A couple of days ago, the nation’s Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, were testifying before the House Armed Services Committee. Some Republicans challenged them, primarily Floridians Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz, on the US military’s sudden embrace of Critical Race Theory…here, I’m using CRT as a shorthand for all the racist Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity garbage being sold for a very nice price to the military, to federal agencies, and to private corporations by various grifters who’ve discovered that you can never underestimate the desire of white liberals to abase themselves in public—so long as you don’t threaten their jobs or perquisites.

I covered the exchange yesterday in a post titled SecDef Austin and JCS Chairman Milley Show They Are Completely Devoted to Critical Race Theory at the Expense of Combat Effectiveness.

In that hearing, Milley, in particular, made it clear that he thought America could only be understood through the lens of CRT and books like How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram Henry Rogers…sorry…I mean Ibram X. Kendi. He also opined that reading books like that would, he felt, enable him to understand what happened on January 6. In the process, he produced the most repeatable quote ever uttered by any CJCS: “I want to understand white rage. And I’m white.”

White rage, a phrase that basically no one had ever heard of, has suddenly entered the vernacular and is being popularized by the media; see my colleague Nick Arama’s post ‘White Rage’ Is All the Rage as CNN Host Shows the Memo Has Gone Out.

Last night, Tucker Carlson took notice of Milley’s testimony in his monologue. The monologue is great and really on target, and I’d recommend you take the time to watch the whole thing. It is cued up to where Carlson starts being mean to Milley.

Transcript

Mark Milley is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He didn’t get the job because he’s brilliant, or brave, or because the people who know him respect him. He isn’t and they definitely don’t. Milley got the job because he’s obsequious. He knows who to suck up to, and he’s happy to do it. Feed him a script and he’ll read it. Yesterday, the man in charge of the nation’s weapons, explaining that he’s working to understand a concept called “White rage:”

MILLEY: I do think it’s important, actually, for those of us in uniform to be open-minded and be widely read. And it is important that we train and we understand. I want to understand White rage, and I’m white, I want to understand it. So what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America? What caused that? I want to find that out, I want to maintain an open mind here and I do want to analyze it. It’s important that we understand that because our soldiers, airmen, marines, and guardians come from the American people, so it is important that the leaders now and in the future do understand it.

It’s hard to believe that man wears a uniform. He’s that unimpressive. Notice he never defined White rage, and we should know what it is. What is White rage? Well, like drapetomania, it’s one of those diseases that only affect people with certain melanin levels. It’s a race-specific illness. That’s what Mark Milley has learned from reading about it. That’s why he’s making his soldiers read about it too. They need to know.

MILLEY: I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin. That doesn’t make me a communist. So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend? And I personally find it offensive that we are accusing the United States military, our general officers, our commissioned, our noncommissioned officers, of being “woke.”

He’s not just a pig, he’s stupid. So Mark Milley reads Mao to understand Maoism, he reads communists to understand communism. But, interestingly, he doesn’t read white supremacists to understand white supremacy. Why not? Go to the source. He’d be fired for that instantly, and that’s the one thing he doesn’t want. So he reads about White rage as if it’s totally real. It’s a medical condition.

I’m assuming the “pig” part refers to Milley’s taking on the classic, rotund shape of woke military officers first made popular by Alexander Vindman during one of the Trump impeachments…I forget which one.

Welp, you would have thought the world had ended. People who didn’t know Milley from Milli Vanilli sprang to his defense. People who loathed the military under Trump were suddenly major fans of the military. Those who decried the incompetence of our general officer corps were moved to defend Milley’s intelligence…though not his physique–I’m expecting Jimmy Dean or Bob Jones to do that. One of the big names that leaped into the fray was retired General Barry McCaffrey, Bill Clinton’s “Drug Czar.”

A dangerous period in American governance. Terrible to see our military leadership viciously and falsely attacked for shallow partisan purpose. We need to be grateful for the dedication and commitment to the Constitution of our senior military leadership. https://t.co/lL6P276YV5

— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) June 25, 2021

Let this sink in. Tucker Carlson on live Fox TV called Gen Mark Milley the Chairman of the JCS “Stupid” and a “Pig”. Why hasn’t he been terminated? Who talks like this about a public official? Mark Milley …Princeton and Colombia. Years in combat.

— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) June 25, 2021

I have several different thoughts here.

The interview with Brian Williams on MSNBC is pretty amazing, as we have Williams and McCaffrey engaging in a non-ironic discussion about Milley’s integrity. It is difficult to parody this.

McCaffrey was pretty open about his loathing of President Trump, so his attack on Fox News and Tucker Carlson is not exactly a shock. As this tweet shows, McCaffrey himself is not opposed to lies, slander, and character assassination when it serves his political goals.

Reluctantly I have concluded that President Trump is a serious threat to US national security. He is refusing to protect vital US interests from active Russian attacks. It is apparent that he is for some unknown reason under the sway of Mr Putin.

— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) March 16, 2018

Let this sink in pic.twitter.com/sIQGfeWJlv

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 25, 2021

So, a question for @mccaffreyr3 —

Given your announced standard for termination do we expect your resignation from your consulting firm, and stepping down from being an NBC News analyst, or do we await your firing? pic.twitter.com/uiDixnBTgG

— Brad Slager – In Trouble More Than Pres. Biden (@MartiniShark) June 26, 2021

I think the Williams interview reveals McCaffrey to be something of a fraud. I’d bet serious money that McCaffrey never complained about being stationed at Fort Bragg or any other place because of the name, and he’s only jumping on that issue because he thinks he can be ‘woke’ and get attention.

Carlson’s monologue was powerful as it was and did not need the “pig” and “stupid” comment (I note that Fox News has excised those words from the official transcript). Those two words have become the focal point of the commentary on that particular segment of Carlson’s show, and that is unfortunate.

I wish that Carlson had devoted more time to Milley’s rather obvious lie at the hearing. He claims he read Mao, etc., to understand communism. Then he tries some weak, verbal kung fu to claim that reading CRT bullsh** is necessary to understand “white rage.”

That makes no sense. If he were really interested in understanding the motivations of the folks demonstrating the Capitol on January 6, he could have read something like J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. If he wanted to understand the root cause of inequality, any number of books by Thomas Sowell would have helped him out. If Milley really believes in this “white supremacy” nonsense spread by Kendi and others, maybe he should have added The Turner Diaries to the reading list. What he did was the equivalent of having David Duke describe the problems in Black America.

McCaffrey’s insistence that the military hierarchy can be allowed to engage in the nation’s political scrum–and that is exactly what the injection of CRT-based racism into the US military is–and be immune from the fallout is insane. His demand that Carlson be fired for insulting a buddy of McCaffrey’s is just childish and shows McCaffrey does not really understand that he doesn’t live in a country where people in power are immune from criticism, ridicule and even insults.

Instead of reading about white rage, I think he and Milley should start a book club to discuss the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and civil liberties. That might be useful, and it would definitely be an education for both of them.

People are criticizing this loser for this awful take, but make sure you learn from it. These people are constantly telling you that you deserve terrible things because you disagree with them. They mean it.

And these are the people in power. Remember that. https://t.co/IVhQMAZ2F8

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) June 25, 2021