The U.S. Navy played a critical role in the Pacific theatre in the Allies’ victory in World War II. A huge intelligence success was critical in positioning Naval dive bombers to sink three Japanese aircraft carriers – the bulk of force for the Japanese Navy – and clear the path for victory on the strategically critical island of Midway.
Americans of a certain age will never forget images of U.S. soldiers running out of the hulls of Higgins boats and onto the coastline of France on D-Day.
Given the rising threat of China invading Taiwan, the Navy could be called on to save freedom with a big fight in the Pacific again.
But will the Navy be ready? And what will the modern-day sailor look like?
Possibly very different.
The face of a recent recruiting campaign for the Navy was Yeoman 2nd Class Joshua Kelley. His stage name – the one he uses in drag performances sanctioned and encouraged by the Navy – is "Harpy Daniels."
The Navy’s version of Dylan Mulvaney
"[It's absurd] that anyone would say, 'You know what? We're having difficulty recruiting people to the Navy. I got a bright idea. Let's hire a drag queen. That's going to sure get people who want to sign up Go Navy.'" "To have such an absurd thing asserted, and to have people believe that that could actually help recruitment efforts, is an exercise in abject lunacy – or intentional subterfuge. I do believe that there are some people who are nefarious in their intention, and they do want to see a weakened America." Abraham Hamilton III |
The Navy enlisted one of its own to take part in a pilot program it says was aimed at reaching wider audiences through social media.
The program ran from October 2022 to March 2023. The Navy is now evaluating the program to see what form it will take in the future, a spokesperson told The Daily Caller.
Kelley was not compensated beyond his regular Navy pay, according to the Department of Defense.
In an interview on American Family Radio, conservative commentator Todd Starnes compared Kelley's role with the Navy to Dylan Mulvaney, the fake female who says he is a woman. Mulvaney's paid Bud Light endorsement for Anheuser Busch has created public backlash, plummeting beer sales and a marketing headache.
But the Navy is facing a much worse problem than beer sales: Tabletop exercises imagining war with China in the Taiwan Straits have ended with nightmare scenarios, AFN has reported. In more than one scenario, the U.S. Navy loses two aircraft carriers, and the 10,000 sailors on them, to the People's Liberation Army.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy shamelessly lectured sailors about proper pronoun usage in a 2022 video.
"We are going to lose a major war," Jesse Kelly, a TV show host on The First, routinely warns his audience when the public learns about the newest Pentagon-approved wokeness.
Starnes, who uses his own radio show to shame the Far Left, said he was "shocked" to learn the Navy believed a drag queen will improve its recruitment numbers.
"This ties into the Navy's new push for diversity, equity, and inclusion," Starnes said on American Family Radio Wednesday. "The Navy's tip of the spear seems to include pronoun confused, non-binary pangender sailors, some of whom might possibly identify as a blowfish. I do not know.”
Every branch of the U.S. military struggled to gain new recruits in 2022 leading one retired general to question the “sustainability” of an all-volunteer military.
In the Navy, the 2022 fiscal year ended with missed recruitment targets for reserve personnel and for active duty officers, according to a Newsweek article about Kelley.
Last year, the number of eligible Americans who showed interest in military service was its lowest in 15 years, NBC News reported.
In a story about Kelley published at the MilitaryTimes.com, it quoted Kelley from a news release that no longer appears at the Navy’s official website.
“I never knew a man could embrace his femininity in a creative and entertaining way like that, and I knew it’s what I wanted to do," the sailor said. "Doing drag allows me to embrace my feminine side and allows me to bring my diversity and creativity out."
He went on to call it an "absolute thrill" to hear people cheer and laugh for him during a drag performance.
Kelley joined the Navy in 2016 and began performing on ships in 2017.
Happy to have Harpy on board
“I’ve been accepted everywhere I go,” he said in an interview with Navy Times. “Those outside my command don’t know I’m the drag queen who slayed on the ship. To most sailors, I’m just YN2 Kelley. Once they find out I’m Harpy Daniels, I’m praised as an inspiration and see so much joy in their reactions for simply being who I am.”
Some question whether the emphasis on diversity and inclusion in the military will affect its readiness.
Last year, a long list of key defense officials spanning multiple presidential administrations co-signed a statement insisting it will not.
Many aren’t as certain.
“Instead of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the Navy needs to be concerned about killing and blowing up the enemy. That's their number one job and throw in the blockade every now and again, Starnes told show host Jenna Ellis. “When you look back over the Obama administration years and now the Biden administration. There have been efforts to really turn the Pentagon and turn our military into a social engineering Petri dish.”
Starnes says the diversity push has links to Critical Race Theory.
“Maybe 12 or 13 years ago a very concerned member of the military actually sent me the training manual, and it was in the early days, and they didn't call it Critical Race Theory, but the whole point of this manual was to literally blame white people for every problem in the world. This is sort of just a sample of the kind of radical woke training that has been in the military for a very long time now,” he said.
A country 'conditioned to surrender'
Starnes says there are bipartisan concerns in play here, not concerns that leaders want to respect rights and beliefs of those in their charge, within reason, but for general readiness to engage an enemy.
“This is incredibly dangerous. Ask any Republican lawmaker, and maybe even some Democrats would quietly admit this, I think they would tell you to the person that we are not prepared to fight a war because of all the woke training,” Starnes said.
Starnes believes the weakening of the military is intentional and is part of a larger effort to move America to Socialism.
He addressed this in his 2019 Book, “Culture Jihad: How to Stop the Left from Killing a Nation.”
“We have been conditioned to surrender our civil liberties in a time of crisis. We have even been conditioned to shut down our church houses to curtail our religious freedom in this country. Then you look at what's happening with the military and the softening of our military,” Starnes said.
“When we do lose a conflict, what happens?” he asked. “What do we become as a nation? When you put all of that together it certainly looks as though we are being conditioned to embrace Socialism.”
5/4/2023 - Sidebar added
