RUTHFULLY YOURS

In 2001, I was an Air Force lieutenant colonel and A-10 fighter pilot stationed in Saudi Arabia, in charge of rescue operations for no-fly enforcement in Iraq and then in Afghanistan. Every time I went off base, I had to follow orders and put on a black Muslim abaya and head scarf. Military officials said this would show “cultural sensitivity” toward conservative Saudi leaders and guarantee “force protection” – this in a nation where women couldn’t drive, vote or dress as they pleased.

To me, the abaya directive, with its different rules for male and female troops and the requirement that I don the garb of a faith not my own, violated the the U.S. constitutional values I pledged to defend and degraded military order and cohesion.

I already had tried for years to get the policy changed. Late in 2001, I sued then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the policy. Congress stepped in and approved legislation that prohibited anyone in the military from requiring or encouraging servicewomen to put on abayas in Saudi Arabia or to use taxpayers’ money to buy them.

I remember a discussion with congressmen and staffers about whether the legislation should be broadened to cover military personnel serving in any country. We naively decided that Saudi Arabia posed the worst-case scenario; the military would get Congress’s intent and would not require servicewomen to wear Muslim attire in any mission elsewhere.

Sadly, we were mistaken. Nearly a decade later, some female soldiers serving in Afghanistan are being encouraged to wear headscarves. Some servicewomen have taken off the regulation helmet and worn just the scarf, even when on patrol outside, in their combat uniforms and body armor, M-4s slung over their shoulders.

The more common practice is to wear the scarf under one’s helmet or around the neck, pulling it on as the servicewoman removes her Kevlar helmet upon entering a village or building.

“Within Afghanistan, the donning of a scarf or other type of head covering by our female service members can be done as a sign of respect to the local culture and people they must necessarily interact with,” a senior U.S. military official told me via e-mail. “This can help promote greater trust and a fuller interaction with the local population as well as increased access to persons and places that contribute to mission accomplishment.”

Unlike in Saudi Arabia, this attire is considered optional and at the discretion of “leaders on the ground,” said the official.

However, when a superior tells a military subordinate any practice is optional, the very mention of the practice creates pressure to comply. This is especially true in combat settings, when subordinates must trust their commander’s direction to maximize mission effectiveness and protect lives.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Arizona Republican Congresswoman Martha McSally called on the national GOP to “grow a pair of ovaries” as she launched her bid for the U.S. Senate on Friday, joining the race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Jeff Flake by embracing President Donald Trump and his outsider playbook in one of the nation’s premier Senate contests.

Like few others, the Arizona election is expected to showcase the feud between the Republican Party’s establishment and its fiery anti-immigration wing in particular — all in a border state that features one of the nation’s largest Hispanic populations.

McSally, a two-term congresswoman already backed by many GOP leaders in Arizona and Washington, described herself as anything but an establishment candidate in a fiery announcement video that touched on border security and Sharia law and featured Trump himself.

“Like our president, I’m tired of PC politicians and their BS excuses,” McSally charged in in the video. “I’m a fighter pilot and I talk like one.”

“That’s why I told Washington Republicans to grow a pair of ovaries and get the job done,” she added. “Now, I am running for the Senate to fight the fights that must be won — on national security, economic security and border security.”

Later in the day, McSally, a retired Air Force colonel and the first female fighter pilot to fly a combat mission, plans to fly herself across Arizona to announce her candidacy before voters in Tucson, Phoenix and Prescott.

The election will test the appeal of the Trump political playbook — which emphasizes the dangers of illegal immigration and demands border security above all else — in a state where nearly 1 in 3 residents is Hispanic and roughly 1 million are eligible to vote, according to the Pew Research Center. Trump won Arizona in 2016 by less than 4 points.

McSally, 51, enters a dynamic Republican primary field that features a nationally celebrated immigration hardliner, 85-year-old former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was pardoned by Trump himself last year after intentionally defying a judge’s order to stop traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. The primary also includes former state Sen. Kelli Ward, an outspoken Trump advocate who was an early favorite of now-disgraced former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

The Left has some reason to worry that the newfound solicitude for sexual propriety spread by #MeToo might overflow the traditional bounds of political-correctness-as-weapon.

