View Full Version : My, how things have changed in America
JFK proposed an emphasis on youth physical fitness in the '60s. This is how one California high school responded:
https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/program-review/the-insanely-difficult-standards-of-historys-hardest-p-e-program/
Now, about 70% of high school males cannot qualify for military service.
Badger52
10-07-2022, 05:39
I remember that. This guy (https://olympics.com/en/athletes/john-gilbert-beckner) was one of my PE teachers in Jr. High and was a great motivator. Staying with that mentality sure made Basic much easier.
Holy Crap! A program like that sounds like a breeding ground for toxic masculinity. Heaven forbid that such a program could exist in these modern days. Was this an all male school I did not notice any young ladies in the photo?
JFK proposed an emphasis on youth physical fitness in the '60s. This is how one California high school responded:
https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/program-review/the-insanely-difficult-standards-of-historys-hardest-p-e-program/
Now, about 70% of high school males cannot qualify for military service.
I've mentioned this elsewhere on the interwebz but I will restate my two cents on this one...
The US Army pisses away what is simply an uncountable amount of resources on these adversity and delusion related efforts when we should be spending that money "investing in the future" instead of buying bigger and bigger band aids for a wound that wont heal.
Pisses it away.
We've got "wearables" that track everything but the target subjects favorite Anime character - and yet here we are. The system is absolutely against taking a risk on the Dewey Oxburgers of the world just because they have a bit of a weight problem.
Sure, they swallow a lot of aggression; along with a lot of pizzas, but so what.
Have you mother fuckers taken a look at General Milleys waistline lately?
All of the money we squander or these feel good adversity and delusion scams but none of them are able to turn Dewey Oxburgr into a lean, mean, fighting machine?
Sergeant First Class Hulka didn't seem to have a problem motivating some of the worst troops on the planet and he did that shit with good old fashion team building and by gut punching the platoon smart ass after hours in the shitter.
Today though - we just can't seem to get it done. For fuck sake, we can't even figure out how to get warriors into the high schools to talk to possible recruits. For fuck sake - a recruiter has to use the same tactics as a fucking 70's era drug pusher just to get face time with these fat fucking teenagers.
...and so what that a red blooded American that wants to serve their country and punish our enemies might be carrying a few extra pounds.
Nope just ain't worth the risk - besides - he's probably an extremist. Certainly a racist.
The ones that DID get raised thinking about baseball, hotdogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet can't be trusted because they are from the wrong demographic - besides, they aren't joining because they are tired of being called racists, bigots, misogynists, xenophobes, and enemies of the state simply because they might have a personal opinion about 'stuff.
Definitely not worth the investment
On the other hand - females that weigh less than a REAL mission ruck seem to be the target audience. Females that are blessed with lower raw PT standards are one of our target audiences. Those that posses a physical stature that will be structurally compromised in roughly ten years of REAL employment in the SOF arena are the ones we are dumping our efforts into. Gotta spend our time keeping a Ferrari running at tip top performance instead of checking the transmission fluid and adding the occasional quart of oil to an old C-10 pickup
...even though all of our driving is being done off-road
Then there is that other demographic that we are courting...
...those suffering from gender dysphoria.
Troops that will enlist and immediately step into several years of gender counseling, hormone therapy, transition surgery, and recovery counseling before they can really focus their efforts on their oath instead of their dysphoria.
...all on the taxpayers dime
All the while, China continues to build. In another 3-5 years when Winnie the Pooh decides he is ready to reunify Taiwan, we are going to be on our heels - wondering how we ended up in the middle of a fight that we might not win.
"No more Task Force Smith" indeed.
"...the lesson never learned"
I wonder how many Mark Milleys there are that are so blinded by their short term goals of liberal fame and post service think tank fortune are actual thinking forward to those days when new eyes look back on the 2020's as the decade that ruined America's global military dominance.
Think about that for a moment:
who is ready to be the new "Task Force Smith" of the 2020's ?
Ok - enough reflection - back to my rambling diatribe.
Who is ready to be the new and everlasting face of the "Task Force Smith" of the 2020's ? Which current Army General is first in line to be name associated with this cluster fuck for the next 70 years? Which of our esteemed leaders is pushing their way to the front of the line for the honor of continuing the illusion that its better to do "something" than nothing. Which one wants to hear their grand kid say "GrandPa - are they talking about you?"
Which of our legacy builders is fighting to go down in history as the one that rode shotgun on not just the metaphorical, but literal, butt fucking of the American Army.
Lets keep pretending that an over weight high school linebacker that still uses the word "fag" is unworthy while we continue to fill foxholes with people suffering from mental health disorders and the girl-power delusion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
There's got to be quite a few of them or the curtains would start to close on this shit show simply due to the attrition of flag officers that wanted to leave behind a legacy of failure.
...because we are failing - we are wading headlong into a fight that we cannot win without a catastrophic investment of blood and treasure.
Adversity and delusion are our strength and we are going to ride that shit to the bottom of the sea unless we adjust our heading.
That's just my two cents though - I could be wrong.
"No more Task Force Smith" indeed.
"...the lesson never learned"
My uncle, CO A-1-9, was killed 3 March '51 during Operation Killer. One of his "infantrymen" also killed that day, 90 days before, was an Enlisted Reserve truck driver. How many others in his company were not trained infantry(?)