PS: Thanks for that illustrative anecdote, Possumman. I don't fault anyone for taking advantage of all that anyway. Just don 't tell me you're a hero and we should say thanks for your service. Hell, that'd probably be embarrassing to most of the men and women, for example, your DIL.

"I recall hearing the military referred to as the Big Green Welfare Machine in the 1980s." Haha, good one, Mr. Hail.

PS

Quite a typical story, Possumman.

Quote from The Anti-Gnostic, writing in 2024:

_________________


I recall hearing the military referred to as the Big Green Welfare Machine in the 1980s.

I think there's a 7-person logistical tail for each trigger-puller.

There are plenty of ways to join and spend 20 years without a whiff of combat, then off to a project management slot with Uncle Sugar. Then retire to a warm, low-tax State with enough cash flow for a Porsche in your dotage.

_______________

PS. My son's wife joined the army right out of college. My kid joined her in Monterey as she went to the DLI to be taught Arabic as she already knew a couple of languages- English, Hebrew and Russian. Sent her to Morocco for months of immersion then transferred her to Fort Carson where she cooled her heels waiting to be deployed. They spent a shit ton of $ training her and others and never used them as intended . When she got out she used GI Bill to attend culinary school. Now she is married over 10 years and has a kid . Not venting but Army decisions make little sense sometime. They stayed in Colorado springs and love it there- btw the Army paid for their move too!

PS: Hah, like minds, Mr. Hail. I read that one about an hour ago. Unlike the case with you, as it seems, this lady (I thought, but I'll check it again) has really pissed me off. I don't agree with much on there, and, believe me, I've got a reply coming.

I think I've written too many just now anyway, but also I've got to go for a while, so it'll appear on there later today.

PS

-- A defense of military women's honor --

An anon Sailer commenter gives a meaty reply to some of what has been written here at Peak Stupidity on the Potomac mid-air collision controversy, in which the women-in-the-military question has been raised. He writes apparently mainly against my first comment in this thread (bottom):

https://www.unz.com/isteve/my-substack-stevesailer-net/#comment-6985040

He says:

_________________

Women were not forced on to the military. When they were allowed to join the regular armed forces sufficient numbers did so to allow the volunteer military to succeed. Without women volunteering to join, the draft would have had to be reinstated. (...)

(and it continues from there)

https://www.unz.com/isteve/my-substack-stevesailer-net/#comment-6985040

_______________

The anon-commenters tend to have a certain forward, or confrontational, tone. More so than the commenters with names/handles, or who are writing under handles. Some of the points he raises are valid, but I see things differently, or am approaching things differently, at a fundamental level.

PS: Good afternoon, Mr. Hail...

https://www.motleyrice.com/news/attorneys-analysis-midair-collision-american-airlines-flight-5342-black-hawk

https://files.catbox.moe/uezns1.jpg

☮️

PS

Adam Smith wrote: "Sometimes the Black Hawks fly so low over my house that I think they are going to crash on us"

---- hence the nickname "Crash Hawk"...?

.

.

I wonder if this Google-result is 'real':

_________________

UH-60 BLACK HAWK HELICOPTER CRASH LAWYER

Wisner Baum
https://www.wisnerbaum.com › aviation-accident › black...

A Personal Injury Attorney in CA can offer you a consultation and information about Black Hawk Helicopter Crashes in the Los Angeles area.
__________________

PS: Good (checks clock...) morning, everyone!

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22just+flew+over+my+house!%22+4chan
https://www.google.com/search?q=dahlonega+ga+ranger+training+black+hawk

So yeah. A Black Hawk didn't fly over my house this morning. But it happens all the time. Sometimes the Black Hawks fly so low over my house that I think they are going to crash on us. Sometimes I have to straighten the paintings after they fly over my house!

Seriously. They come across the ridge here not more than 30 feet above the tree tops. I could hit them with a rock.

It's a meme. But it's also true.
We have a Black Hawk ranger training facility here in Dahlonega.
https://tinyurl.com/222f4kb7

https://i.ibb.co/C3McywDR/taylor-swift-retard-face.jpg

☮️

PS: OK, thanks for that, Alarmist.

"Mr S, is that:..."

What? Shades of Reg Caesar here ... haha. Good question though... probably not the hockey team... It is Georgia. They might have hockey but hockey in the South is just for mercenaries.

