Every week there is some news story about General so-and-so stepping aside due to investigations. The Canadian Forces Reddit seems to be cheering this shit on, and saying that all of the senior people in the military need to be replaced. Anybody on here with time in have some perspective on what the fuck is going on?
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (58)
sorted by:
Nothing that doesn't happen anywhere else.
I've heard of rapes and sexual sexual harassment happening in the CAF (no organization is completely free of this) but as far as I can tell, most of these high profile cases are just instances of a senior officer having relationships with subordinates.
What people need to understand is that in the military, rank is social status. And everywhere in the world, women tend to go after men of the highest stations they can attain. Women are sexually attracted to high-status men. What that means in the military is the higher your rank, the more women in the ranks throw themselves at you. Just like anywhere else in the world.
What's changing is that now with the whole #metoo movement, men of high rank sleeping with lower ranking women is being viewed as a Harvey Weinstein scenario where before it wasn't.
I recall a few years back a General got in shit for being caught sleeping with one of his subordinates I think in Afghanistan. I remember the public sentiment at the time was "What's wrong with finding love in such a horrible place? Leave them alone!" I even got downvoted heavily in the r/Canada thread on the story for trying to explain the toxic effect of rank-disparate fraternization on the chain of command. I'm going to try and find that thread but I won't hold my breath.
That was before #metoo. Now identical scenarios are viewed as #metoo incidents. That's what's changed. There isn't some spike in sexual assault happening in the CAF. People are suddenly now being retroactively raked over the coals for sleeping with women they outranked at the time.
I agree. There is a retroactive witchhunt going on, applying today's woke standards to go after Sr pers for stuff they did 20 years ago. But those at the top supported both cancel culture and "zero tolerance" attitude. They kneeled for BLM and "encouraged" people to go to Pride parades wearing the uniform. They thought this would save them? Fools. They are reapoing what they sowed. In today's world, all you need to do is make allegations and the media and woke crow will do the rest, ruin a reputation based on allegations. It doesn't matter if the men are innocent. In one case you read an article and have to go to para 6 to find out the charge is that a man sent an email with "innuendos". The text of the email is not provided, so you can't judge by yourself. It's a fucking woke circus to distract from a rusting out CF, a corrupt government and a broken economy. It's show.
Where do you think all this is going?
Seems lile the CAF is headed towards a Commisariate style structure with "professionalism and conduct officers" and more secretive ways to rat out people for something they did decades ago. Meanwhile the canadianforces reddit is basically advocating mutiny/desertion with thinly veiled memes.
It's a pendulum. It'll swing back. Just ask anyone who was around for the last Liberal party "racism and sexism" witch-hunts in the 90's.
It will continue to get worse as long as the Liberals are in power though. Their last reign was particularly hard on the military. They used the witch hunts to turn the public against the military thereby manufacturing public consent for gutting the military's budget. They called it the "decade of darkness".
Also keep in mind, the Liberals hate the military. This goes back at least as far Trudeau senior. They see the military as a concentration of patriotic conservative white males with guns. They're the Liberal's natural enemy.
Throw in the fact that the forces stopped being a meritocracy a long, long, time ago and that most members are intensely dissatisfied with an increasingly out of touch senior leadership that's interested more in it's own advancement than the welfare of the troops and its no wonder the rank and file are cheering when senior officers get taken to town.
If we're going back 20 or 30 years to look for faults, there's a few senior leadership types I'd like to see brought to justice for causing deaths and injuries that were swept under the rug, but that's not gonna happen because "sex" is not in title of the offense.
Yup. I remember the days when it was a big deal to find out which coroiprals got selected for leadership training that year. It was highly competitive. Now they just hand it out like candy. I've also taught on leadership courses that had explicit "no-fail" policies. We were told that if a candidate failed a hard-assessed task, it was our fault as as instructors for "not mentoring them adequately". Why have tests at all if people can't fail them? They basically just removed all quality control from the leadership selection & training system. That was the moment I realized it was a sinking ship.