RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/which_makes_better_soldiers_dei_or_assimilation.html

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is divisive, as it emphasizes differences based on race, ethnicity, biological sex, gender identities, etc., which is opposed to the time-tested, traditional military culture emphasizing unity, teamwork, selflessness, sacrifice, and assimilation into the warrior ethos.

May 1969, a commercial bus full of sleepy recruits stopped during darkness at Fort Ord, CA. Two Drill Instructors (DIs) jumped on the bus and started screaming, “get off my bus, you dirtbags, and line up outside.” A diverse assortment of now wide-awake young men lined up in four rows and then shuffled/marched to sterile appearing billets with a platoon of 50 recruits in each open bay, gray double-decker bunks with sheets and a wool blanket on both sides of an aisle running down the middle of the bay. They were awake until 0200 scrubbing the billet floors and latrine; up at 0530 the next day.

The next day they marched with DIs yelling commands, to the long quartermaster warehouse to be issued clothing and gear. But, first a stop at the barber building with a line of barbers ready to buzz hair off which they did quickly leaving about 1/4 inch on the top and almost none elsewhere.

Inside the quartermaster building there was a long countertop with mostly civilians on the opposite side manning issue stations; the recruits moved from one station to the other getting standard Olive Drab issue clothes which they stuffed into duffle bags. Sizes for fatigues, socks, t-shirts, boots, etc. were based on the calibrated eyeball estimate of the QM guy behind the counter. The heavy duffle bags were carried back to the billets where the contents were arranged in foot and wall lockers, dress right dress, according to the SOP, inspected and enforced by the DIs.

All of this was done to erase the “back on the block” civilian mentality and quickly replace it with “you’re in the Army now” and don’t forget it mindset. No more personal identities, no more it’s about me, it is now about the “Green Machine, your ass is mine” and your personal identity as a civilian does not matter; it no longer exists — you are now part of the machine — you have one color — Green.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/18/unpacking-ray-dalios-alarmist-prediction-of-civil-war/

The other day, Ray Dalio, the billionaire investor and founder of Bridgewater Associates, told The Financial Times that he sees the risk of a second American civil war as “growing” and places the odds of such a war at “35-40 percent.” According to FT, Dalio’s “research” has led him to conclude that “we are now on the brink,” although we “don’t yet know if we will cross over into much more turbulent times.”

On the one hand, it’s important to remember that Dalio is nearly universally known as a world-class crank. He’s made a lot of money in the markets and has long been considered an astute investor, but he has also long been considered an odd duck, to put it gently. Additionally, the idea that this proclamation and setting of odds are based on “research” is silly. There are no variables one can examine and analyze and then use to calculate an objective estimate of a civil war’s occurrence. To pretend otherwise is… well… perfectly Dalio-esque.

On the other hand, Dalio is hardly alone in his belief that tough times are imminent. Virtually the entirety of the ruling class seems to believe that the zeitgeist of the moment is characterized by anger, hatred, and the expectation of confrontation between political adversaries. Hollywood is busy making movies about a potential Civil War. Political magazines are warning that totalitarianism looms just over the electoral horizon. And even the President of the United States is releasing videos that sound more like pre-fight smack talk than political posturing. In short, Ray Dalio is hardly the first major public figure to express his fear/hope that the nation is “on the brink.”

Ironically, the part of this story Dalio and his fellow elites are missing is that in which they’re the cause of the turmoil that currently plagues the United States, or, at the very least, are exacerbating that turmoil and aggravating the people’s frustrations.

Consider, for example, the description Dalio gives of one of the primary causes of this possible civil war:

This election would be a test of ‘can democracy work well? Will there be an acceptance of the rules and an ability to work well under those rules?’ he said.

[Republican candidate Donald] Trump will follow more rightist, nationalistic, isolationist, protectionist, non-regulatory policies — and more aggressive policies to fight enemies internally and externally, including political enemies. [President Joe] Biden, and even more so the Democratic party without Biden, will be more the opposite….

