Army Gen. Mark Milley pushed back on claims from Republicans that the military is “woke” and as a result not prepared to take on modern threats, saying he’s “not even sure what that word truly mean…
Army Gen. Mark Milley pushed back on claims from Republicans that the military is “woke” and as a result not prepared to take on modern threats, saying he’s “not even sure what that word truly means.”
“What I see is a military that’s exceptionally strong. It’s powerful; it’s ready. In fact, our readiness rates, the way we measure readiness, is better now than they’ve been in years,” Milley said in a CNN interview Sunday.
Republican politicians and candidates have blasted the Pentagon for so-called woke policies, pointing to efforts to recruit a diverse group of military service members and be inclusive to transgender soldiers.
Those claims have also headlined efforts to reduce military spending.
No one knows what the word woke means. Even people who use it can't define it. It's just a boogeyman word for things people don't like or want, and even they can't agree on it.
Really that's the closest we've come to an actual proper definition of the term "woke" by a conservative (and I'm like 90% confident that DeSantis' lawyers got that definition from the first few lines of the Wikipedia page on this term).
Yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, other conservatives give very different definitions, or none at all. VICE asked several conservatives at CPAC for a definition of the term and got a bunch of different answers (and vague non-answers). During an interview a conservative author who wrote an entire book about "wokeness" couldn't give a definition of the term. A few weeks ago Noah Samsen made a response to an anti-woke YouTuber by the name "Think Before You Sleep", who simply defined woke as "communism" (whatever he thinks that means).
For all intents and purposes, "woke" might as well just mean "anything vaguely progressive that I don't like".
Ok a court filing, DeSantis lawyers defined "woke" as, "the belief that there are systemic inequities in US society and the need to work against them".
It still means what it always meant. Being aware of society's injustices to the poor, downtrodden, or minority population and wanting to do something about it. They can't fucking stand that.
Being against being "woke" truly reveals who they are. That they just want to sweep it all under a rug and forget about it.
I think that's insufficient anymore if we are considering the right's usage of the word. Marketing or selling products to those groups counts as woke to the right.
No the problem is that woke does have a meaning, and most people know what that meaning is. The problem is that if republicans actually defined it out loud they'd have to admit what they actually take issue with and what they're actually fighting, and doing so would basically be admitting that they're the baddies. It'd be saying the quiet part out loud. By avoiding acknowledging the actual meaning of the word they get to pretend that wokeness is a nebulous Bad Thing that should be fought against.
for me, for example, it means “people who are all over their head with cancel culture”; it also means people [who use the word] are probably a bunch of far right crazies.
So overall I guess it’s a way to describe the two far ends of the same thing
"Woke is now defined in this dictionary as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” and identified as U.S. slang. It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement."
There is actually a real definition to it. For example one day I realized that black people live in a world different than mine.
It woke me up to the realities of black existence
That’s why it’s “woke”.
When i had my kid and i read a bunch of stuff on parenting, i also came across those articles where black families needed to talk to their sons about police. It never occurred to me that people would need to so that.
Based General for not even entertaining the idea of knowing what the W word even means.
It's too bad all our journalists are sold out to corpos otherwise they should respond to anyone wanting woke with "what is that? Idk what you are talking about please elaborate".
That's not entirely true. To pass the "stop WOKE act", the bill had to have a definition of"wokeness". You know what the definition is? Awareness of systemic injustice.
The first few times I heard "woke" used, it was in the context of people who don't follow the sheep because they aren't asleep. Hence, they have woke up.
It was always a vacuous ambiguous way to say someone was liberally enlightened without having to justify the claim with anything specific. That is true for both the positive and pejorative use of woke. I enjoy the song "Wide Awake" by Parquet Courts that made fun of the term in it's original use.
That is true for both the positive and pejorative use of woke.
At this point, from what I can tell, there is no truth for the pejorative use of 'woke.' It means whatever the Republican saying it wants it to mean. If they want it to mean anything at all but 'this is a bad thing.'
"Woke is the word I use to express my absolute and utterly baseless hatred for any Person, Thing, Idea or Concept, without having to resort to the hard slurs that would get me eviscerated and remove my plausible deniability" - Republican Zeitgeist
Before the right co-opted it, it was a reference to being awake to social injustice and aware of systemic discrimination. Then the right grabbed onto it and decided that everything social justice is ‘woke’ and pretty much replaced SJW with it. Today it means anything ‘liberal’ with regards to social matters per the American Overton window metric.
Authoritarianism requires the support of the military and a military that's full of LGBT people won't support authoritarians that wants to execute LGBT people.
It's got nothing to do with the actual quality of readiness of the military. It's theatrics to let minorities know they're not welcome, using the currently fashionable trigger word.
They caught a lot of criticism for being 'woke' (in the sense of being socially progressive) a few years ago when they air this video as parts of an recruiting campaign.
