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Pentagon Agency Pauses Celebrations for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month and More

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department's intelligence agency has paused observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Pride Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance and other cultural or historical annual events in response to President Donald Trump’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal workplace.

The instructions were published Tuesday in a Defense Intelligence Agency memo obtained by The Associated Press and affect 11 annual events, including Black History Month, which begins Saturday, and National Hispanic Heritage Month.

Military Times

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/01/30/pen...

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department's intelligence agency has paused observances of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Pride Month, Holocaust Days of Remembrance and other cultural or historical annual events in response to President Donald Trump’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the federal workplace.

The instructions were published Tuesday in a Defense Intelligence Agency memo obtained by The Associated Press and affect 11 annual events, including Black History Month, which begins Saturday, and National Hispanic Heritage Month.

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What makes the USA safer?


a) the DOD spending a bazilion labor hours planing, promoting, and participating in these cultural events; or

b) Spending that same bazililion hours in training and preparedness for foreign operations already underway or that may be deployed on a moments notice, adapting and becoming proficient in new weapons and other technologies as they are deployed, and so on. ie the mission critical stuff, not the virtue signaling stuff.

Convince me that a) is the better investment of the DOD's time and focus.

What makes the USA safer?

Having honest and intelligent public servants in charge who believe in our Constitution rather than sociopathic con artists who lie, steal, grift, and constantly make up shit to try to pin their ongoing failures on anyone but themselves.

Thanks for asking.

What makes the USA safer?

a) the DOD spending a bazilion labor hours planing, promoting, and participating in these cultural events; or

b) Spending that same bazililion hours in training and preparedness for foreign operations already underway or that may be deployed on a moments notice, adapting and becoming proficient in new weapons and other technologies as they are deployed, and so on. ie the mission critical stuff, not the virtue signaling stuff.

Convince me that a) is the better investment of the DOD's time and focus.

I don't have enough knowledge of what happens at the DOD for those events, i.e. how much time and resources are devoted to them and for what, to be able to give a informed opinion on those specific matters, but wouldn't those same arguments apply to other holidays, which are not being stopped? And you would also need to consider positive effects on morale of recognizing the various cultures and ethnicities that make up our country.

I do have an informed opinion on what does NOT make the US safer:

1) Let's start with electing an erratic, unstable, bumbling, aging, crooked megalomaniac reality TV star as President and handing him the nuclear codes and surrounding him with a bunch of loyalists who will do whatever he says

2) Appointing a TV news personality (possibly alcoholic) who calls those who disagree with him politically "America's domestic enemies" as Secretary of Defense

3) Destabilizing the world order in so many ways not in our favor ultimately--frightening our allies with impulsive actions and petty squabbles, pulling out of the World Health Organization, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, leaving our allies unable to trust us and looking for other places to turn to get the kind of help and stability that they used to get from us

4) Letting a bunch of violent right-wing criminals out of jail on pardons

5) Destabilizing the domestic order with a flurry of poorly thought out and executed and often illegal Executive orders, relaxing environmental standards that will worsen air quality, water quality, etc.

6) Ignore scientific consensus on climate change

7) Divisive rhetoric

And on and on...it's been well-covered here. We're halfway screwed already. Hopefully it won't get worse than that.

Having honest and intelligent public servants in charge who believe in our Constitution rather than sociopathic con artists who lie, steal, grift, and constantly make up shit to try to pin their ongoing failures on anyone but themselves.

Thanks for asking. - aw

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OK, you choose not to make a case for a.

OK, you choose not to make a case for a.

Because a) was a strawman.

What I will make a case for is that various cultural events and other public events serve as recruiting opportunities. They show the military in a good light. They highlight the job opportunities for young men and women. They are an opportunity for the general public to talk to soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines to find out what military life is like, why these particular people chose to serve their country in these particular branches. They're just good PR. Good PR can happen at a gay pride parade just as easily as a 4th of July parade.

I would also ask how sending a color guard to a MLK day event is any different from sending a color guard to a Washington's birthday event or a Labor Day event or a Memorial Day event? They're all national holidays.

As to Black History month, why should we celebrate the Doolittle raid and not the Tuskegee airmen? Why should we celebrate Roosevelt's Rough Riders and not the Buffalo soldiers? Aren't they all part of military history?

So once again, our current political leadership isn't focused on actual leadership, but on sending messages to their base which alienate other parts of the electorate. They are encouraging division rather than looking to reduce it.

--Peter

OK, you choose not to make a case for a.

LOL. No, I just don’t think it’s much of an issue at all. I highly doubt a gazillion hours are spent on the recognition of diversity.

The right uses cultural issues (the war on Christmas, wokeness, DEI, etc.) as wedge issues to divide people and rile up their base. I think the left sometimes gets silly the other way, but I’d rather err on the side of inclusiveness than on divisiveness.

I’m much more concerned about putting incompetent people in positions of power.

bazilion labor hours

You lose some credibility when you do this.


So how about they spend time planning a parade for Donald where they can pin a medal on him? Or how about they spend their time planning and building the wall, or making detention centers? Maybe we could train them how to arrest people crossing the border? Maybe we could teach them all about flying into Latin American countries airports?

Convince me that those are worthwhile.

