I know because I've seen it — though from my experience, I've seen them get prepared by senior NCOs close to retirement who have been selected because they can “speak their minds” without worrying about career reprisals, or more rarely by mid-level officers, typically captains or majors.
Now that I'm up at the strategic level Army, we have dedicated people for this task of briefing and generally handling EO stuff. Seems like a GROSS waste of manpower to me, but the Army doesn't give a s**t what I think anyway. In my Infantry days, it was usually the most un-PC NCO we had who got tasked to be the company EO rep--it was practically a joke, but a joke that had to be taken seriously regardless, which made it even more head-shaking in its incongruity.
If people can accept the principle that the only colors which matter are “red, white, and blue,” I'm fine with that.
I wish that was so, but it isn't. PC has its hooks in the military (especially the Army) good and deep. It's all small groups of special interests and skin colors and (now) sexual orientations.
I once held to the idea that we were all green, but I've seen first-hand how that is NOT the case. Hell, I had a (black, female, VERY entitled) major in my ROTC program outright say that's not the case.
You haven't heard me disagreeing with your points, Future Snake Eater. In fairness, however, there have been groups of people in the Army “looking out” for each other for a very long time ... at least back to the 1950s and 1960s when my father was an NCO, and probably much earlier. I've read stories about how groups of Southerners at West Point made a point of treating the sons of Northern generals horribly during MacArthur's time as a cadet.
I've seen good people get frustrated by that kind of in-group self-protection stuff and get out, not primarily on the racial issue, but on protecting and promoting friends regardless of standards. I'm thinking right now of a West Pointer who would have made a great senior officer, but got so frustrated by nonsense that he got out after his commitment was up and now works for a defense contractor where his abilities are appreciated. Many more examples of his situation could be cited.
What I've heard over and over again, however, is that once military personnel get out, they find situations in corporate life which are as bad if not worse. The Army's problems with political correctness are arguably less serious than those of the corporate world.
96 posted on 4/6/2013 12:00:13 PM by EricT.: “The worst EO briefing I ever had to attend in the USNR was presented by a junior enlisted African immigrant with a thick accent that was very had to understand. It was standard multi-cultural tripe.”
Understood. I've seen some bad ones too.