Flash Post #9
Trigger Warning: this post is calculated to offend racists, misogynists, transphobes, homophobes, and all manner of other bigots. So maybe don’t read anymore if you’re a bigot and can’t stand to have your feelings hurt.
With that little disclaimer out of the way, consider the following stories of social media activity by US military service members, pulled from the headlines:
A two-star general delivered a smackdown on twitter, taking dead-aim at a television personality who took a break from his usual white-nationalist/anti-immigrant schtick to shit on women in the military.
A Master Sergeant in the Tennessee Air National Guard, aided and abetted by a Colonel and at least one other SNCO holding the camera, reenlisted with a dinosaur puppet over one hand and had it videotaped for her children, who could not attend in person, to watch later. The video was later uploaded to Facebook.
A US Army soldier made an Instagram post in which he indicated that he joined the Army to get better at killing black people.
What do these three stories have in common? The subjects all saw their military careers ended as a consequence of engaging in social media activity deemed “offensive” by some. And that gets to the heart of the military’s free expression problem.
For the record, I agree fully with the decision to terminate the career of one of the above subjects (the racist soldier, duh). What is troubling–mind-boggling, really–is that military leadership cannot seem to similarly distinguish between anti-bigotry or innocent (fundamentally harmless) fun on the one hand, and straight-up bigotry-verging-on-hate-crime-planning on the other.
I mean, I get it, really I do. People were “offended” in each case. Racists don’t like being called racists and misogynists don’t like getting told that some women are in fact doing more good for the nation than they are: anti-bigotry is offensive to bigots. Likewise, misogynists in general are liable to be offended by the mere notion that a woman could rise to be a senior noncommissioned officer in the armed forces–in charge of men!–whether she might reenlist with a sock puppet on her hand or not, and god help the hapless Colonel–male or otherwise–who might aide and abet her in such a grievous outrage against “western chauvinists.” But, I mean… does the military really have to treat offense given to bigots (whether intentionally by an anti-bigot, or unintentionally by someone from a marginalized group merely for existing) as if it must be a career-killer on par with bigotry-bordering-on-hate-crime itself?
You would think it would be easy to distinguish between offense given to bigots versus offense given by bigots, but the military appears hamstrung as certain forms of bigotry have gained broad support in the Republican Party. Not that Democrats can’t be bigoted too–many of them are–but to the extent one party has more or less adopted a pro-fascism, pro-racism, pro-misogyny, pro-homophobia, pro-transphobia, pro-all-around-bigotry-if-it-brings-in-voters agenda, it’s the Republican Party. If you are a Republican and, reading that, you are upset that I could write such a thing, too bad. As your boy, the intellectual dark web prophet and minister to angry young white males himself is fond of saying, facts don’t care about your feelings. Which makes it ironic as fuck that Republican-controlled state legislatures across the nation have been falling all over themselves to prevent school children from learning that some of the founding fathers might actually have been racists and other sordid facts that, if known, might lead them to consider the possibility that the United States has a fundamentally racist origin and more work is required to undo all the institutional harm still built into the system from its inception (and quite often strengthened through the years). Or, uh, I mean, because, you know, it might hurt the kids’ feelings to learn the truth. Or some such nonsense.
Anyway, back to the military’s free expression problem. The problem, in a nutshell, is this: the military cannot distinguish between displaying, say, the battle flag of the confederacy or any other pro-confederate (and by extension, pro-racism, pro-slavery, anti-human-rights) regalia on the one hand, and Black Lives Matter on the other. And to be clear, black lives do matter. It’s that black lives don’t seem to matter according to the systems now in place (and that traditionally have been in place throughout our nation’s history, from its inception) that prompts such a positive assertion, and why the self-identified “centrist” retort “All Lives Matter” is grossly ignorant at best and offensive (in a pro-bigotry sort of way) at worst: because it implicitly undermines the notion that black lives are uniquely threatened by our nation’s persistent racism, as if to suggest that there isn’t widespread systemic racism shortening the lives of black Americans.
And this isn’t just me making shit up and drawing inferences: the military is so manifestly incapable of distinguishing between expressions of hate (eg: pro-racism, anti-human symbols like the confederate battle flag) and expressions of support for civil rights that all Americans should have (eg: the LGBTQ+ Pride Flag) that, in response to widespread and wholly justified calls to ban the display of racist (eg: pro-confederate) flags on military installations, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense instead issued a memorandum banning the display of ALL flags of any sort except those prescribed as “approved” on a very short list (a la Pleasantville). Those approved flags, in addition to the Stars and Stripes of course, are:
– Flags of U.S. States and Territories and the District of Columbia;
– Military Service flags;
– Flag or General Officer flags;
– Presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed civilian flags;
– Senior Executive Service (SES) and Military Department-specific SES flags;
– The POW/MIA flag;
– Flags of other countries, for which the United States is an ally or partner, or for official protocol purposes;
– Flags of organizations in which the United States is a member ( e.g., NATO);
– Ceremonial, command, unit, or branch flags or guidons.
While on the one hand it’s great that racists can no longer show their pride by putting up a MAGA flag and/or the confederate battle flag in their cubicle, note how that list–which applies not only to government workspaces, but to base housing, even if privately operated under contract–also excludes pro-human, pro-civil rights displays like the BLM banner and the Pride Flag.
The military’s problem, as typified by the above-referenced memo, is that it seems to think that neutrality, that silence, is the best way to respond to the politicization of certain topics. That is, to the extent that bigotry is now a partisan issue and so might arguably fall within the gambit of DoD Directive 1344.10, with one party (the Republican Party) leaning in hard on a range of pro-bigotry stances, military leadership seems to be possessed of the notion that a rigorously enforced code of silence is the proper, apolitical and non-partisan approach. But that is false, as Nobel laureate and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel observed:
“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Elie Wiesel
Silence with respect to fascism is pro-fascism. Silence with respect to racism is pro-racism. Silence with respect to misogyny is pro-misogyny. Silence with respect to homophobia and transphobia is pro-homophobia and pro-transphobia. To remain neutral is to give comfort to those who would exclude large, otherwise qualified, swathes of the population from our nation’s military (as they historically succeeded in doing for much of our nation’s history and still largely have succeeded when it comes to people whose gender identity does not align with their sex as assigned at birth). The military cannot afford to remain silent when service-members are marginalized by bigots, nor can it afford to sacrifice the recruitment and inclusion of otherwise qualified Americans from marginalized groups for the sake of bigots who might call themselves patriots, but are in fact bent on the destruction of our democracy.
Songs of Babylon 