Leaderboard

The latest: "Air Force moves to cancel contracts for training on white privilege" "The Air Force is taking the first steps toward canceling any contracts for diversity and unconscious bias training that include segments on white privilege and other controversial subjects, as called for by the White House." Etc, etc, etc. https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2020/09/22/air-force-moves-to-cancel-contracts-for-training-on-white-privilege/

I'm missing the relevant data about military operations in there. But, more importantly, "diversity is our strength" has *nothing* to do with your search terms. That statement is, and always has been, a reference to diversity of immutable human characteristics. I'm all for diversity of thought being a force multiplier, and there's plenty of evidence in the social sciences for that...but that's not what people mean when the term is used.

Hey, in all math I know, B 5-2 = B 3. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

We should be focusing on the mission that UNITES us, not the race baiting academic trash that divides us. Diversity is not strength, unity is strength. And we’re strongest when diverse people have unity of purpose in defending our nation together, executing the mission, and crushing our enemies.

Russian PA image of the SU-35 that got the kill.

The entire point of The Enlightenment was that logic and reason could be used to transcend individual human experiences and thus individuals could have empathy for that which we did not experience ourselves. So, it doesn't require a person of another gender, another race, another [insert characteristic here] to be present for any other human to comprehend, understand, and empathize with their perspective and/or lived experiences. You don't actually have to feel childbirth to understand what it is like. You don't have to be a "POC" to understand the experience of what it must be like, whatever that is supposed to mean. If you want to argue that people of different *cultures* bring different perspectives to the table, that's perfectly valid...but to say that immutable characteristics are responsible for (or an avatar for) differences in thought and character is precisely the kind of "logic" that was used to undergird actual tribalism (or racism, if you'd rather frame it that way) for hundreds (thousands?) of years. No two humans are alike, regardless of immutable characteristics, so Enlightenment logic on the issue is a truism for all humans to be able to form social groups. People of the same immutable characteristics can have a widely divergent set of experiences, beliefs, and character, just as people of a wide variety of immutable characteristics can all believe in the same orthodoxy. Diversity of immutable characteristics is not an avatar for diversity of perspectives, simply put.

Well, I'm a staunch individualist...but that being said, there has never been any data or proof (outside of a cliche catch phrase that was foisted upon society in the 1990s in pursuit of an ideological narrative) that "diversity is our strength." I don't have a problem with the concept if it is actually true...but unfortunately we bypassed the "falsification test" part and went right to the "this is fact and we cannot question it" part.

This and what @MCO said about getting little out of it...I'd actually take it one step further and completely revamp PME and form a partnership with a 3rd party university (brick-and-morter school or online). Have some core classes to learn AF history/strategy planning applications, but the rest would be a list of elective classes under several umbrella topics...leadership, counseling, strategic writing, etc. The idea is to make the experience beneficial to the USAF and the Airman, vs the forced hazing and stat padding for the chosen few. Oh, and if forced to keep in-residence PME...you should only go once in your career. We currently lose 2+ years for HPO Patches for glorified admin. Not the best use of our talent.

The idiocy is not limited to just the AF, it has spread to the GCCs as well. I honestly feel bad for the planners on staff. Lord know how much time/effort they put in to putting these ops together to have PA fuvk away the messaging right off the bat.

What is the point? The actual goal? This is the curriculum (IDE/SDE) that makes a better O-5? O-6? Spending this time in lieu of investing it in your actual job/family/hobbies is really THAT beneficial? At least a masters degree helps on a civilian resume.....

To be fair, both of those statements/decisions were made in a pre e-commerce dominated western world, and before a lot of the political/economic changes in Asia of the last decade that are the ingredients of the current global flow of goods and money. The whole foresight vs hindsight thing, and all.

Good, the honest discussions with each other are worth so much more then having our Airmen browbeaten about how they're wrong, always been wrong and always will be wrong.

Got the TBNT from Hawaii last night, and Tucson just now. Congrats to those invited!

I like this idea. I would take a step further and open it up to anybody that wants to do it, versus only allowing the top 20%. I would also tie in an option for folks do a career intermission to go to an in-person school for a Master's degree. I think one of the big problems facing the military is that we don't bring in a lot of the tools/ideas that work in the civilian sector, and that's because most leaders haven't been exposed to them. I did the ACSC OLMP and I enjoyed it. I won a research award (i got my name on a plaque at Maxwell), but, because it wasn't in-residence, it literally gained me nothing career-wise. So why does the AF currently offer this program if promotion boards/senior leaders don't feel they are worth the effort they ask folks to put into them?

If you are going to make me do PME by correspondence, then give me time to actually do it instead of telling me to do it in my off time. With actual time and if you do it right you could even make it more beneficial for people that put some effort into studying and through possibly networking. As something to do in my spare time I want to put as little effort into it as possible, and get little out of it.

Memphis is hiring. Shoot me a PM with your email if you want the flyer.

The shortcomings of the current system of electing the President stem from “winner-take-all” laws that have been enacted by state legislatures in 48 states. These laws award all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate receiving the most popular votes in each state. Because of these state winner-take-all statutes, presidential candidates have no reason to pay attention to the issues of concern to voters in states where the statewide outcome is a foregone conclusion. In 2012 all of the 253 general-election campaign events were in just 12 states, and two-thirds were in just 4 states (Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and Iowa). Thirty-eight states were completely ignored. States rights, huh? Bring back a system that actually makes everyone’s votes matter.

They will be disappointed in the results

YGBSM.... This sounds like someone who needs to be outed. What sq?

There is a distinct difference between talking about experiences, how all people have biases, etc. That's just being a human and connecting to other humans. Then there's the Robin DiAngelo / Ibram Kendi anti-racist horse shit. Which is actually just racist nonsense looking to reverse the tables of history.

Then there was this...