Ah, I see. It’s all Donald Trump’s fault. Strangely, Dalio doesn’t address the almost inarguable fact that Donald Trump is a symptom of this nation’s political dysfunction rather than the cause of it.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/17/if-it-aint-woke-dont-fix-it/

To hear the radical left tell it, America is broken beyond repair.  It must be torn down and rebuilt — “fixed” to the radical left’s specifications.  Following this slanted subjectivism has turned countless American institutions into caricatures. 

Like so many monsters stitched and bolted together by Frankenstein, these once-healthy institutions now lurch stiff-legged before us — and always ever more leftward.  Among them, none stands out more monstrously now than America’s self-proclaimed “elite” colleges. 

The list of the left’s demands is as endless as its proposals are preposterous. 

They demand an open border policy because they claim enforcing national sovereignty is racist.  They demand sanctuary cities because they claim it is racist to not encourage illegal immigration.  Police departments should be defunded because they claim enforcing the law is racist — ditto prosecuting those apprehended in breaking it — despite minorities being the greatest victims of these policies. 

When it comes to schools, they oppose standardized testing and advanced placement courses because they deem these too to be racist, and they oppose school choice because, in the words of American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, these are “undermining democracy.”

These radical demands and more have penetrated corporations, sports, establishment media, and entertainment.  The Biden administration’s capitulation to the left’s environmentalism is a case in point. 

On Earth Day, it heralded a grant competition for $7 billion to go to 900,000 low-income families for solar panels: that comes to about $7,800 per house.   If that $7 billion figure sounds familiar it should; it almost exactly matches the $7.5 billion the administration asked Congress for in 2021 for EV charger installation. As of December 2023, not one had been built; by the end of March 2024, only seven had. 

Yet no place has allowed itself to be rebuilt with greater abandon than the campuses of America’s self-styled elite institutions of higher education.  Grotesque anti-Semitism has been retooled into pro-Palestinian “progressivism” by the left.  Their calls for the destruction of Israel have always rested on the preposterous proposition that this somehow did not include those who inhabit it. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/everyone-gets-a-trophy-and-no-trophy-is-worth-anything-c03f351f?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

President Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 Americans this month. I wish he had cut the list down to two or three. Perusing the list of winners I note, along with a preponderance of Democratic politicians, the heavy hand of diversity at work, making certain that among the winners are included a sufficient number of women, African-Americans, Hispanics and even a Republican (Elizabeth Dole).

The result of so many medal winners is to diminish, if not altogether destroy, the cachet the honor once held. Another once-vaunted prize bites the dust.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom joins the Nobel Prize for Literature, which long ago lost its luster. When it went to Bob Dylan in 2016, what prestige remained was all but blown away. His songs have nothing to do with literature, and most, in any case, are derived from Woody Guthrie. I await the day the Swedish Academy decides to recognize that notable speed typist Joyce Carol Oates, which ought to finish the prize off completely.

The Pulitzer Prizes in the arts haven’t done much better. Some years ago in the London Times Literary Supplement, I noted that these awards seem to go to two kinds of people: those who don’t need it and those who don’t deserve it. In 1998, when Katharine Graham won a Pulitzer for her autobiography, Hilton Kramer noted that she qualified on both grounds. The prize’s prestige has also all but evaporated.

Then there are honorary degrees, which long ago lost their honor. Universities often give them to the wealthy, hoping the recipients will make handsome financial contributions. My friend Sol Linowitz told me he collected 63 such degrees while chairman of Xerox. The thick-fingered hand of diversity is felt here, too. Good luck finding a list of honorary degrees these days that doesn’t include at least two African-American women.

The National Book Award, especially for novelists, once had great prestige. To win one meant that a novelist had truly arrived—or so Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, William Styron, Philip Roth and other novelists of that era must have felt. Today you’d be hard-pressed to name any novelist who has won a National Book Award in the past decade, which may have something to do with the loss of interest in the contemporary novel generally.