Thursday, August 29, 2013

Epic Tone Deafness...

From what appears to be a USAF training document on Equal Opportunity, comes an instruction block on "Extremism". Some examples of historical extremism are given:
As noted, an ideology is a set of political beliefs about the nature of people and society. People who are committed to an ideology seek not only to persuade but to recruit others to their belief. In U.S. history, there are many examples of extremist ideologies and movements. The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule and the Confederate states who sought to secede from the Northern states are just two examples.
LOLWUT? So, members of a nation's armed forces are being told that the founders of the nation in whose armed forces they serve were the kind of extremist kooks they need to look out for? Was this material screened by anyone with measurable brain activity?

Anyhow, some examples of the bad kind of extremisms follow, number one of which is:
NationalismThe policy of asserting that the interests of one’s own nation are separate from the interests of other nations or the common interest of all nations. Many nationalist groups take it a step further and believe that their national culture and interests are superior to any other national group.
I hate to be the one to break this to A1C Snuffy or MSgt Powerpoint Presenter, but your job description is to kill people and break their stuff because the interests of your nation differ from the interests of theirs. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you guys are the sharp end of the nationalism spear.

I have yet to read all 133 pages, but it's bound to be full of comedy gold as touchy-feely Human Resources gobbledygook is applied to the people whose job description includes maintaining a nuclear arsenal capable of taking out a fat kid's portion of the global population pie chart and occasional bouts of cluster-bombing the wogs.


(H/T to Stephen.)

22 comments:

Panamared said...

Can not think of a single comment that I want the NSA to read, when it comes to this Orwellian Government Program.

OOPS

Paul said...

I remember my daughter returning from basic tell me I was a terrorist. I told her, no the guys in the sand box are the terrorists. Not sure what she thought.

I've known for a while now that the government is training the troops to not think we are who they are protecting.

If you go to a town hall meeting you need to be such a disruption you are evicted. There is not one congress critter or senator that has our interests in mind.

alanstorm said...

"Was this material screened by anyone with measurable brain activity?"

Some questions just answer themselves...

Anonymous said...

But remember recruits, the Ft. Hood shooting was a case of work place violence and not a terrorist attack.

"Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta."

Gerry

Kristopher B. said...

There will always be some whore in the military that will do anything to get to flag rank.

Of course we are the terrorists. The last thing the current administration wants is to have soldiers or officers know anything about history.

I'm just waiting for a new Reichswehreid to be implemented.

Matt said...

It is possible that the USAF has it correct. They are accepting the reality that they do not work for the best interests of the U.S. citizen, but for the warfar-welfare complex, multinational corporations and United Nations. The leaderships only loyalty is to the office that signs their checks and promotion packet.

Michael said...


From the next page:

"Nowadays, instead of dressing in sheets or publicly espousing hate messages, many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place."

those are some pretty evil topics there ...

Tam said...

It's all code words for racism.

Angus McThag said...

When the military puts out a list like this I will worry.

The USAF? It affects caddies far more than any other profession.

Boat Guy said...

All part-and-parcel of "the narrative". Our upper-ranks (both in in uniform and out)are full of the whores who will push this stuff. There are exceptions (at least one four-star comes to mind) but they are prove-the-rule exceptions. The effort to remake the Armed Forces (our ID's no longer say that by the way, they read "Uniformed Services")into such things as "A Global Force for Good" continues apace. That way, instead of defending the Constitution and the nation against enemies foreign and domestic we can be used to intervene anywhere for any (or no) reason and any number of the uninformed and untutored will see it as a "good thing".

Anonymous said...

If you enjoyed this, you'd have a ball with sexual assault training. The Army training says recent chanes have been made to target the training toward potential attackers. Since the training is mandatory for all, the implication is anybody in the Army is a potential rapist.

Having also taken the AF training, I can tell you that, as a woman, you can have sex tonight. Should you change your mind three weeks from next Tuesday and decide you didn't really want to have sex tonight, you were raped.

mikee said...

I was a postdoc at the Naval Research Lab way back when Tailhook went down. Although only a civvy contractor as a research associate, I got the full one day Naval stand down for sexual harassment training along with all those serving on ships at sea or on shore leave.

Meh. My mother was stricter about polite behavior to my sisters than that stuff.

In our research group of 5 males and two females, it was a female who had the roughest language and most offensive behavior. We guys, which included the other, more polite female, lived through it somehow.

Joe said...

New gun legislation by decree: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/29/obama-announces-new-gun-control-measures-targets-military-surplus-imports/

So they'll be eliminating the re-importation of lend/lease firearms, next will be shutting down the CRP.

Derfel Cadarn said...

I will now point out that the presence of "measurable brain activity" is exclusionary for ANY position in the government including the military at all levels.

Borepatch said...

MSgt PowerPoint has correctly divined the path to First Sgt.

OldAFSarge said...

OMG.

That's not the Air Force I retired from some 14 years ago. What have they done?!?

Chris said...

I think we are observing another proof of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. The "uniformed services" (as is often the case in the absence of full-scale, active, lots-of-body-bags war) are being run for the benefit of the careerists and REMFs, not their putative employers.

Anonymous said...

"Was this material screened by anyone with measurable brain activity?"

Screened by Leftists, I'd say.

Mike James

Drang said...

@Borepatch: Remember, in the Chair Force "First Sergeant" is an administrative position, ad does not indicate any Leadership function at all.

Which reminds me of when I was the company First Sergeant back in 97 or so, and got my hands on a copy of XVIIIth Airborne Corps' "Handbook on Gangs and Extremist Activities". (I referred to it as "Janes' All The Worlds Thugs and Punks.") At one point it was telling me that talking about "attending cons" was a sign of extremist activity, and I was wondering who I was supposed to report myself to...

Matt G said...

Tam, while the book may present ideas contrary to the outlook one may wish the military to train its people in, it's teaching truth.

Revolutionaries who go to war against their country are extremists.
Nationalism is a motivation for lots of extremists. As is religion and ethnic affiliation, etc.
This stuff is straight out of my graduate classes on Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Sounds like someone cribbed the "Motivations" chapter from one book, and retitled it as an "Identifiers" chapter in a military manual.

Michael Z. Williamson said...

Stupidity happens in any large organization.

If any conspiritards really think troops are brainwashed into being part of some global anti-American something or other, I'd be happy to arrange a personal meeting. YOU are the brainwashed suckers.

markm said...

It sounds like they've finally found a way to top my best example of absurd GI training materials. That was an Air Force manual on "effective writing". Every sentence in it contained multiple violations of the rules it was expounding. It said the same thing Strunk and White said in a few pages, but managed to use nearly ninety pages of bureaucratic gobbledygook to say it.