Think Campus P.C. Is Out of Control? Look at the Military.

[LiberalArkie]

To put political correctness on college campuses in some actual perspective—terrible scourge, or media hysteria?—it helps to look at another institution that houses and trains a lot of angry and hormonal 18- to 24-year-olds: the U.S. military.

These institutions have more in common than you might think. Both have to make a lot of rules to anticipate the actions of thousands of teens gathered in a strange place with sudden access to freedom and money and booze. Both bring together kids from all over, some of whom haven’t met many people of different races and ethnicities. Their relationships are more intimate than most of us have with our coworkers, because they live together, and they also can’t be immediately fired for being jerks. This is a serious problem for the military, because it needs the teens to kill bad guys, not each other. And so it has procedures for dealing with conflicts over teen identity politics that can be far more intrusive than any university faculty training on microaggressions.

A fascinating example is a chart from a June 2000 Army handbook on the threat of hate groups in the ranks titled, “EXTREMIST TATTOO DECISION SUPPORT MATRIX.” The EXTREMIST TATTOO DECISION SUPPORT MATRIX is about a serious subject, but it is delightfully absurd. Basically all the caution and nervousness in, say, competing university memos about racist Halloween costumes is rendered in the stilted formality of military language and broken down into a multi-step process. The problem the MATRIX is meant to solve is what to do if your soldier appears to have a racist tattoo.

Snip

https://newrepublic.com/article/124303/think-campus-pc-control-look-military

[GP6971]

1. Hate groups within the military is a

problem acknowledged by the military higher ups. The problem with the military is does the "concern" of the higher ups filter down to the troop level? Usually not, in any depth. Company and battalion commanders have other things to worry about....things that affect their careers.

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. "Rehabilitation"? No? That's awesome. Go sit on the group W bench.

The flowchart does have the merit of having a logical process behind it.

[LiberalArkie]

3. It is about that time of year.

He stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go over and sit down
On that bench that says 'Group W'."

And I walked over to the bench there, and there's... Group W is where they
Put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committin'
Your special crime.

There was all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly-lookin' people on the bench there .
. . there was mother-rapers . . . father-stabbers . . . father-rapers!
FATHER-RAPERS sittin' right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean
And nasty and ugly and horrible and crime fightin' guys were sittin' there
On the bench, and the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one . . . the meanest
Father-raper of them all . . . was comin' over to me, and he was mean and
Ugly and nasty and horrible and all kinds of things, and he sat down next to
Me. He said, "Kid, what'd you get?"

I said, "I didn't get nothin'. I had to pay fifty dollars and pick up the
Garbage."