time the red balloon goes up, that “diversity” shit reminds me of a very substandard POS Troop I once briefly had under me who ALWAYS flaunted her ethnicity and gender barking that the Unit needed “Diversity” when it came to promotions, awards and choice assignments.
Ah, evaluations O, E, S or U in training from years past…
White male “S” would be the white female or black male “E” and the black female “O” especially because “you tried” (and Asians better be Superman to even pass). With standings riding on that, you bet folk were pissed.
Remember that you can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be led. Quote Stan Laurel.
The Commissariat wants to control you in order to transform this capitalist hellhole into a socialist utopia! WE WILL SUCCEED!!!!
Over my heavily armed dead body and a equal sized pile of brass.
Come get you some, boy.
MD61, check your inbox.
Ok. Thanks.
AW1Ed,
Right back atcha.
Check your inbox (email).
It’s not about this article… but about something much bigger.
Phony bigger.
🙂
Man, 96 comments here and not a whole lot about the topic at hand…
I’ve been in for 32 years total, with a three year break from 91-94. I’ve got to say that up until recently I was convinced the army wasn’t “woke” (feel like a retard even writing that in quotes), but my last job and my current one, I’m starting to see more of it, and in people junior to me. Not good. And the scary thing is that I almost feel at risk when because I haven’t changed. 2.5 years and counting.