Not sexist....just more honest than you.

Not sexist....just more honest than you.

Well……since I have started posting on Blogger, or Blogspot, or Blognation, or whatever the Google tool is called, and directing readers to it through FB linkages, I get a mixed bag of comments; some comment directly to the BLOG (thank you), some comment on FB (which will certainly land me in a liberal run FB exile at some point), and some through email and PM’s.  I am cool with all of it, HOWEVER, some things get hidden in these multiple venues.

And…..I know that this might shock you, but after my piece on the fallen bridge in Florida……I have been accused……breathe deeply now….of being a sexist.

Shocking, I know.  But dead wrong.  Let me put something in perspective for you.  I am 56 years old.  I am 6’2” and weigh about 205lbs (yes, I would like to trim some cheesecake from the belt line……but that would require me to stop eating cheesecake…..so you see the dilemma).  If Toby Keith was right and he ain’t as good as he once was, I am no longer as good as I THOUGHT I was.  But the other day I was picking my wife up some non-recognizable chai something or other from a STARBUCKS located in our supermarket.  There were two young (er) female city police officers in there getting their, probably much needed, jolt of caffeine.  Both of these officers looked to weigh about a buck ten, WITH vest, gun belt, gun, tazer, radio, cuffs and assorted gear.  By my eyeballing I weighed about what the two of them in full kit weighed TOGETHER.  And with that gear, even in my broken down state, I am PRETTY sure I could out run them.  Maybe not the tazer and certainly not the Glock, but on foot….probably.

Now, I am a law abiding citizen….for the most part, and if stopped but one of these officers for any reason, I am going to be cooperative; I have nothing to hide and they have a job to do.  BUT THAT IS ME, and we have a number of confinement facilities here with burgeoning populations that would indicate that I am NOT absolutely in the main stream.  What I mean to say is that, at my age, size, weight and nominal speed, if I did NOT want to cooperate with one of these young officers, there is probably not a whole lot they could do without back up, without shooting me with something, and putting themselves at risk.

And I am sure that they are fine young people, I will not argue that they didn’t excel at the admission test, or at least do well, and the same for their performance at the academy.  I am not even going to suggest that the standards for them and for their male counterpart applicants were not the same.  What I AM going to suggest is that one of these officers, on patrol, alone, answering a call on someone my size, possibly armed (and that is a sure bet for me….I was when I was in the store with them), possibly under the influence of something mind altering (no danger with me, but you get my point)……is no match for what is on the other side of the door when they arrive.

Not me, I am a law abiding citizen, I am a fan of law enforcement at the local, person to person level….I like them, and like I said, I am cooperative.

Because I want to be.  No law enforcement officer, regardless of race, color or sex is going to be endangered by me…that is just the kinda guy I am.  But I am also not “everyman” of stage history…and I am certainly not everyman in this town.

We set ourselves up for failure when we let artificial requirements drive selection of our people for jobs.  How many of our police officers must be women, that need men to help them subdue a suspect before we get one killed just because?

A few years ago, in Saint Louis, a black female who had NEVER passed a basic physical fitness test to be a fire fighter, won a court case allowing her to be a firefighter.  Want to guess why?  Let’s just say that I hope you are near the door on the ground floor if your Saint Louis abode bursts into flames and she answers the call.

Also in Saint Louis, at about the same time, a handful of black fire fighters SUED the city because they were not selected for Chief of their house.  All of them had failed the selection test, and a few had not even taken it.  Guess what?  Yep.

Two nights ago I encountered one of our local confinement facility correction officers in Wal Mart (a real Wal Mart….not the people of Wal Mart web page), who was an absolute comic book character.  She was a full foot shorter than me and had me by about 75lbs.  Her ankles were the size of my thighs (keep in mind that I am not a skeleton by any stretch), and her boots would barely lace.  Her uniform looked like she had pulled it straight from the laundry hamper…but at least her baby was asleep and quiet in the buggy.  And I thought “what POSSIBLE deterrent is this CO to anyone?  An inmate outside of the bars on the hoof around this woman is as good as a free man.  I literally could not envision a role she could play as a CO given her size and comportment.

Sexist?  More like realist.

We are going to get ourselves killed.  And I am not speaking in any progressive double speak.  This reverence for diversity at all costs is one day going to cause 110 lb police officers to take an ass beating at the hands of a real criminal that does not care about diversity……if it is only an ass beating.  Some criminal is going to take it on the run as soon as he realizes that one of natures largest, slowest mammals is all that stands between him and his next crime spree.  A family is going to die in a house fire because a fire fighter doesn’t have the body strength to drag them to safety.  We will be diverse as shit, but there will be far less of us to celebrate it.

And after we kill each other through diversity and the complete inability to speak the truth about these things out loud, we will do the same thing to our society and our nation…..and we have an early lead on that with our media and “activists” among us now.  The only logical conclusion to this trend is a bad one.

None of this may prove to you that I am not a sexist, and I will be frank, the way the term is used along with racist and feminist, I don’t have a firm grasp of the approved definition, other than the idea of it pisses progs off to no end, and I am fine with that.  And I know that this is long, but let me offer this for addition to my bonafides.  When I was a fairly new major, I had responsibility for a portion of the aviation officer basic course at Fort Rucker, AL.  After every lieutenant finished flight school, they came to me and my instructors for six weeks and we force fed them six weeks of field training, tactics and physical torture.  One evening I received a phone call in my quarters from a lieutenant colonel, battalion commander at Fort Hood, TX.  He purported to be calling on behalf of a female lieutenant in his battalion that was being told by big Army that she would not make it for selection to captain because of the final report that I had given to her while in school.  He cajoled me and tried to flank me and I finally cut him off and said that I would not write a letter to the board saying I was wrong, but that I WOULD write a letter saying that I do believe, if confronted with evidence contrary to the performance I had witnessed, that the lieutenant could have developed into a competent officer under the proper leadership and mentorship.  The lieutenant colonel put the brakes on immediately and said “I see what is happening here.”  When I allowed as how it was good that one of us did, he said “You probably don’t know that I am a graduate of DEOMI”  I told him I was unfamiliar with the acronym and he told me “The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute.  I am a black officer.”  I told him that I would have never guessed that there was a DEOMI and that when he identified himself as an LTC battalion commander, his skin color never occurred to me.  He then said that he could tell that I had rated the lieutenant so lowly because she was a woman.  My reply was “Sir, I gave her that rating because she performed like shit.  I have been at this more than a day or two, and if it helps you sleep at night, my highest ranked officer in the last 12 months was also a woman who is doing quite well in the Army at the moment.  And I have changed my mind about that letter”.  He then said that he would discuss this with my battalion commander, and he never did (my boss said that if the other man was going to call him about the issue, he would have called him first).

My point?  I know what I am doing on these issues, and I know what is right in these issues.

And diversity for the sake of saying you have enough women, blacks, black women, or Serengeti gazelles, will never be right in any issue if it puts people at risk.

And that is not sexist.