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The Unravelling
https://www.slowdownfarmstead.com/p/the-unravelling
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Summary: embrace the suck or you get weak. Today's military no longer offer recruits the discipline that gets you back on track in life.
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Isn’t that what the great gift of challenges and hardships are all about? There is no teacher or guru capable of giving you what life’s hardest moments can. Sure, there are words and platitudes and lessons to read about, but it is only through actually living through something that we are shown what stuff we’re actually made of. That was the gift the military gave me. In hindsight, I’m not sure I could have ever learned those things about myself, given the me I was. I had no idea that what I was doing when I stood at attention on black asphalt for hours on end, skin blistered by the sweltering sun, had anything to do with discovering who I was or what I was capable of. My determination and grit. I didn’t have determination and grit going in. All I knew was that I was lazy and hopeless and yet, there I was on that asphalt standing still and turning and slamming my foot down at the bark of a Sergeant in front of me. Dumb and meaningless suffering, that’s what I was thinking then.
Wax on. Wax off. Left turn. Right turn.
Nothing in this world could have changed my perception of self other than moving through the darkest of cavernous hellholes and coming out the other end. It remains that way still as I continue to evolve and grow. I’m a stubborn sort. Through the hellholes we go. Forward ho! There was no therapist or kind confidante that was going to find the words that would pull me through to the other side. No, some paths need fire and brimstone.
But we’ve changed our bent in this brave new world. The institutions that once held us to something greater are fading under ideologies that purport to usher in a new era of inclusivity and equality for all. Children’s sports teams assert that winners and losers are damaging and so there will be no score counting. Work as hard or as little as you like, we’re all winners here. Universities have dramatically lowered entrance standards. Today, most kids can get into some sort of university and thus, degrees have become quite meaningless. Cashiers at the health food store and uber drivers are full of university qualified humans all struggling to pay off their student debt. Fire departments and police too, have watered down expectations. It’s everywhere, yes, but what you lose when you apply these principles to the military wounds me personally.
Who joins the military as an enlisted man? Oh, oops, enlisted person? Is it still enlisted? Pundits and experts from around this country have weighed in with their opinions on why the military is bleeding, more aptly hemorrhaging, personnel. Get rid of the archaic ideas, they say. “Nobody wants to work in an old, tired, organization that draws its culture and values from a museum, people want to be part of an agile organization that rewards modern values.” Really? You sure? Because I don’t see that at all.
Yes, there are the ideologues that call for, and have well succeeded as I’ve already mentioned, in bringing far-left ideologies into the framework of our military, but these are mainly people at the top setting the cadence for the people below them. And those people at the top are products themselves of these far-left ideologies that have completely infiltrated and saturated our institutions of “higher learning”. And so, where they go, so go these ways of looking at the world. But, the very gears that make a military work are drawn from segments of the population who are a little closer to the realities of life. The blue collar workers. The folks that understand that ideas are all well and good, but there is a real world where real work calls for brushing away of ideologies. Those ideas don’t work on the ground and nobody likes to have values shoved down their throats.
I like to think that I have a pretty good looking glass to peek into the minds and motivations of younger people today. Yes, there are the parrots squawking radical notions on repeat. Let’s leave those to the side while they figure things out in life. It’s the others, the young women I know through my grown daughters and the others I have had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with through my writing. They are tired of the unstructured, anything goes, promiscuity and excesses of their time. Young women wondering if the men around them will ever rise up and expect anything more than a one night stand. And young men, told their worth is in their compliance to a woman, in the softening of their masculinity, in how many dollars they earn. It’s everyone for themselves, no rules. Just keep your judgments to yourself and repeat the mantras as given.
Do I think these young people would join the “new” military en masse? Of course not. I don’t think they should either. Why would they? For more of the same with crappy pay and the abject disrespect and devaluing from their higher ups? To grind yourself for an institution that now also thinks it’s within their purview to fill your mind with their political bent? For the weakened camaraderie and morale that comes from these ideologies that are determined to highlight our differences and magnify our, supposedly well-needed, shame? Why would I ever tell someone to join such a place? I wouldn’t. Don’t do it. Everything that was good is gone.
A young, strapping lad that lives near us once expressed to me his desire to join the military. He’s a farm boy, always working hard on some side hustle. He fells, bucks, splits, and delivers firewood. He clears driveways of snow in the winter. He cuts lawns in the summer. He did well enough in high school but he’s itching for something more. Always, he’s good natured and funny. He was liked by all on his hockey team, a good team player. But he wants out of this little country life. For now. He’s like a coiled spring ready to pop. Decades ago, I would have said something different to him, but now I tell him, “No, don’t do it. The military is not what it was. You’ll hate it. You’re too good for them.”
This is what happens when our institutions start to disintegrate. Those decision makers at the top of the hierarchy are making decisions that would appeal to a group of people that would never join the military in the first place. Those entrenched university students, savvy with the lingo and the ideas of critical race theory, are never going to join the army as a soldier. And the young people that would are baffled by this new military that has replaced pride with equality. They’ve confused expression and inclusivity with values and their right to determine them. These ideologies insist. They offer nothing. It’s a slippery, shadowy, insidious decline of expectations. Purple hair with face tattoos and men with long hair wearing women’s skirts, yes. But don’t you dare utter a word of wrong-speak.
It’s the “soft bigotry of low expectations” showing up. Again.
Here’s a thought: what if tradition and high standards are exactly what’s missing from what the world offers our young right now? What if the very things that make the sacrifice of military service worth it are now being erased? Has anyone asked the rank and file if critical race theory training and men wearing skirts will keep them around longer? Has anyone bothered to look at retention? They weren’t doing that three decades ago when I served. They had a “this is what you get, take it or leave it approach”. Seems that’s remained, only the what you get part of the equation has dwindled. What if the military dropped the idea of competing with the likes of social media companies and other jobs with low standards, and put their focus on what they can offer that very few other institutions can. Kind of like they used to. Pride. Discipline. Camaraderie. Discovering that you are so much more than you realize. It may just turn out that more soldiers, serving with pride and honour, paid well, with some thought to their families and homes would keep more people around. And that would mean less deployments and burdens for those willing to tough it out.
Or we could tell soldiers that their whiteness is a shame to be purified and their masculinity a toxic, ugly thing. Either way…
My husband and I know serving members, ones that have been in the Canadian Armed Forces for decades, career soldiers, who are now counting down their time to retirement. “I’ve never seen morale so bad”, they’ve said. “Every young person I meet who has dreams of joining, I redirect”.
It’s a toxic work environment, filled with suspicion and dread. Not because the work is indescribably tough. Not because they have to present themselves with extreme care, slicked and polished to within an inch of their life. Not because they are chastised when they don’t meet the standards in dress or physical fitness. But because none of this matters anymore.
Thinking back now, to that young girl I was over thirty years ago, I wonder what today’s military would be able to offer me. Had I gone into that armoury and found women walking around with painted long nails and flowing blue hair or men with long hair and face stubble slumping about, I don’t know if I would have understood that place to be any different than what I knew. Where is that pride that was always drilled into us back in the day?
The pay, the benefits and the deployments have only worsened as the mass exodus continues. And as people leave, those left behind are demanded to do more to patch the holes. Families suffer as a result. The glue that kept it all together, the stuff that offered, in return for the hellish conditions, something far greater than most could get anywhere else is now going or gone all together. We’ve traded honour and tradition, virtues that build, for untested ideologies that erode and degrade. Will what’s on offer be enough in trade for the call of sacrificing one’s life for their country? Either way, it appears for now that the weakening of our fundamental structures marches on. Almost like it’s by design or something.
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