China Doesn't Care How Woke We Are
The Important Thing is That The Important Thing Remains The Important Thing.
The Rise of Woke National Security
Over the last week, one of the truly tectonic shifts in the American national security scene has emerged to take its place atop Biden Administration slow-to-develop concept of grand strategy and our role in the world. No, it isn’t nuclear strategy, nor is it relations with key allies, or the re-emergence of great power contention. No, it is the rise of National Security Wokeness, and anyone who didn’t see this coming hasn’t been paying attention.
Let’s start with this Tweet, a screenshot sent to me that shows the original tweet by the White House Gender Policy Council, and a retweet that focuses in on some part of the accompanying briefing.
There are several important things to understand here. The first is that there is in fact, a White House Gender Policy Council, which of course raises the question of what benighted identity groups there are that are not so deserving of representation in the West Wing. Then, focus for a moment on the words “Equity” and “Equality”. They are different words, and they are used to convey different things, as equity is aimed at outcomes and equality is aimed at opportunity. Much of the mess of identity politics and the reactions it fosters comes not from the concept of equality (although truth be told, some on the right have not been terribly supportive here), but from the concept of equity, as in, if outcomes are unequal, the process must be skewed (racist, sexist, heightist). The Woke Wave currently propelling the Biden Administration does not care to distinguish between equity and equality, choosing instead to pursue both in whatever the area under consideration may be. For the purposes of national security, it now seems that the Director of National Intelligence sees gender equity as SUCH A THREAT that a new (highly paid, executive) position is being created (and then staffed with support, etc.) to address it.
The final thing to note is the identity of the “re-tweeter”. I do not know Ms. Goldstein personally, though I am grateful to count her as a Twitter follower. Modest internet research indicates that Ms. Goldstein has a number of solid left of center credentials (Truman Project, Democratic Hill staffer), but her impressive background is not the important thing, so much as her existence. You see, the national security left has to its great credit, been building a deep bench of progressive and diverse (at least in terms of gender/race/ethnicity) scholars and thinkers like Ms. Goldstein since the mid ‘00’s, a group of people who flocked to the Obama standard, populated his government and supporting thinktanks, served as a rump for the Team Hillary, effectively parried the Trump catastrophe, and who now populate the Biden Administration (a quick Google of Ms. Goldstein reveals her current employment as a Navy civilian, although I am unsure if it is political or civil service). As impressive as Ms. Goldstein is, the left is LOUSY with similarly impressive young go-getters. The bench is deep, it is committed, and it is influencing national security policy. It is fostered with forethought, and there are both formal and informal networks that cultivate this system. This long term effort has been brilliant, and is now beginning to flourish. It is—in terms of long term importance—the left’s version of the Federalist Society.
I point this out because although there are of course young go-getters on the right in National Security, the pool is not nearly so deep, the system for cultivating them is not nearly so formal (nor successful), and there does not appear to be as great a sense of importance placed on their development. The Pre-Trump GOP and its adherents made halting efforts toward such a corps, but I’m unaware of any successful continuing efforts. There were plenty of young folks who went into government in the Trump Administration, and one of the great benefits of much of the established right of center National Security world sitting out those four years, was opportunity for moving up quickly in a regime starved for competent people. Presumably, these people will go back into government in the next GOP Administration, but there is a “lost generation” between them and the Old Bulls we saw so much of from the Trump team. It will be interesting how that gap gets filled.
Now, onto another interesting whirlwind of woke making its way into national security:
It boggles my mind that I cannot discern the level of seriousness and focus coming from most senior national security types in the Biden Administration toward the threat from China that they are able to muster for the (yes, acknowledged and real) impact of climate change. It isn’t that climate change isn’t important, it is that 1) the impact is not nearly as immediate as that of the (real, actual) national security threat posed by China, and 2) the DoD’s role in (mitigating? ending? ameliorating? staunching?) climate change is not only undefined but relatively minor. DoD needs to tend its knitting, and the other parts of government that can be useful in the long-term adaptation required — should tend to theirs. This conflation of climate change and actionable national security threat is dangerous in a time of growing great power instability, but it is directly traceable to influence of the woke NatSec bench I discussed earlier, who see climate change with a fundamentalism that would make any Southern Baptist envious.