Hey, that reminds me of your long comment, the mercenary thing, including the Romanians in Africa. America could have a draft, which nobody wants, I don't think, we can have the mercenaries we have now (even if it's just for the training and the GI bill, is that not really being a mercenary?), or we could have what the Founders envisioned. That was, you had NO standing army. The various States - 50 by this point, I'm told - would raise their militia's/armies IF necessary. That makes it a BIG IF, by this arrangement.

I would say that neither the draft nor the mercenary-filled standing army we have now are Constitutional.

PS

Mr S, is that:

__________________

"A Black Hawk just flew over my house!"

or

"A black hawk just flew over my house!"

or

"A member of the professional hockey team from Chicago just flew over my house!"

?

PS: A Black Hawk just flew over my house! ☮️

PS

PAT is a static call sign for the unit. No need for a VIP to be on board. Only some VIPs have specific calls, like AF-1. Static signs in general, if they are used, are replaced with tactical call signs when things heat up.

PS: Oops, that's right, '08. Thanks for the correction, Mr. Hail. I was under the impression that, slightly differently. Steve Sailer saw the fact that Obama HAD a 2nd term as the cause of it. He has noted that the guy said or hinted to people that (to the effect of) "wait until my 2nd term, when I don't have to worry about re-lection for me to really do the blackety-black stuff." He does indeed know a lot about Obama, as he wrote 1 or maybe 2 books about the guy.

I agree with you that Wokeness was not something that just started out of the blue 10-12 years ago. It's been a long-term effort. The ctrl-left just got bolder at some point, maybe about that time of Obama's 2nd term.

PS

"Obama came into office in '12"

Actually first elected in Nov. 2008, of course. (The Sailer theory is that "Wokeness" was some kind of Frankenstein-byproduct of a campaign strategy used by the Re-Elect Barack Hussein Obama 2012 campaign. That explanation doesn't really work for me; as in, it's highly incomplete.

Obama is a great example of what Wokeness wrought. Brought out of nowhere in August 2004 to speak in front of the DNC as the keynote speaker. Shuffled into a rotten-borough U.S. Senate seat. Within about two years of taking office as a first-term Senator, he's running for president. He wins, and people still don't know much about him, except one thing: He's a well-spoken Nonwhite Postracial-kinda guy, the kind of figure we'd been trained to adore for years.

PS: OK, I'll take your word for the CoG thing, Mr. Alarmist. They used that call sign "PAT", so who was said flag officer?

I imagine Captain Lobach did need to keep current, so maybe that's all this was. However, in the civilian world the PIC does not correspond to who is (in FAA parlance) "sole manipulator of the controls"). Basically, PIC IS what the military calls A/C. Yes, he could have said "My aircraft" and gotten them out of trouble.

I think there's no way either of them saw the CRJ till the last second. Earlier on, W.O. Eaves could have decided he'd do the instruction further down the river, past DCA, or wherever they were going. We're talking a couple of minutes here. Did he not want to correct her so readily?

PS: There's a lot in that comment, Mr. Hail, so I'll address these points in a few comments.

I agree with you about the wokeness timetable. We've had AA for 60 years (only one of the various wokeness "programs", if I may), and things have just been accelerating. The light-bringer Obama came into office in '12, and this allowed a lot of the more blatant programs to be put into place, both actual government edicts or efforts and the permission for the Lyin' Press arm of the Regime to say things they wouldn't have said earlier.

Steve Sailer has been under the impression that wokeness has been a fad of some kind, and, whewwww!, glad it burned itself out, or something. Nah, without this Trump election win, it'd have to have been ended (or temporarily suspended, as they* will continue if, or as soon as, they are given the chance) in a different manner. Trump should be given a whole lot of credit.


* Who's "they"? That's another thing I disagree with Mr. Sailer on. There is an actual Deep State, not just the bureaucracy/Administrative State. They are having a big set-back, but we'll see how they fight back.

PS

Again, it would not be CoG. It was most likely a flight to give her hours to keep her rating with the nearest available Helo. PATs are more often than not a way for Flag officers to get from their quarters on a local post to some other place in DC. Traffic is a bitch, and they’re too important to sit in it. CoGs will be heading literally for the hills.

