Military commander removed after denouncing neo-Marxist critical race theory

Ana the Ist

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That's pretty twisted reasoning. The fact is that he explicitly couched his discussion in classical political terms: The word "Marxism" itself, for instance.

The military training doesn't use any of that terminology at all. Just because it kicks over his personal beliefs doesn't mean it's Marxist or even critical race theory.

Show me one of those Marxist PowerPoint presentations, or it didn't happen.

I'm not sure what you're saying here...

If the military doesn't call it Marxism....then it's not Marxism?

That can't be the argument you're making....
 
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RDKirk

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I'm not sure what you're saying here...

If the military doesn't call it Marxism....then it's not Marxism?

That can't be the argument you're making....

The military is not teaching Marxism, neo- or otherwise.

But some people don't like the military deconstructing their rationales for bigotry, so they label it "Marxism" to rouse the unthinking rabble.
 
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Ana the Ist

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The military is not teaching Marxism, neo- or otherwise.

But some people don't like the military deconstructing their rationales for bigotry, so they label it "Marxism" to rouse the unthinking rabble.

Deconstructing their rationales for bigotry?
 
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98cwitr

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All General Whiting did was light the fuse to a problem that is going to backfire.

We're trying to avoid ignition of that powder keg...too many innocent people will be hurt if set off.
 
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98cwitr

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He said something to antagonize someone and is whining about it.
20160707_allhousesredux.png


Why did I get fired for callously ignoring someone's house being on fire! :(

I think we need to ask: Who started the fire?

iu
 
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RDKirk

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Military commander removed after denouncing neo-Marxist critical race theory
A commander in the United States Space Force was apparently relieved from his post after appearing on a podcast to promote his book, which asserts a neo-Marxist agenda is transforming military culture and policy. Citing a diversity initiative in which the U.S. is referred to as a “white supremacist nation,” Lohmeier told the Information Operation podcast that the young service members are inundated by a “hyperpoliticized work environment where diversity and inclusion initiatives are being pushed constantly.”
Lohmeier added that conservatives in the military who are willing to voice their opinions are painted as “extremists.”“What you see happening in the U.S. military at the moment is that if you're a conservative, then you're lumped into a group of people who are labeled extremists, if you're willing to voice your views. And if you're aligned with the Left, then it's OK to be an activist online because no one's gonna hold you accountable," he said.

Space Force officer relieved of post after denouncing Marxist ideology and critical race theory in military: Report

Okay, so I bought and read Lohmeier's book. He has a lot to say about his view of the state of world and national polity, and how the world and the nation got to where it is. He brings every "bad guy" into the picture, from the Illuminati to the Freemasons to Lenin and to Marx into the conspiracy to take down America. He cites all the things that he doesn't like about the current state of the United States (and the world), and pigeonholes all of it as "Marxism." That consumes the first 100 pages of a 200 page book, and much of the rest. There is a whole lot--many entire pages--of Tucker Carlson quotation.

The couple of actual DoD documents he references, he applauds. Other than that, he doesn't present any other evidence of official DoD training of any of the Marxism or Critical Race Theory that he accuses the DoD of perpetuating. He doesn't even claim any such official training has even happened.

He cites attending a voluntary racial issues discussion group among officers in which he didn't like the book that was used as the basis of discussion. He discusses several anecdotal conversations he's had with various people who don't like the current political climate in and out of the military (for their own reasons, which don't necessarily coincide with his). He discusses a chaplain assigned to his unit who was to the left of him on racial issues. All anecdotal.

That doesn't mean that his anecdotes aren't troubling to some extent. He has a complaint that officers on social media make politically extreme statements without recrimination. I agree with him that should not happen, although I'm not sure from the limited information he gives whether those statements are being made by people identifying themselves as military officers, or if he just happens to know personally who they are. That makes a difference in terms of a military disciplinary response. But for sure, and for a lot of reasons, I would agree there needs to be some kind of military discipline exerted on military members' activities on social media.

One concern I do share with him is the adoption of any whole-piece inclusivity program from academia into military indoctrination, or lifting military indoctrination directly from such sources as the 1619 Project. I don't think that can be done properly--civilian and military personal relationships are far too fundamentally different--and while he speaks about it as though it has happened, he doesn't point out any specific circumstances of it happening.

As I said earlier, "Show me the PowerPoint slide."
 
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RDKirk

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Solidly Marxist?

The paragraph quoted mentioned seeing "Marxist ideology" everywhere. That's not the same as saying Marxist controlled.

Except that he has lumped everything and everybody to the left of him (and he's pretty far to the right) as "Marxist."

He calls, for instance, every "accusation of racism" in society, even historical accusations, parcels of Marxist ideology.
 