So how long do you think it takes to choose a poster, hang it on the bulletin board, and for Sarge or a Butterbar to give a leetle speech?

I would rather they arrest Jan 6ers, take them to Death Valley, and tell them if they make it across the desert, they're pardoned and then shoot in the air to get them moving. We film it and run the event on Netflix.

So how long do you think it takes to choose a poster, hang it on the bulletin board, and for Sarge or a Butterbar to give a leetle speech? - Lapsody

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Hardly anytime at all to hang a poster. However, planning, construction, and after a month dismantling and storing until next year's Black History month this exhibit takes considerably more time. Notice the size of this thing, occupying an entire corridor in the Pentagon. Note also it is inside the pentagon where potential recruits will never see it.

https://www.defense.gov/Spotlights/Black-History-M...

not the virtue signaling stuff.

Hegseth is white virtue signaling.

Just look at his tattoos.

Before, he hid them because he had pulled off a security detail, considered a threat because of them.

Now he can wear them proudly and issue dictats that enforce their message- and that message has nothing to do with combat readiness.

In fact, that message detracts from cobat readiness as he turns his gaze from combat readiness to focus on immigration and Trump’s political foes.


“Combat readiness” my ass.

Here's what the left wants in the military. If you want to know why DEI needs to D-I-E, consider this a primer:

https://www.thefp.com/p/dei-military-pete-hegseth-...

Who needs terms like 'mom' and 'dad' anyway? They're not inclusive enough.

But that was the exception, not the rule. In 2022, Mookie recalls attending a training course at Georgetown University for Air Force generals and senior officers called “Managing for Inclusion.” The professor, he said, informed the group that white people were oppressors and black and Hispanic people were the oppressed, so they couldn’t be racist. The professor also taught the class how to ask someone for their pronouns at the beginning of a conversation.
“The whole thing was old-fashioned propaganda,” Mookie said. “But there were generals, including Lt. General Mary O’Brien [now retired] and Lt. General Leah Lauderback, and higher-ranked people within this course who were going along with it, clapping like trained seals.”

And this is the least of it. It gets worse:

Several high-ranking officers with combat experience who spoke to The Free Press understood its fatal flaw. “So let’s say we have soldiers, airmen, Marines, and sailors, who have actually been in combat and who have actually covered one another, and who have actually sacrificed for one another, and they are all across different ethnic groups, races, and whatever,” said Mookie. “And then all of a sudden, some clown is saying, ‘Hey, but you know, you’re inherently racist.’ That just ain’t gonna work for unity.”

and
About two years ago, my son had to take economics 101,” he told The Free Press. “It’s a basic core curriculum course, and there are probably about 15 cadets in the class. And the first three or four were females or minority cadets, and they’re all in uniform. And the instructor addresses them and says, ‘Oh, Cadet Gonzales, Cadet Smith, Cadet Jones.’ And she got to my son, and she says,`You'll be Cadet White Boy One.’ And she says to another white cadet, `You’ll be Cadet White Boy Two.’ My son said,`I beg your pardon, ma'am?’ She said, `All you white boys look alike. So you’re going to be White Boy 2, and the other boy over there will be White Boy One.’ ”

Nothing says inclusion like using racial terms to describe your students, eh?

Hardly anytime at all to hang a poster. However,

Skip everything, eh? It takes much more time for the wall and detention centers than all of your objections. I suppose the troops will also get training on guard duty. It takes a lot to plan for the parade. Face it, you have no idea, you're just listing stuff. For all you know it's shake n bake. Whereas building detention centers and a wall is an across the military and Corps of Engineers task. Planning, scheduling and plotting the additional maintenance, etc., for all those military flights for deportation is am expensive wasteful endeavor - just charter the planes, it's a bargain, but you're constrained by the pot of money, eh?

Have you stopped the plane flights in with migrants? I keep asking that question and no one knows. How about Schedule F?

However, planning, construction, and after a month dismantling and storing until next year's Black History month this exhibit takes considerably more time.

You're talking about a rounding error in terms of cost. Less than a rounding error.

The military is made up of people. Just like any other company or organization. It's a nice diversion to have some event, or decorating, or whatever, for Valentine's Day, Black History month, Halloween, etc. Whether you work for Intel, or the Navy.

Why not worry about something important, because this just ain't it. You will never make a nick, much less a dent, in the budget deficit worrying about this kind of thing. It's a distraction. A shiny thing. "Squirrel!!"

Why not worry about something important, because this just ain't it. You will never make a nick, much less a dent, in the budget deficit worrying about this kind of thing. - 1pg

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It is not about the dollar cost. It is all about how their time could be better used for mainstream military responsibilities.

It is not about the dollar cost. It is all about how their time could be better used for mainstream military responsibilities.

Such as Donnie's parade? Building the wall? Building detention centers? And guard duty on deportees?

It is not about the dollar cost. It is all about how their time could be better used for mainstream military responsibilities.

We're not at war. So their responsibilities are polishing their shoes/boots, cleaning stuff (including barracks, tanks, heads (toilets), weapons of various sorts, etc), some doing paperwork, others making sure reactors are humming along, guard duty, etc. All mundane stuff that always gets done. What responsibilities do you imagine that aren't getting done?

It was a long time since I was in, but I'm sure routine hasn't changed that much.

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