"Our troops are a bunch of woke, poetry-loving queers"

No, they're not. Why do Conservatives hate our military?

And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect.

• Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

How can one absolve intelligent men for engaging in arrogant and demented folly?

• C. R. Strahan

It was with some considerable amusement that I listened to America’s Dumbest Senator ©, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), complain about poems being read over the loudspeaker on US Navy ships. I couldn’t help wondering what he’d be complaining about next. Drag queens in the engine rooms? Transgender ice cream socials in the captain’s quarters?

There seems to be an expectation that for the American military to be at peak readiness to face potential enemies of freedom, it must also be at peak toxic masculinity. Nothing faintly effeminate must be allowed to seep into the hypermasculine world of American war-making. So, no poetry readings, philosophical debates, and nothing beyond “See enemy, kill enemy.”

This explains why Tuberville and other red-meat Conservatives have their panties all bunched up over “diversity” and “wokeism.” Those are all things that detract from military readiness, they insist. These blindered nimrods believe the only military force capable of hunting down and killing the enemy is composed of White Conservative Christian cisgender heterosexuals.

The Congressional White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexual Caucus appears to have determined that it’s perfectly acceptable to be openly racist and homophobic when critiquing the military. Because of the critical role of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Space Force (which still sounds like a Mel Brooks movie) in defending the homeland, we must be certain only the most masculine are chosen to protect us.

And we all know what The Congressional White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexual Caucus demands. They want a military that looks, talks, acts, and f**ks precisely as they do.

Our military isn’t “woke.” Of course, it isn’t. Nothing with that many tanks is “woke.”

• Trae Crowder

What might be happening is that with all the criticism from Conservatives and The Congressional White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexual Caucus, they might be sabotaging recruiting efforts. And when the recruiting numbers are down, they can blame the situation of Joe Biden and “wokeness in the military.”

That is, in the more technical language I tend to favor, a load of pure, unadulterated horseshit.

All the Biden Administration is trying to do is what they’re trying to do with much of the rest of the government- trying to make it look more like America. Sure, that’s a secondary goal to ensuring military readiness. Still, there’s nothing wrong- and certainly nothing “woke”- about having a military that looks more like the country it’s meant to protect.

A theme that keeps dominating certain corners of media commentary is the idea that the U.S. armed forces have become “woke.” In today's vocabulary, this implies that the American military has been overtaken by ideological imperatives that push a far-left political agenda.

Blaming a “woke” military culture for scaring off those who would otherwise volunteer is silly. It’s a lazy argument made by lazy intellects who don’t care to fully understand the reasons behind the lagging recruiting numbers.

It’s not a simple, easily understood problem with an equally clean and transparent solution. Like too many issues Conservatives attempt to break down, there’s more to it than meets the eye…which means that Conservatives aren’t going to bother to try to understand it.

No, they’re going to demagogue it.

First, the labor market is one of nearly full employment, with even high-paying jobs in the private sector desperate for suitable applicants. The more attractive the civilian job market proves to be, the more challenging military recruitment always becomes.

Second, the skill set and learning potential expected of recruits to the U.S. armed forces no longer fit the popular civilian image based on 20th-century “dogfaces” and G.I. Joes. For example, infantry recruits today will be expected to deal with complex equipment and training regimens that demand physical durability and cognitive flexibility well beyond that of their fathers and grandfathers. The U.S. Space Force and cyber commands need to be populated by persons at the upper end of the scale for imagination, creativity and the ability to "connect the dots."

Another motive for military recruitment is patriotism. The tradition of serving in the armed forces is often handed down from generation to generation in military families. These multigenerational military families come disproportionally from small-town and rural America, where great pride in military service is combined with shrinking job opportunities in the civilian labor market. That component of the American population is shrinking, meaning that there are fewer and fewer potential recruits from this group.

This generation has (thankfully) had no 9/11-style calamity to create a patriotic call to arms. Recruiting in the years after 9/11 wasn’t much of a challenge as young Americans felt moved to enlist and protect their country. That sort of motivation doesn’t exist today, which we should be grateful for, even if it does complicate military recruiting.

Today’s increasingly technical military isn’t the “dumping ground” it may have been for past generations. Those who may not have had other prospects coming out of high school could always enlist and be guaranteed a paycheck. The American military of the 21st century is an increasingly high-tech undertaking, meaning that education is more important than ever.

The Biden Administration’s focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion isn’t the detriment to readiness Conservatives are convinced it is. Many still believe the American military was, is, and should forever remain a White-male-dominated institution. All that narrow focus does is eliminate talent that happens not to be White, Conservative, Christian, cisgender, and/or heterosexual.

Suppose Conservatives like Sen. Tommy (“No one’s more military than me”) Tuberville genuinely want a military that’s ready 24/7/365 to face whatever adversary awaits us. In that case, they’d want to draw from the whole of the vast American talent pool. That they seem not to want that only exposes their racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and religious bigotry.

All of their caterwauling has nothing to do with military readiness. It’s just another weak attempt at embarrassing a President they despise. And it’s every bit as pathetic as their argument.

The American military isn’t “woke.” There are no “ideological imperatives” pushing “a Far-Left agenda.” There are only narrow-minded Conservatives who have nothing positive to add, and so their weak response is to try and tear down an institution they already spend far too many taxpayer dollars on.

It doesn’t get much more pathetic than that.

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