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RDKirk

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The military is an organisation of exploitation and dishonesty without care for their lower ranks. At least in world war 1 the leadership were honest enough to tell their new recruits that they could expect nothing but death.
It's mission is get the job done. Just look at care that vets do not get.

In love
Jay Sea

Or look at the care that vets do get. Veterans' hospitals are full. Do some slip through the cracks? Yes. Are the cracks too wide? Yes. But as American institutions go, the US government does better for its 7% of veterans than for 92% of its other citizens.

Of course, in America that's a low bar.
 
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Ana the Ist

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Except that he has lumped everything and everybody to the left of him (and he's pretty far to the right) as "Marxist."

He calls, for instance, every "accusation of racism" in society, even historical accusations, parcels of Marxist ideology.

I'm not sure what a "historical accusation" is....do you mean accusations of racism that happened in the past?

Can you give an example he uses?
 
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Desk trauma

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Okay, so I bought and read Lohmeier's book. He has a lot to say about his view of the state of world and national polity, and how the world and the nation got to where it is. He brings every "bad guy" into the picture, from the Illuminati to the Freemasons to Lenin and to Marx into the conspiracy to take down America. He cites all the things that he doesn't like about the current state of the United States (and the world), and pigeonholes all of it as "Marxism." That consumes the first 100 pages of a 200 page book, and much of the rest. There is a whole lot--many entire pages--of Tucker Carlson quotation.

The couple of actual DoD documents he references, he applauds. Other than that, he doesn't present any other evidence of official DoD training of any of the Marxism or Critical Race Theory that he accuses the DoD of perpetuating. He doesn't even claim any such official training has even happened.

He cites attending a voluntary racial issues discussion group among officers in which he didn't like the book that was used as the basis of discussion. He discusses several anecdotal conversations he's had with various people who don't like the current political climate in and out of the military (for their own reasons, which don't necessarily coincide with his). He discusses a chaplain assigned to his unit who was to the left of him on racial issues. All anecdotal.

That doesn't mean that his anecdotes aren't troubling to some extent. He has a complaint that officers on social media make politically extreme statements without recrimination. I agree with him that should not happen, although I'm not sure from the limited information he gives whether those statements are being made by people identifying themselves as military officers, or if he just happens to know personally who they are. That makes a difference in terms of a military disciplinary response. But for sure, and for a lot of reasons, I would agree there needs to be some kind of military discipline exerted on military members' activities on social media.

One concern I do share with him is the adoption of any whole-piece inclusivity program from academia into military indoctrination, or lifting military indoctrination directly from such sources as the 1619 Project. I don't think that can be done properly--civilian and military personal relationships are far too fundamentally different--and while he speaks about it as though it has happened, he doesn't point out any specific circumstances of it happening.

As I said earlier, "Show me the PowerPoint slide."

Thanks for taking one for the team and wading though that.
 
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Ana the Ist

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Okay, so I bought and read Lohmeier's book. He has a lot to say about his view of the state of world and national polity, and how the world and the nation got to where it is. He brings every "bad guy" into the picture, from the Illuminati to the Freemasons to Lenin and to Marx into the conspiracy to take down America. He cites all the things that he doesn't like about the current state of the United States (and the world), and pigeonholes all of it as "Marxism." That consumes the first 100 pages of a 200 page book, and much of the rest. There is a whole lot--many entire pages--of Tucker Carlson quotation.

The couple of actual DoD documents he references, he applauds. Other than that, he doesn't present any other evidence of official DoD training of any of the Marxism or Critical Race Theory that he accuses the DoD of perpetuating. He doesn't even claim any such official training has even happened.

He cites attending a voluntary racial issues discussion group among officers in which he didn't like the book that was used as the basis of discussion. He discusses several anecdotal conversations he's had with various people who don't like the current political climate in and out of the military (for their own reasons, which don't necessarily coincide with his). He discusses a chaplain assigned to his unit who was to the left of him on racial issues. All anecdotal.

That doesn't mean that his anecdotes aren't troubling to some extent. He has a complaint that officers on social media make politically extreme statements without recrimination. I agree with him that should not happen, although I'm not sure from the limited information he gives whether those statements are being made by people identifying themselves as military officers, or if he just happens to know personally who they are. That makes a difference in terms of a military disciplinary response. But for sure, and for a lot of reasons, I would agree there needs to be some kind of military discipline exerted on military members' activities on social media.

One concern I do share with him is the adoption of any whole-piece inclusivity program from academia into military indoctrination, or lifting military indoctrination directly from such sources as the 1619 Project. I don't think that can be done properly--civilian and military personal relationships are far too fundamentally different--and while he speaks about it as though it has happened, he doesn't point out any specific circumstances of it happening.

As I said earlier, "Show me the PowerPoint slide."