As China launches globally orbiting hypersonic weapons and builds ships faster than any nation since the United States in the 1940’s, we cannot afford to be unserious. But the woke left is going to be heard, and we will continue to siphon off talent and attention pursuing performative policy positions that demonstrate one’s secular religious piety.
Winter is coming.
We Are a Silly People
Because when not busy with shilling for a corrupt ex-President and normalizing riotous insurrection, Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) pays attention to Navy issues, he occasionally rises above my indifference filters. Such an event happened recently when Twitter shut down his account for “misgendering”, which is verboten these days.
Last week, Banks sent a pair of tweets reacting to news of Levine being sworn in as a four-star admiral with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Banks responded by posting that the honor had been “taken by a man.”
He elaborated with a follow-up tweet: “Calling someone that was born and lived as a man for 54 years the first ‘female’ four-star officer is an insult to every little girl who dreams of breaking glass ceilings one day.”
Rachel Levine, openly transgender health official, sworn in as four-star admiral in Public Health Service
A Twitter spokeswoman told The Washington Post that one of Banks’s tweets violated the company’s hateful conduct policy and that he must delete it before regaining access to his account.
This is hate? This gets you kicked off? Ridiculous. Rachel Levine has every right in the world to consider herself a woman. She has every right in the world to ask others to address her as and think of her as, a woman. She has no right to require it, or demand it, or expect others to believe it because it just is not so. Banks is obviously trying to score points with his base, and I fully support Twitter (a private company) having whatever rules it wants for people who participate in its FREE platform. But the silliness of an entire portion of our society lying to itself about patently false things it believes are true, does not extend solely to the insurrectionist wing-nuts of Jan 6.
On Subscriptions
I am a subscriber, truth be told, to far too many things. When it comes to on-paper reading, I subscribe to National Review, Commentary, Foreign Affairs, National Affairs, and The Proceedings of the Naval Institute. Because I hold a card in the American Express family, I receive (unbidden) Departures, though I read it anyway (mostly for the watch ads). These periodicals come to me through the much-maligned U.S. Mail, and they tend upon receipt to be placed on the coffee table in my office. Some are weekly, some monthly, some quarterly. Unlike most paper that I receive in the mail, these do not fall under my “handle it once” mantra, and they tend to pile up over time, and on about a quarterly basis, I collect them up, bring them in the house, and find one of the many great little reading spots we have. Sometimes it is “the library” (a dining room with bookshelves); sometimes it is the kitchen in one of the comfy reading chairs there in which I can enjoy both the printed word and the snoozing of two privileged black labs. Sometimes it is in the bedroom, either on the couch or on the bed. Tonight’s location was on our porch, with a (gas) fire and a cat.
There were magazines and journals going back to the beginning of August, and as I moved quickly through them, I would often come across a piece that I had read online, or even better, one that I had seen discussed on line with the intention of someday reading. Tonight was someday. Anything that resembled “news” coverage is passed over, as by this time, it is no longer news. One of the delights I happened across tonight was a reflection by Joseph Epstein in Commentary on living with cats. You should read it, even if you don’t like cats. You cannot not like good writing. The big, tome-like periodicals, (Foreign Affairs, National Affairs) are saved for last, because it is highly unlikely that I will finish them—or even get very far into the first—in the time I set aside for this indulgence. The system has provision for this reading, in that I make at least two long flights every month, and I almost always travel with at least one of each, sometimes more.
Online subscriptions are another issue, possibly a problem. I subscribe to The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Athletic, The Bulwark, The Dispatch, and countless “Substacks” (just like the one you are reading) including Andrew Sullivan’s, Commander Salamander’s, John Schindler’s, and Matt Labash’s. Countless “newsletters” are delivered into my email each week, and there is a virtual pile comprised by read and saved emails that I scan through when not working, Tweeting, Substacking, sleeping, eating, or otherwise engaged.
I often say that we are living in a golden age of television, what with all of the wonderful things we have to choose from (and spend on), but I rarely take the time to stop and think about how amazing a world it is we live in where I can have nearly instant access to the distributed wisdom of some of the smartest people on earth.
There really is no excuse for being bored.