OPINION

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Turning on the military

The Republican revulsion to education in pursuit of greater understanding--an odd new right-wing theme this year--revved up last week.

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and thus officially the nation's highest-ranking military officer and top military adviser to the president, got challenged by Republicans at a congressional committee meeting on the military's tolerance of racially divisive subject matter.

The specific question was based on seeming conservative resentment of military studies of "whiteness" and "white rage." Apparently some conservatives think we shouldn't describe white people like that or at least shouldn't study why some white people act the furious way they act.

Meantime, hanging low over the proceeding was the current conservative obsession on "critical race theory," a right-wing code phrase for any intimation that America was founded with or on racism and that racism persists still--which is entirely true.

Milley went off a bit in response. He said he found it "offensive" that military leaders were being called "quote, 'woke,' or something else, because we're studying some theories that are out there."

Of "white rage," he said he wanted and needed to understand the thinking and motivation of persons who stormed into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to inflict damage and injury and contribute to loss of life in an apparent attempt to stymie a constitutional process.

The general seemed to harbor the notion that the Army might have a legitimate interest in domestic threats to the government requiring the services of at least the National Guard.

Milley reminded the inquiring congressman that West Point, beyond existing for Army officer training, is a higher education institution devoted to the advancement of critical thinking and critical-thinking skills.

"I've read Karl Marx. I've read Lenin," the general said. "That doesn't make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?"

Milley said it's important to study the nearly 100 years it took America to free slaves and the nearly 100 years after that to pass a civil rights law.

In some jurisdictions, that kind of thing used to be called history class. Or at least a good history class, probably at the collegiate level.

There was a time--about 2020 and before--when education was considered a positive thing; when critical thinking was a worthwhile objective; when America was believed to be made stronger by truth and introspection.

But fear of facts and an emphasis on the convenience of insular propaganda seem to have taken hold of the right wing in 2021. It's either that or Republican strategists see a chance to smear Democrats as anti-American, though it seems quite the other way around.

Some people have begun to contemplate race in America more thoroughly and critically--and honestly, even candidly. And some on the right seem to think domestic objectivity about America can be spun as a sin roughly equivalent to sitting through the Hog call at a Razorback game.

Republicans responded to Milley by decrying a "woke" military leadership as an affront to the brave enlisted men.

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a subject at least peripherally of a sex-trafficking investigation, tweeted that Milley's statements were so wrong-headed as to help explain why "we've fought considerably more wars than we've won."

There was a time when conservatives extolled our great military. Now Gaetz seems to be saying that we got out of Vietnam and are getting out of Afghanistan because our generals have become such sissies that they believe in education, or a least the kind that goes in for deep thinking.

There also was a time when conservatives advocated greater spending on the America military. In those days, liberals were the ones standing accused of being opposed to peace through strength by wanting to cut defense spending.

But then, on the evening after the general testified, a sneering prime-time host on right-wing Fox News--Laura Ingraham is the name--denounced Milley's ode to knowledge and said the proper response was to curb military spending.

Here is what she said: "We are sending our tax dollars to this military in an attempt to weed out so-called 'extremists,' which just means conservative evangelicals, as far as I can tell. We're paying for that? Why is Congress not saying, 'We're not going to give you a penny until all of this is eradicated from the military budget'? Nothing. That is my offer to you. Nothing. That's what I would say. I am totally outraged by him and his ridiculous response today."

I've never understood why some on the left want to "defund the police." That seems quite insane.

But at least this Fox personality tells us straight up why she wants to defund the military.

It's because a general came out for education.


John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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