The military is doing "inclusivity training"?
 
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RDKirk

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The military is doing "inclusivity training"?

The military has been doing its own version of inclusivity training for 50 years, when the military began making the concept of "we're all green" a proactively explicit doctrine instead of an implied idea.

But what is an idyllic concept in the civilian community is, as you have said, a necessity of the military telos. We can't win wars without it. That is, in fact, the reason why military leaders went to Truman to push for an integrated service, not the other way around.

By the late 60s, it was clear that service integrtion was still short of actual "inclusivity" (although "inclusivity" wasn't the word the military used at the time, it's the concept they were groping for). But practical inclusivity is a different thing from idyllic inclusivity.

Here is an example: For everyone who enters basic training, the military's intention is that each person finishes basic training strong and successfully. That is, for everyone an equal outcome. But people do not enter at equal levels. Some are overweight, some underweight, some weak, some slow, some bright, some dull, some can fallow directions, some are hard-headed. So to achieve an equal outcome, they must receive unequal treatment. The slow and weak must work harder. The duller must study longer. The overweight must run farther. The hard-headed get more discipline.

The military must also accurately access true requirement versus arbitrary bars, which is why Marine Corps basic is has always been more physically rigorous than Air Force basic. Sometimes those have to be reconsidered. For instance, my field, Intelligence, had been barred to women up into the 70s. Why? Well, because we typically worked on the flight line and thus were considered "operations," and women could not be in "operations." Duh! But...intelligence is not flying aircraft into combat. It's not even doing a lot of heavy physical labor. It's mostly sitting in chairs at desks using our brains...and women have brains, too. So sometimes military traditions need re-evaluation. What do we really need?

In the Navy, women had long been barred from sea duty. Because they could not go to sea (or into the air or under the sea), they could not earn various warfare badges, which virtually shut them out of higher promotion levels. But the Navy realized that in a lot of ratings (Naval occupations)--like Intelligence--male sailors were doing the minimum of sea duty necessary to qualify for the warfare badges, and were often far behind women in all the other qualifications necessary for the badges. So in the promotion boards, instead of warfare badges (which women couldn't get anyway) as automatic discriminator criteria, promotions boards were instructed to examine how much each candidate had actually accomplished across the board. If the woman was maxing out on everything else possible to she could do except getting the warfare badge, she should rate higher than a man who was clearly doing the bare minimum, including the minimum it had taken to get the warfare badge. (Today, women can go to sea, so the promotion considerations can be identical.)

These methods are not the way the civilian community does "inclusivity," and the military must be careful not to mimic the civilian method of inclusivity.

For example, here is where a mistake has been made: The Marine Corps, when it expanded the roles of women in the Corps, increased the rigor of women's training, keeping them separate from men in the early weeks. In those early weeks, they gave the women "more" of what American high school graduate girls commonly lacked in comparison with high school graduate boys: Not only more physical training but also more explicit training in assertiveness. Then, with that additional training in the areas American teenaged girls are typically weaker than American Teenaged boys, they were combined in the final weeks of training. Again: Unequal treatment to achieve an equal outcome.

But under pressure of civilian idyllic inclusivity, in which equal outcome is supposed to result from equal treatment even from unequal starting positions, the Marine Corps has been forced to combine male and female training from the beginning day. So, essentially, the weak Marine doesn't get more training in the weak areas...they have to reduce the requirement instead.
 
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Okay, so I bought and read Lohmeier's book. He has a lot to say about his view of the state of world and national polity, and how the world and the nation got to where it is. He brings every "bad guy" into the picture, from the Illuminati to the Freemasons to Lenin and to Marx into the conspiracy to take down America. He cites all the things that he doesn't like about the current state of the United States (and the world), and pigeonholes all of it as "Marxism." That consumes the first 100 pages of a 200 page book, and much of the rest. There is a whole lot--many entire pages--of Tucker Carlson quotation.

The couple of actual DoD documents he references, he applauds. Other than that, he doesn't present any other evidence of official DoD training of any of the Marxism or Critical Race Theory that he accuses the DoD of perpetuating. He doesn't even claim any such official training has even happened.

He cites attending a voluntary racial issues discussion group among officers in which he didn't like the book that was used as the basis of discussion. He discusses several anecdotal conversations he's had with various people who don't like the current political climate in and out of the military (for their own reasons, which don't necessarily coincide with his). He discusses a chaplain assigned to his unit who was to the left of him on racial issues. All anecdotal.

That doesn't mean that his anecdotes aren't troubling to some extent. He has a complaint that officers on social media make politically extreme statements without recrimination. I agree with him that should not happen, although I'm not sure from the limited information he gives whether those statements are being made by people identifying themselves as military officers, or if he just happens to know personally who they are. That makes a difference in terms of a military disciplinary response. But for sure, and for a lot of reasons, I would agree there needs to be some kind of military discipline exerted on military members' activities on social media.

