The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) in Colorado Springs, CO, is focused on turning out woke warriors, despite the obvious contradiction in terms. The leadership at one of America’s premier military academies has switched the emphasis from academic excellence, unsurpassed leadership skills, and preparation for killing the enemy and breaking their stuff to diversity and inclusion. But, as Liberty Nation explained, the US Air Force Academy is not the only military academy headed down the path of wokeness. The US Army’s West Point engaged in similar non-warrior-value curricula.
Fox News correspondent Jessica Chasmar was the first to break the story of the USAFA program to instill in its officer candidates attributes other than those of value in combat against a determined enemy. To back up its exclusive report, Fox relied on actual charts used by the Academy to indoctrinate its students in woke ways. One of the charts in a PowerPoint presentation entitled, “Diversity and Inclusion: What it is, why we care, and what we can do” pushing “inclusion” prompts the audience to “Include all genders” in daily speech using terms like “Partner vs. Boyfriend/Girlfriend.” The implication is there are more than two genders, male and female, despite 100% of the anatomical and biological evidence to the contrary. Now, keep in mind, as Chasmar points out, the purpose of this training, as a chart explains, is “critical for ‘developing warfighters.'”
Woke Warriors Means Naming ‘G-animals’
During the training, the students have an exercise where cadets are asked to name as many animals as possible starting with the letter G. When time is up, the instructor asks, how many G-animals did “you generate as an individual…as a class/squadron generate?” Then the instructor exclaims many more G-animals can be named with a more diverse group than a single individual. Not to burst the diversity bubble, but a group of more than two will likely name more G-animals, whether it’s diverse or not. Furthermore, what does this have to do with turning out warfighters? It’s not as if an F-35A fighter pilot in combat with a missile heading up the airplane’s rear is going to look back fondly on this exercise at the academy and wish he’d thought of more G-animals.
To this point, “Young kids don’t join the military to learn how to use the right pronouns. They join the military to learn how to kill the bad guys and defend this country,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) told Harris Faulkner on Fox’s “The Faulkner Focus.” Cotton explained that the Pentagon should encourage young people, whether going to a military academy, entering through Reserve Officer Training Corps programs, or through a local recruiter, to join the military to serve and defend the country, not “to go to social justice training seminars.”
(Photo by Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images)
The Military is Not a Mirror of Society
The USAFA, however, wants to ensure the cadets are schooled in all the diversity and inclusion propaganda. One chart from the above-mentioned briefing deck closes with a bullet meant to give the importance of “Why?” D&I (Diversity and Inclusion) “is important at USAFA” by having a citation from the Harvard Business School (HBS) – always a nice academic touch.
The bullet reads, “Diverse teams outperform other teams (Rock & Grant).” The citation refers to a David Rock, Heidi Grant, and Jacqui Grey article in the Harvard Business Review, “Diverse Teams Feel Less Comfortable – and That’s Why They Perform Better.” The HBS journal piece did not refer to a military organization with its strict hierarchical flow of direction and disciplined structure but to a 2016 study of 20,000 commercial firms where the performance metric was profitability – not destroying an enemy bent on destroying you. Facing the possibility of death in the skies over a battlefield is not a feature of daily office life at Apple or Google.
The Academy goes further, to ensure the cadets are correctly indoctrinated. Graduates of the “Cadet Wing Diversity and Inclusion Program” are given a purple aiguillette or rope worn over the left shoulder. The aiguillette “symbolizes their position as a diversity representative,” Chasmar tells us. Additionally, these special cadets can mentor and advise other cadets on diversity. Every cadet with a full load of academics, military studies, and athletics requirements will be truly grateful to have these helpful folks around. Probably not, instead, the purple uniform accoutrement will be a signal as to who to avoid. All of this would seem like just a silly slice of Americana, if taxpayers weren’t paying for this nonsense.
The USAFA would better serve the nation with more attention to actual useful academics like mathematics, English with all the pronouns, physics, biology including both genders, engineering, and real warfighting leadership skills. Because, as Liberty Nation pointed out in a recent article, woke won’t win wars.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliation.
