Needles & Grooves

I had that last week. It was still pretty vague in our training, like they didn't want to mention any specific groups as being extremist (there was one mention asking if a soldier posting swastikas on social media should be reported, everything else was very non-specific).

And like so many of the trainings we have, I often find myself thinking "I am 100% on board with this being something we do training on... but this implementation, not so much..."

Yeah, it’s so stupid. We’re giving extremists training to our soldiers with terms that have been hijacked by the extremists themselves. Lots of talk about patriotism and keeping the oath.... but like.... the left just gave those terms up to the red hats, they completely failed to recognize the importance of these terms.

They no longer mean what they used to mean. I hate that it happened like that, but it did. Patriotism, oathkeeping, even the flag itself has become synonymous with an ideology linked to extremism.

Hearing this take on the “stand down” training is very interesting to me when compared to my buddy’s experience. He’s in the Marines and the instructor/trainer, was black and ran through it with a dismissive attitude because he thought it was a BS training.

I have no ability to hold an opinion. I’ve been out for over 2 decades at this point and didn’t receive this training. Just remarking on the different perspectives.

I can see why he would be. Especially if he’s familiar with the inauthenticity and politicized aspects of diversity in the military. It is BS training, it’s BS training because it doesn’t address the complexity of the problem. It’s just giving extremist rules in which they need to abide. i. e. Don’t recruit on public forums, don’t put stickers of organizations on your car, don’t research killing senators... etc. etc.

I was hoping for a “we all have biases, let’s tap into those” type of training and not a “here’s what the bad guys did wrong, don’t do what they did, be smarter than them” approach.