No different from demands regarding race and identity politics generally, the strictures of political correctness concerning sex do not define rights and wrongs. Rather, they claim authority to suppress such evils as the powerful may impute to their enemies. They also serve the ruling class’s war against Western Civilization. But current demands for “sensitivity” for women’s sense of sexual self-worth, rather than merely enhancing the power of better-connected people over less-connected ones, might actually lead America to consider what proper or improper sexual behavior is.

Neither P.C.’s partisan nature nor its corrosion of our civilization are in doubt. Elsewhere, I showed that Communists originated the term to distinguish between the “correctness” of what serves the Party’s interest from that which is factually correct—and that the Party’s paramount long-term interest lies in overcoming the reality that human beings perceive through the senses and reason with the Party’s “correct” version thereof.

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), the most durably influential of Communist theoreticians, had argued that re-orienting the popular mind away from the cultural icons of Western Civilization would anchor the Party’s power to a cultural hegemony impossible to break. Gramsci’s argument is all too well rooted in modern thought since Machiavelli, and cultural destruction has been part of every revolutionary movement at least since the French Revolution.

The fundamental problem with cultural revolution is that it is easier to destroy cultures than to replace them. The end-states sought are inherently undefinable. Each and every revolutionary will have his own ideas of what is proper and improper. Since those ideas must be bound up with the struggles of each for his own power. As the revolutionaries clash, incoherence is guaranteed. Beyond that, No matter what the revolutionaries do to disorient people, human nature’s magnetic needles always end up pointing people away from that which is merely politically correct.

Of all human nature’s aspects, sex is among the most intractable to political power. Soviet teaching (see Marx and Engels’ “The Origins of the Family”) and policy reflected the Marxist notion that humans are animals, and the sexes are equally self-interested. As Soviet family policy see-sawed, natural families were wrecked. Powerful males lorded over females, as it is in the animal world, and females then acted defensively or manipulatively toward men. Russia is not a happy place, and its population is declining.

Here and now, a New York Times op-ed by Daphne Merkin reflects the sense growing among erstwhile P.C. revolutionaries of the feminist kind that they have been on the wrong path. Their most immediate concern is ordinary partisanship. Merkin and her friends find it “troubling” that men such as “Garrison Keillor, Jonathan Schwartz, Ryan Lizza and Al Franken” have been hurt by accusations they regard as unspecific and unproven. OK. But logic then leads to asking what behavior it should take to disqualify even such worthy people. Political correctness has no answers. “Scattershot, life-destroying denunciations” are not enough. “Due process is nowhere to be found.”

Sin in haste, repent at leisure:

A prominent donor to the Democratic Party says she is considering withdrawing support for senators who urged their colleague Al Franken to resign after he was accused of sexual misconduct.

The donor, Susie Tompkins Buell, has been one of the Democratic Party’s most generous supporters for decades. In particular, she has been a champion of female politicians, including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Maria Cantwell of Washington.

Ms. Buell said in a text message on Saturday that withdrawing support from the senators who called for his resignation was “an option” she was considering. “In my gut they moved too fast,” she wrote, adding that Mr. Franken “was never given his chance to tell his side of the story. For me this is dangerous and wrong,” she added. “I am a big believer in helping more women into the political system but this has given me an opportunity to rethink of how I can best help my party.”

This is what happens during a stampede: people get trampled. And speaking of a stampede:

When Hollywood’s most prestigious organization, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) — the group of nearly 7,000 actors, directors and other industry types who dole out the Oscars — expelled Harvey Weinstein on Oct. 14,audiences applauded. But by acting so swiftly, a mere nine days after the New York Times first reported allegations of sexual assault against the movie producer, the outfit now finds itself facing a dilemma. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Congressional Black Caucus had a front seat to #MeToo with the revelation that $220,000 had been paid out to a staffer alleging sexual harassment by Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL), a former judge impeached for bribery whose girlfriend has been on his payroll to the tune of $2.4 million, and that Rep. Conyers (D-MI) had his own sexual harassment settlement. That scandal forced Rep. Conyers to resign and hand the seat to his son at the behest of his wife, Monica, who had been convicted of bribery.

Corruption, fraud and bribery are ongoing problems at the Congressional Black Caucus.