One concern I do share with him is the adoption of any whole-piece inclusivity program from academia into military indoctrination, or lifting military indoctrination directly from such sources as the 1619 Project. I don't think that can be done properly--civilian and military personal relationships are far too fundamentally different--and while he speaks about it as though it has happened, he doesn't point out any specific circumstances of it happening.

As I said earlier, "Show me the PowerPoint slide."

Dang, I’ve spent loads of time in pursuit of winning internet arguments, but never any money.
 
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Ana the Ist

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The military has been doing its own version of inclusivity training for 50 years, when the military began making the concept of "we're all green" a proactively explicit doctrine instead of an implied idea.

But what is an idyllic concept in the civilian community is, as you have said, a necessity of the military telos. We can't win wars without it. That is, in fact, the reason why military leaders went to Truman to push for an integrated service, not the other way around.

By the late 60s, it was clear that service integrtion was still short of actual "inclusivity" (although "inclusivity" wasn't the word the military used at the time, it's the concept they were groping for). But practical inclusivity is a different thing from idyllic inclusivity.

Here is an example: For everyone who enters basic training, the military's intention is that each person finishes basic training strong and successfully. That is, for everyone an equal outcome. But people do not enter at equal levels. Some are overweight, some underweight, some weak, some slow, some bright, some dull, some can fallow directions, some are hard-headed. So to achieve an equal outcome, they must receive unequal treatment. The slow and weak must work harder. The duller must study longer. The overweight must run farther. The hard-headed get more discipline.

The military must also accurately access true requirement versus arbitrary bars, which is why Marine Corps basic is has always been more physically rigorous than Air Force basic. Sometimes those have to be reconsidered. For instance, my field, Intelligence, had been barred to women up into the 70s. Why? Well, because we typically worked on the flight line and thus were considered "operations," and women could not be in "operations." Duh! But...intelligence is not flying aircraft into combat. It's not even doing a lot of heavy physical labor. It's mostly sitting in chairs at desks using our brains...and women have brains, too. So sometimes military traditions need re-evaluation. What do we really need?

In the Navy, women had long been barred from sea duty. Because they could not go to sea (or into the air or under the sea), they could not earn various warfare badges, which virtually shut them out of higher promotion levels. But the Navy realized that in a lot of ratings (Naval occupations)--like Intelligence--male sailors were doing the minimum of sea duty necessary to qualify for the warfare badges, and were often far behind women in all the other qualifications necessary for the badges. So in the promotion boards, instead of warfare badges (which women couldn't get anyway) as automatic discriminator criteria, promotions boards were instructed to examine how much each candidate had actually accomplished across the board. If the woman was maxing out on everything else possible to she could do except getting the warfare badge, she should rate higher than a man who was clearly doing the bare minimum, including the minimum it had taken to get the warfare badge. (Today, women can go to sea, so the promotion considerations can be identical.)

These methods are not the way the civilian community does "inclusivity," and the military must be careful not to mimic the civilian method of inclusivity.

For example, here is where a mistake has been made: The Marine Corps, when it expanded the roles of women in the Corps, increased the rigor of women's training, keeping them separate from men in the early weeks. In those early weeks, they gave the women "more" of what American high school graduate girls commonly lacked in comparison with high school graduate boys: Not only more physical training but also more explicit training in assertiveness. Then, with that additional training in the areas American teenaged girls are typically weaker than American Teenaged boys, they were combined in the final weeks of training. Again: Unequal treatment to achieve an equal outcome.

But under pressure of civilian idyllic inclusivity, in which equal outcome is supposed to result from equal treatment even from unequal starting positions, the Marine Corps has been forced to combine male and female training from the beginning day. So, essentially, the weak Marine doesn't get more training in the weak areas...they have to reduce the requirement instead.

Ok...

When talking about inclusivity in the military...we're basically hashing out the role women have and could have?
 
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RDKirk

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Ok...

When talking about inclusivity in the military...we're basically hashing out the role women have and could have?

Pretty much any group. Generally, speaking, the military has to deconstruct attitudes that people come in with.
 
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Ana the Ist

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Pretty much any group. Generally, speaking, the military has to deconstruct attitudes that people come in with.

Well now I'm lost again...

Your example of how the "one size fits all" approach isn't necessarily going to work for women because of the biological differences between men and women that are a fact of reality...makes sense. We are different in some ways. It's the exact reason why so much trouble has been stirred up by allowing trans females to compete with biological females.

What other groups are you talking about though? I'm fairly certain that significant physical or mental disabilities prevent people from getting enlisted.

What else are we talking about in regards to inclusion here?
 
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