Thank You From An Active Duty Military General
From: (Active Duty Military General’s e-mail address withheld)
Subject: Thank You From An Active Duty Military General
Date: November 15, 2024 at 9:03:48 AM MST
To: Michael L Weinstein <[email protected]>, <[email protected]>
Mikey and the MRFF Team –
I’ve gone through all the stages of grief these past few weeks. Not necessarily for myself…I’ve had a great career and retirement doesn’t sound so bad. But I fear for my service members. Our DoD has always led the way towards the integration of women, people of color and racial minorities, minority faith and non-faith people, transgender people and others of the LGBTQ+ community. Our Services have worked to reduce disparity and barriers to promotion. We’ve made gains in modifying dress and appearance standards to be more inclusive and reduce barriers and physical ailments that some of our strict standards were causing. The upcoming Administration is already vocalizing a reversal of all this goodness. Not just a reversal of a few standards, but complete elimination of our amazing leaders who fought for diversity and inclusion because these leaders know it makes us the best Air Force, Space Force, Navy, Marines, Army, and Coast Guard in the world. I am afraid for our service members. Afraid that their proud service will be thrown away because they are transgender, or another member of the LGBTQ+ community, or because they practice a minority faith or non-faith path, or because they are a black man that spoke on the military need for diversity and inclusion. How will we recruit and retain our fighting force of the future if that future is watching these horrors occur? We won’t. Then we’ll wring our hands about why we are not the best in the world. Our adversaries are definitely watching and I’m sure they are comforted by what is about to happen.
Thank you for all that you do to fight for our amazing members who volunteered to serve this great nation.
– A General Officer currently on active duty
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General, if you guys had court-martial guys like Colonel North and Admiral Poindexter for their roles in the Iran-Contra affair, court-martial all those military and ex-military people who participated in the 1/6 event and court-martial the military people especially Christian nationalists who impose the religious beliefs on other people thus violating the line between church and religion, you wouldn’t have organizations like MRFF and the ACLU doing your job.
I noted the mention of possible decline in recruiting. Pre-Trump, the only service achieving its recruiting goal is the Marine Corps. Navy enlistees, up to age 41, are eligible for bonuses from ~ $5,000 to $140,000 and it still struggles but misses the target. Based on experience as a Recruiter-In-Charge during Viet Nam, I initially envision a decline in enlistments, a large increase in first-term experienced members accepting discharges, and significant retirement requests from the career pay grades (E-6, E-7, E-8, & E-9), many who planned to remain for 24 to 30 years. I’m guessing some would respond, that this would be crazy as there would be few jobs. My story is somewhat similar and my wife and I had agreed to this two years prior. Family time was the priority! In 1980 I was selected for Command Master Chief. That would have required a two year obligation on sea duty. I shocked the CO and XO when I informed them I was declining the promotion to submit my retirement request! They tried to convince me no jobs were available due to the recession. “The early 1980s recession was a severe economic recession that affected much of the world between approximately the start of 1980 and 1982. It is widely considered to have been the most severe recession since World War II until the 2007–2008 financial crisis.” I got help with my resume from a university business management professor and started a campaign six months early. I turned down several interview requests, including the CIA. I interviewed with a company in Rockville and shocked the CO when I showed him the offer letter four months prior to my retirement. I took 60 days retirement leave and started work while buying a home. In today’s $ I was earning $107,000! The actual outcome of this puzzle will be interesting.
Studies show that every time, a Republican is in the White House, you will always get a recession. Of course, it doesn’t help when American CEOs have sent jobs overseas in the last 45 years and/or hired immigrants (legal and illegal) to replace American workers not to mention the CEOs have totally dis-invested themselves from American society while at the same time have access to the politicans.
To add on to Gunther’s comment, any MBA accounting course will teach you that tying Corporate leaders’ pay and incentive package to shareholder returns (stock price), ensures corporate responsibility at the top. Wrong!
Tying Corporate leaders’ pay to stock value ensures a higher stock price to maximize corporate leader payout! Through things like stock buy backs, minimizing labor cost, offshoring, et al.
When 10% of Americans own 93% of all stocks, it’s a recipe for Corporate control of a government, much like we have in the US. The lower 50% of Americans own 1% of the stock market. With the accompanying stagnant wages, lowered quality of life, poorer health, outsourcing of US jobs to profit maximization, growing income and wealth inequality, and unbridled populism as the down trodden awaits their white knight to make it all better. In other words, Trump and his Quack Pack of sycophants ready to do the King’s bidding!
“It’s the brown people” that are taking your jobs! Not enough illegals in this country of 360 million to amount to a hill of beans in the grand scheme of the economy – unless of course, you count those being rounded up and kicked out hoping for white people to pick your fruits and vegetables, process your meat products, etc.
Trump is not the disease. He’s just another symptom. You think building a wall on the southern border will stop fentanyl deaths in this country? Yeah, right!
These are deaths of despair reflective of a desperate population. It’ll get a whole lot worse before it gets better!
I’ll give you one example of wealth disparity in this country to illustrate the point.
Eric Smidt, owner of Harbor Freight Tools, just had a $300 million yacht built a couple years ago. That yacht, when it goes out, is accompanied by a “yacht tender,” a 69 meter “keeper of the toys,” a support vessel, both flagged in the Cayman Islands. No US flag on either ship. While I don’t begrudge Eric from having a couple of boats he can tool around on, I do begrudge Eric not flagging and registering those boats in the US. After all, Eric has relied on the infrastructure that US taxpayers built and put in place to support his multi billion dollar business!
Not to mention his $70 million dollar Gulfstream and his $45 million dollar cottage in Beverly Hills.
Every time he moves his boats or jet, he gets a tax break – for business purposes. His wardrobe and lifestyle is, in and of itself, a tax break. In other words, US taxpayers subsidize everything he does!
And where are Harbor Freight tools made? Let me guess … China?
I’m picking on Eric Smidt, but there are plenty more just like him in this land of the free!
With a net worth in excess of $10 billion and you can’t flag your toy boats in America because …. it cost too much vs Cayman Island registration?
Dripping hypocrisy. I wouldn’t mind if EVERY American had access to universal healthcare as a fundamental right, but to have medical bankruptcies as the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US, yeah, mull that one over and you begin to get a full grasp on populism.
Capitalism will eat itself, the strains showing in a very divided country, giving rise to those strange noises coming from the hull as we get closer to test depth!
Trump and his Quack Pack to add more weight, get us their quicker. Never mind those hull noises, completely normal!
“Don’t look up!”
Gonna get a lot worse! The End Times? Yeah – of a dying empire, capitalism finally caving in on itself, Trump to lead the race to the bottom as he gets rid of the DOJ, FBI, Dept of Education, dismantles Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, repeals Obamacare without replacement, more tax cuts for the rich, destroys green energy initiatives – it goes on and on ad nauseum.
Good luck MAGA. You’re gonna need it!