After two decades of financial scandals, Rep. Corrine Brown (D-FL) was convicted of running a fake charity and sentenced in December. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) was sentenced last December for bribery, fraud and money laundering. His son, Chaka Fattah Jr, was already in prison on unrelated bank fraud charges. Around the same time the wife of Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Il) had wrapped up her prison sentence after her husband had ended his prison term a year earlier on fraud charges.

Hardly a year goes by without a criminal case involving a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Bribery and fraud, fake charities and money laundering to pay for the high life are familiar CBC themes . Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. bought a gold Rolex, Michael Jackson and Malcolm X memorabilia, and mink capes. Rep. Brown stole from poor children to pay for an NFL luxury box (won’t you take a knee) and a Beyonce concert. Chaka Fattah Jr. bought Hermes ties and a Ritz-Carlton condo.

These aren’t aberrations. They’re part of the culture of corruption at the Congressional Black Caucus.

The year that Barack Obama, a former CBC member whose level of corruption outdid any of his former colleagues by climbing into the high stratospheric billions and using the Justice Department to run a massive slush fund, took office, every single House member investigated on ethics charges was CBC. A former study suggested that a third of CBC legislators had faced an ethics probe.

That’s what a culture of political corruption looks like.

After all the credible allegations against Roy Moore, after his initial, fumbling denials, you would think he’d be down for the count. But no. The polls show a tight race in Alabama, and the political betting markets actually make him a heavy favorite.

Why?

Partly because Alabama is such a deep-red state. And partly because the Democrats’ own sexual scandals have helped Moore. It’s not obvious they would. If the Democrats had condemned their own members promptly and forthrightly, when the evidence against them was compelling, then the party could stand on solid ground condemning Republicans. The cascade of scandals would highlight the seriousness of the problem and give Alabama voters a clear-cut opportunity to rebuke Moore’s alleged predatory behavior and, with it, the atrocious conduct of many others.

That’s not what Democratic congressional leaders did. Instead of standing on moral ground and condemning sexual misconduct, regardless of party, they dug a bunker to protect their own. They adopted a familiar public-relations strategy: look troubled, condemn the general problem, avoid specifics, and call for an inquiry (behind closed doors, of course). No transparency. No public shaming. Most of all, wait and see. Don’t call for one of your own to resign unless the public pressure becomes unbearable.

That’s exactly how Nancy Pelosi responded to multiple, credible allegations of sexual misconduct against senior Michigan Congressman John Conyers. On Sunday, Pelosi went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and genuflected to Conyers, calling him an “icon.” When she asked, rhetorically, “Who knows these women?” she made clear what really matters to her: partisan advantage.

By Thursday, she finally decided where that advantage lay. She called for Conyers to resign. Why so slow? Because the political choice was between two key Democratic constituencies, compounded by her party’s bedrock commitment to identity politics. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders know they gain with women voters (and many men) by condemning sexual harassment and assault. But they lose with many African-Americans when the accused is a prominent black legislator and the resignation call comes from a white one. That was the choice facing Pelosi. Which alternative would cost them more votes and more donations?

In these awkward circumstances, Nancy moved slowly, watching the allegations and evidence pile up, and watching resentment among women grow. Her best solution would have been for Conyers to resign because theCongressional Black Caucus asked him to. No dice. The CBC talked with him but told reporters they would wait for the Ethics Committee to do its work. That would be complete within the decade.

Earlier this week, President Trump made waves when he announced there would be no deal with the Democrats in the forthcoming budget battle. He increased the swells when he also insisted there would be no tax increases, contrary to Democrats’ wishes. On December 8, the government faces yet another partial shutdown unless the president and Congress can agree on a mechanism to fund it through the end of the year.

In response, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the handful of other Leftist holdovers in Congress took to the airwaves—yet again—to portray Trump as an irrational leader. Schumer publicly ruminated how it would be better for congressional Democratic leaders to iron out deals with congressional Republicans over both the pending budget battle and the tax reform legislation.

Can you blame them? Trump is running circles around Schumer and the Democrats—to say nothing of congressional Republicans.

What Schumer and the Democrats don’t understand is that Trump has already outmaneuvered them. Schumer has no desire to work with Trump because he doesn’t know what he’s getting. Trump’s unpredictability has left the entire political class cowed. The Democrats can only behave as the party of “No!” and the Republicans have no choice but to limp along after Trump, lest they suffer at the polls.

This is good for Trump and even better for America.