Tucker: America's obsession with being 'woke' hits the military
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host examines the fixation with identity politics among those meant to keep us safe
It's easy to dismiss woke activism as a kind of childish sideshow that plays out mostly on college campuses and public radio shows. The cringing, the self-hatred, the hair-on-fire hysteria, the total obliviousness to historical reality -- the whole thing is like an adolescent rage fit that goes on forever.
At the University of Wisconsin last month, child activists convinced administrators to move a boulder on campus because they claimed it represented bigotry. It was a racist rock. That actually happened, along with countless other things like it. Our grandchildren are going to read about this moment and they're going to laugh in disbelief. At least, that's been our assumption.
But what if the current lunacy turns out to be more than a passing phase? What if race obsession is not a fad, but instead an incurable brain virus that's infected our country's entire leadership class? If that's the case, then we're in trouble. Our grandchildren won't laugh about what's happening right now. In fact, at this pace, a lot of Americans won't have grandchildren.
Here's America's highest-ranking guilty White guy explaining how he's hiring the people to run the federal agencies.
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PRESIDENT-ELECT JOE BIDEN, DEC. 19: Today ... we will make [these] the sixth African-American members of our Cabinet, which is a record. After today, our Cabinet won't just be one or two precedent-breaking appointments, but 12, including today's long-overdue appointment of the first Native American Cabinet secretary ... Already there are more people of color in our Cabinet than any Cabinet ever, more women than ever.
Biden isn't even bothering to try to convince you that he's choosing the most competent people for key jobs. Instead, he's telling you what they look like. Their appearance is all that matters. So it turns out your mother was wrong, you can judge a book by its cover. In fact, you're now required to.
Over time, identity politics will destroy our country. No nation can remain unified for long if people are encouraged to think of themselves as members of competing ethnic groups first and citizens second. Countries need a reason to hang together; unity doesn't happen by accident. The fixation on race that has seized our leadership class guarantees permanent disunity. It's terrifying if you think about it, but it could be much worse.
What if the woke brain virus began to infect the last remaining meritocracy in this country, the U.S. military? If that happened, it would be a legitimate disaster.
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The military, we have all been told since childhood, doesn't care what you look like, what your parents did, or where you're from. They care about your performance. That's why the U.S. military is impressive and why they've been able to keep us from being invaded, because they only care about what matters, and what matters is protecting the United States.
Not any more. Last week, Acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, announced that the U.S. military will be changing its standards from top to bottom. This is not to create a more effective fighting force to save your children from China or other foreign domination. No, it's in order to conform to policies formulated by the Pentagon's so-called Diversity and Inclusion Board. You can imagine what those policies are. Strict affirmative action, hiring and promoting by appearance, the elimination of objective standards. According to Miller, who should be ashamed of himself, these extremist left-wing social engineering projects are "moral imperatives" in the armed forces, though he did not explain why.
This is a symptom of a larger problem that, unfortunately, the rest of us have ignored for a very long time. While the rest of the country is focused on the remarkable heroism of, say, SEAL Team Six, much of our military's leadership was moving in another direction to the point they have now come to resemble the anthropology department at Wesleyan.
In September 2017, Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Jay Silveria went on this rant after a supposed hate crime took place at the academy's prep school:
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SILVERIA: You may have heard that some people down on the prep school wrote some racial slurs on some message boards. If you haven't heard that, I wanted you to hear it from me. If you're outraged by those words, then you're in the right place. That kind of behavior has no place at the prep school, it has no place at USAFA, and it has no place in the United States Air Force. And if you can't treat someone from another race or [with] a different color skin with dignity and respect, then you need to get out.
The hate crime was a hoax, like so many hate crimes that are reported in the media. The U.S. military, for the record, has a very long history of treating everyone with respect and dignity because it was a meritocracy and a meritocracy is designed to treat people with respect and dignity on the basis of how they behave, not on the basis of how they look. But Silveria apparently forgot that he was mouthing the words to a hymn written by the hard left, and no one stopped him or many like him. So the brain virus spread throughout the U.S. military.
This summer, the U.S. Army's so-called Operation Inclusion instructed soldiers that the phrase "Make America Great Again" was a form of socially acceptable "covert White supremacy." According to the Army, a presidential campaign slogan was White supremacy. No one did anything about that.
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Now, according to the Army's Equity and Inclusion Agency (yes, they have one), the phrase, "all lives matter", American exceptionalism, and the celebration of Columbus Day are racist. Over the summer, the now-retired head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Army Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, encouraged his employees to read the lunatic tract "White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo, a book that is both inherently bigoted and very stupid. Over the summer, Kaleth Wright, then the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, proclaimed on Twitter that his greatest fear was that one of his airmen might be killed by a racist cop. Not killed by the Chinese military, but by American racism.
Again, these are the people who are supposed to be protecting you. Can you protect a nation with a military like this?
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening monologue on the Dec. 21, 2020 edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
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