The rank would not matter beyond being required to call her Ma’am or Captain As the more experienced pilot and probably the instructor, he would be the A/C. If she was solely manipulating the controls at the time, she would be PIC, but the IP would simply tell her, “My aircraft.” I had to do that with a rated Bird once; he complained to my squadron commander and was quickly disabused of his RHIP.

PS

How do you reverse the "women in the military" momentum?

I've argued with Steve Sailer commenters that Wokeness, in a reasonable definition of the term, cannot be said to originate in the early 2010s. People seem to like this 'narrative,' for some reason, but the "women in the military" push long predates the 2010s.

--

(Aside: Here is a recent comment on the matter of whether Wokeness only began around 2013 or not:)

https://www.stevesailer.net/p/dei-vs-affirmative-action/comment/91518686

--

The ideologically-tinted push for women in the military is able to be identified back to the mid-1970s already. The trend-line is all up since then. It was triumphant by, when, the close of the 1980s? Women break the 15%-threshold of all U.S. military personnel by about year 2000. In the usual fashion of Wokeness, the "women in the military" ideological-current still pretended it was still the underdog.

The essay shared by Adam Smith yesterday ("The Army’s Special Treatment of Capt. Rebecca Lobach," by
Chase Spears, February 5, 2025, RealClearDefense) identifies this head-on. The military itself is obviously on board with the ideology and took measures to both protect and lionize the Biden-connected pilotess who, from all who know, caused the disaster. Women are given "special victim status" in some ways by default ("World to end, women and racial minorities hardest hit").

---

In year 2023, the share of active-duty officers in all branches except one (the Marine Corps) exceeded 20% women.

The officer-share is, I think, a few points higher than the enlisted rate now, after running in parallel with it much of the time. The enlisted rate is also approaching 20% women, and fast. For all the softer roles, and for the "National Guard" generally, the female rates are higher as a rule. Black women have been highly overrepresented among women in the military for many years.

The military as "jobs program" never quite gets the staying-power that it deserves because those most likely to argue it are also beholden to a pro-military default ideology, and U.S. civic-nationalism that does such things as worship the 1941-45 war (a "cult" which Pat Buchanan, in one of his later contributions, argued must be dethroned if there is to be a future for White-Western people in North America).

It's been commented a lot that the U.S. military, by the early 2020s, began to have real trouble with White-male "recruitment." The untold part of the story is that they DID generally, ultimately, meet recruitment targets over the past 5+ years but only because of a rise in female "recruits." If the female-portion were held equal to even its 2010s-rate, there'd have been actual shortfalls.

See also my comments on the matter, in the previous thread, on the process in our time by which Americans are taken from civilian life into this somewhat-strange, globe-spanning, enormous and bloated bureaucracy known as the military. (Or any-'body' in the USA, really; from any kind of rooted-American family or not.) The process hinges on huge payouts and promises and certain careerist and ideological elements. This is objectively unhealthy and 'problematic' if the idea is that a military exists for war-fighting. (A traditional national-defense war hasn't been fought in a very long time).

The post-1974 recruitment system, being "all-volunteer," with all the gears greased by huge 'payoffs' -- such that being in the military is widely said to be "a good career move"! -- became ripe, in certain ways, to be 'gamed' by ideologues, such as those who sought to empower women.

(And was it Senator Lindsey Graham, and others, who proposed a wide citizenship-for-military-service program for "nonimmigrant foreigners present in the United States"? One such teeth-having initiative was put into place, into law or policy, by George W. Bush-era Defense Dept in 2008).

Yes, I'd say one part of what the U.S. military today, if looked at coldly and objectively and unsentimentally, is a dressed up version of what those 300 Romanians found in Africa were up to. I refer to (one of) the group(s) of foreign mercenaries in Congo, who surrendered to Rwanda-backed rebels last week. The Romanians had signed up to fight under the Democratic Republic of Congo's flag, under terms of $5,000 a month, plus expenses and other benefits. What a deal! Nearly a year-after-tax fair-Romanian-wages-equivalent, in hand, after only about two months; too bad about the surrendering and all; and good luck getting the finance minister down in Kinshasa to pay back-wages now; Washington DC is a lot more likely to pay, and the U.S. military is still a "good career move," which is probably what Captain Rebecca Lobach thought of her career so far.

On the Romanians in the Congo:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d591ldq46o

I still return to my question: Is there a scenario by which the "women in the U.S. military" component reverses and declines steadily? How? Who? When?