For the lazy it's an animated story of a woman that became a soldier who was raised by two moms. It touches on her advocating for the LGBT community and empowering women in the video.
It's stands in contrast to the typical recruiting method of portraying tanks and generic disposable 18yr old men blowing things up by highlighting a personal story of a woman.
It was part of a series of other similar videos released at the time. I think the controversy was from the perception that it was an attempt to appear socially progressive in a performative manner without actual resolving any of their problematic behavior like covering up sexual assaults.
Another example of it I've heard from a LT I know is holding suicide prevention meetings and then treating soldiers in a way that makes them hate their life.
Absurd on the face of it. But making a cogent point is beside the point here, all they're really doing is sending the message that as soon as they're back in power, the military will be politicized.
Edit: Or possibly given the Russian military treatment; contracts awarded, real units never delivered, and the money all absconded with by craven oligarchs until the only way to prosecute a war is with mercs.
Edit 2: Merc squads padded out with penal legions. We do have plenty of prisoners, after all.
The military would be changed to defend the regime instead of the country.
Part of it was communicated via Trump's pardon of the war criminal. In Trump's mind, he was signaling that he would let the military do whatever they wanted in exchange for loyalty. For most of the military senior brass, it was a symbol of giving up on their ideals.
Just look at this guy's career. 44 years with his nose to the grindstone and boots on the ground just to have chickenhawks scream at you about "wokeness."
These people never change. They complained when they allowed non white people to enlist. They complained when they stop segregating the units. They complained about woman, about inclusivity etc. They just keep moving the goalpost whenever there is progress then, claim the next thing will destroy the military. Just their thinly weiled prejudice.
I love how republicans navigated themselves into a position where the best thing anyone else can do is ignoring them.
No discussion, because it doesn’t lead anywhere.
No listening to them, because they talk about the end of the white race, autism from vaccines or woke stuff.
It’s like living with children, but you at least listen to a child when something bothers them. You don’t care for republicans, conservatives or nazis. It doesn’t matter how they call themselves. At this point, they march together and therefore are the same.
If only they hadn’t the right to vote…things could be easier.
(If you read any kind of 4chan conspiracy theory about leftist communist cannibals from lizard space who want to abolish their right to vote, now you now where it came from.)
I find it hard to believe that the largest and most effective organization designed specifically to kill or otherwise incapacitate whichever opposing forces their set against, isn't woke.
It's pretty obvious that Gen. Milley is wearing a wig, and what do you think he's hiding below that wig? Yep, you guessed it, blue and purple dyed hair.
I guarantee you that after this sham of a hearing, Gen. Milley's entire polycule was laughing at how xe hoodwinked us yet again.
FYI Gen. Milley's preferred pronoun is Xe, so put some respect on that shit.
"Woke" could be taken as the opposite of "denialist".
Wikipedia defines "woke" as "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination", although today it's often extended to other prejudices besides racism.
Thus, "anti-woke" can be taken to mean "in denial about racial (etc.) prejudice and discrimination".
For example, we could say that the Association of German National Jews, the pro-Nazi Jewish group that existed from 1921 to 1935, was an "anti-woke" organization. This group sought to convince German Jews that they could drop their Jewishness and assimilate within a Nazi-dominated Germany.
I would say that to be "anti-woke" isn't to be in denial but rather to be in favor of racial (etc) prejudice and discrimination. Otherwise, they would feel that there's nothing to be particularly against. More woke-neutral than anti.
Denialism isn't that innocent. More than a few Holocaust denialists seem to have the position of "The Nazis didn't really kill the Jews, but they should have."
Not that I'm all stoked on a bloated US military, but the main reason our forces would not be prepared is due to republican fuckery, so to see a general get grilled about it by the GOP proves that irony and self awareness is long dead where those fossils are concerned
“This is a military that’s dedicated to maintaining our readiness, our capabilities, our lethality. And the thing that we also need to focus on is the modernization for the future character of war that I see fundamentally changing,” Milley said.
“This military is a lot of things, but woke, it’s not. So I take exception to that. I think that people say those things for reasons that are their own reasons, but it’s not true. It’s not accurate,” he continued. “It’s not a broad-brush description of the U.S. military as it exists today.”
Army Gen. Mark Milley pushed back on claims from Republicans that the military is “woke” and as a result not prepared to take on modern threats, saying he’s “not even sure what that word truly means.”
Republican politicians and candidates have blasted the Pentagon for so-called woke policies, pointing to efforts to recruit a diverse group of military service members and be inclusive to transgender soldiers.
Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who announced he will retire at the end of this month, said the U.S. military is actually in better shape now than in years past.
And the thing that we also need to focus on is the modernization for the future character of war that I see fundamentally changing,” Milley said.
Ron DeSantis (R) argued that the military is being ordered around by a civilian “political ideology” and is “being infected by the woke mind virus.”
Those criticisms from Republicans have created “a real crisis” of confidence in military institutions, according to defense analysts.
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