Ladies in the Navies

If you knew a bridge was being built by feminists, would it be bigoted to avoid driving under it? If the answer is yes, then the definition of the term bigoted must include common-sense self preservation and protection of one's family. That may seem like hyperbole, but remember we're dealing with the kinds of people who have serious philosophic debates about the benefits of human extinction. The only reason any normal person would drive under a bridge they knew was being built by feminists would be a fear of social shaming. You're expected to ignore all reality - like the increased likelihood of your own pointless demise - to signal proper moral obedience. To me, a bit of social shaming seems almost luxurious compared to the inconvenience of being pulverized under many tons of unsupported steel, concrete, and hubris.

Any time an organization officially declares "diversity is our strength", the ship has been set on a crash course with disaster. Literally.

In 2016, Norway introduced conscription for women. The Navy received the highest number of women after conscription duties were introduced.

The Norwegian publication Armed Forces had in an article heaped praises on the KNM Helge Ingstad crew in which four out of five navigators were women. “It is advantageous to have many women on board. It will be a natural thing and a completely different environment, which I look at as positive,” Lieutenant Iselin Emilie Jakobsen Ophus, a navigation officer at the warship, had said.

Two years of women in the Navy, letting them navigate them an "unsinkable" flagship-class frigate. What could go wrong?

In late November, the Helge Ingstad collided with an oil tanker and sank. Did you hear about it? There wasn't much media coverage of the event, for the likely reason. CNN covered it. Neither they nor the Wikipedia article make mention of the ship's "advantageous" navigational environment. Should they not mention that the ship had, statistically speaking, the strongest contingent of empowered navigators in the entire world? It seems like a relevant fact. Wikipedia's "Investigation" section makes no mention of the cause, but focuses on design flaws of the ship that may have lead to its inundation. The real question seems to be, how do we prevent these warships from sinking when they are inevitably run into merchant traffic by seapersons in the modern military?

India's TheWeek was willing to comment on the uncomfortable circumstances of the incident (the first link). If we want to find out the particulars as to why a NATO ship is sitting on the ocean floor, we apparently must consult media from outside the Anglosphere.

This Navy Times has just reported on a scathing internal review of the 2017 USS Fitzgerald incident - in which 7 sailors died - that has largely been withheld from the public.

The probe exposes how personal distrust led the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock, to avoid communicating with the destroyer’s electronic nerve center — the combat information center, or CIC — while the Fitzgerald tried to cross a shipping superhighway.

[...] The Fitz’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, and Lt. Natalie Combs, who ran the CIC, are battling similar charges in court but contend unlawful command influence by senior leaders scuttled any chance for fair trials.

It sounds like a cat fight between the two women in charge at the time. The article references a couple other recent collisions in the US Navy. The destroyer Porter collided with a supertanker in the Strait of Hormuz shortly after the female navigator became disoriented and fled the bridge. Shortly after the Fitzgerald, the John S. McCain collided with a tanker, resulting in 10 more dead sailors. The officers reprimanded were both men, and both named Sanchez.

It's conventional wisdom that the wars of late-stage empires are not generally fought by the host nation, but by mercenaries and people of annexed lands. The citizens haven't just become soft, but also wealthy. They have much to lose, so they hire others to go off to battle instead. But also, the empire has become an entity unto itself. An early empire is built by the nation to serve the nation. It provides them with resources, prestige, and security from invasion. Late empires have outgrown the host nation and accrue manpower however they can.

A second historical perspective: no nation that ever won a war sent its women into battle. The main reason is a matter of survival logistics. Women were - and are - needed for childrearing. If a country lost many men in battle to repel invaders, they could return to full manpower within a generation. If they lost many women, the damage would carry through several generations and likely doom them to later defeat. The other reason is simply that men are far stronger and better at fighting. An army of men could rout a similarly equipped female army several time its size. In antiquity, of course. As militaries have modernized, the need for manliness has diminished. There isn't really a reason a chick can't steer a boat as well as a dude. (Unless she just refuses to talk to that bitch Natalie in the CIC.) Supposedly men have better spacial capacity, which seems to be true, but that doesn't make women worse drivers, for instance. Some of the women in my town can even drive to work while on the phone and eating their breakfast. No one will say that doesn't take talent.

The prevalence of women and minorities in the accident reports is inescapable. Normally I'd say there's no reason why a highly trained woman or Hispanic couldn't navigate a vessel as well as anyone else. The Mexican navy hasn't been ramming frigates into tankers, after all. The first problem is that our military, bowing to the pressures of the public religion, is eager to promote women and non-whites to improve "optics". You can't be sure if General Jane earned her way up through valor or vagina. It's the same reason why it isn't racist to demand an Asian doctor at the hospital. They face the harshest admissions scrutinies, so they are, on average, more capable.

The second problem is less acute but even more fundamental. The US Navy doesn't serve America, but the Empire of Columbia. It's not Americans defending the homelands where their children will grow. It's whatever warm body can perform the required task for keeping a heavily deployed force operational. They're defending Kuwait and Syria, enforcing sea lanes that mostly benefit our allies, or bombing Serbians on behalf of Bosniaks. While the homeland is literally being invaded by tens of millions of foreigners, our military is out plowing into merchant ships in far-flung corners of the globe.

Other countries are taking note. Judge them by their actions. Russia, of course, deftly defied American hegemony in Syria. Brazen, risky, and successful. How do you not admire that? China is now becoming very belligerent.

A rare and under-reported tense exchange occurred between US and Chinese military commanders in Beijing on Tuesday. A high level Chinese military official, General Li Zuocheng, told the head of the United States Navy, Admiral John Richardson, in a face to face meeting that Beijing would defend its claim to Taiwan "at any cost". 

The Chinese know strength when they see it, and when they don't. They're not even pretending to be diplomatic. They're ready to reunite their own nation, one way or another. They don't care about Taiwan so much as the Chinese defectors dwelling there. I have to note that the Chinese general spoke down to Admiral John Richardson. A white guy, with English first name and English last name. A bigot, if you will. The specific demographic of heritage America that the dominant social forces here are demanding be improved with diversification. The Chinese - who are racist - are disrespecting a ranking officer of the nation that wields power unrivaled in all human history. Imagine how they'll respond when we send Admiral Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (or similar) as our military dignitary. I'll give you a hint - they wouldn't even wheel out a ladder for President Obama. But, we may never find out, as our rate of collapse likely exceeds even our rate of social progress.