I think I get your point, Foster. That sometimes that "mob mentality" is much closer to the surface than those "outside" really know.
I would never presume to tell the "line" how to approach their issues. I've studied just enough military history that there's far too much in that life I'm appallingly ignorant of.
It's more than that, though, since just being ignorant by itself has never stopped me from opining. But it's what I'm ignorant of. Its the shared mentality, bad and good both, that makes the your Corps a "corps," rather than just a bunch of strangers holding guns that happen to be in the same location at a given moment.
This is why I think so many of us are so off when we presume that just by changing the rules from outside, we can solve the problem.
Look, I think there is no biological or physical reason why gender or sex should make a difiference in combat. To my mind, combat success has some basic physical fitness requirements (I'd flunk) and some not-so-basic mental fitness requirements (I expect I'd flunk here, too). I do not claim to know what those requirements are, but my gut feeling -- and, if there's one thing I got, it's a damn big gut -- is that it has nothing to do with whether you have big dangly bits, small dangly bits, or no dangly bits at all (Zhang He was a eunuch, for exampl). And that it has nothing to do with who you want to use said dangly bits with.
And part of the reason my gut takes me that way is my perception that Foster feels similarly. (Right?)
But this issue isn't just a matter of deciding rational reason to exclude a lieutenant from serving just because he's gay or just because he goes public with his gayness (though, from what I've read and heard, there might be a reason because he's a lieutenant 🙂 ).
Communities are not wholly rational machines. They aren't fancy-schmancy Swiss clock mechanisms. They are a complex set of shared attitudes and beliefs. And every community has certain buttons that can give rise to "unthinking" mob-type actions. When Foster, who's been there and done that, and whose opinion on "what drives line Marines" I respect a great deal, says that this is one of those places, regardless of whether he'd like it otherwise or not, I listen.
That doesn't make the mob right, of course. But when those kinds of actions are involved, finding a solution takes much more than being right.
I'm not arguing for "don't ask, don't tell". And I'm not arguing against it. What I'm saying is if Foster is reading the "community of line-Marinedom correctly -- and I'm not going to claim I know enough to say he isn't -- is that getting the Marines to change doesn't have a simple political solution.
That change is going to have to figure out how to deal with, re-shape, change, that "mob mentality" part of the community.
It can be done. American mobs today don't have exactly the same trigger that French mobs had back in 1789. The mob mentality of a group of conscripts or peasants is going to be different than the mob mentality of a group of volunteers. The mob mentality that led to the original Tea Party is different than the mob mentality that led the Senate to pass the Patriot Act by a virtually unanimous vote. Mob mentalities evolve and change, just like any other historical process.
But to actually change what drives a mob -- I have no clue how to do that. Especially when it comes to a community I'm not and never have been a member of.
I might have some suggestions as how to change the mob within, say, the academic community. But change the mob within the Marines. No fucking clue.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)