Pride goeth before a fall

Hello this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 10^th day of June in the year of our Lord 2022. On this Report, I will be talking about how the civilian leadership, appointed by the Biden Administration, and the upper command of the Marine Corps has accomplished something that no foreign enemy has been able to accomplish in over 240 years of combat. That accomplishment was to wear down the United States Marine Corps and force it to surrender to the forces of identity politics and to recognize publicly a month set aside to honor a certain group of people for their sexual preference alone.

Pride goeth before destruction … of esprit de corps

The title to this Report is from Proverbs 16:18.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

So, The Few the Proud the Marines forgets the basic mission and focuses on the celebration of Pride Week. What is the basic mission of the Marine Corps? Is it to achieve diversity of all ideologies within the ranks? I was taught the mission 50 years ago as follows: To close with and destroy the enemy and to inflict maximum attrition on him. It is a mission and a history based on blood and sacrifice. Officers are taught that the order of value is first the mission and its successful completion, second the men under your authority, third your own life. You quickly come to learn and accept that your life as a second lieutenant is pretty far down the order of importance.

I mention all that just to tell you that it is a beloved organization by the people who have served and most of us would not trade the experience for anything. When we were sent into battle, we knew that we had each other’s back and we depended on and relied on each other. In fact, setting aside all the patriotic stuff, we fought for each other. I assume Marines still do that and that is why division and divisive nonsense like Pride Month are such an insult to Marines.

The Marine Corps takes Pride – in insulting their own

We are 10 days into Pride Month and everywhere you look there are rainbow flags signifying support for the month set aside to honor the “LGBTQ Community.” I’m an old Marine from 50 years ago so seeing a notice that the Marine Corps had finally surrendered to the woke mob was a little perplexing to me. I know things change and culture changes in keeping with the law of thermodynamics, but the Marine Corps does not change, it lives forever as is.

The exact statement the Marine Corps released from headquarters Marine Corps in Washington D.C. announcing recognition of Pride Month was as follows:

Throughout June, the USMC takes Pride in recognizing and honoring the contributions of our LGBTQ service members. We remain committed to fostering an environment free from discrimination, and defend the values of treating all equally, with dignity and respect.

The image released with the statement was widely mocked on social media and was apparently taken from the 1987 film by Stanley Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket. The illustration was a Marine helmet with several rainbow-colored rifle bullets in the band with the words “Proud to Serve” written on the helmet. The difference between that image and the film image was that in the film version the helmet said, “born to kill.” If you saw that movie then you understand what those men portrayed as Marines endured and you might start to understand.

Things only a Marine can understand

Whether born that way or not, killing is every Marines’ job and the bottom line of his duty. I suppose they should go ahead and change the slogan used in TV recruiting commercials for years, The Few the Proud, the Marines. Now perhaps we should just say we are proud to support pride. Seriously though I don’t get this. A whole month set aside to honor certain people’s sexual preference, and the Marine Corps joining the festivities. The Marine Corps has always been above such civilian pandering.

I suppose if you served in the Marine Corps, you understand what I’m saying, and if you have not had that honor perhaps you don’t understand. The slightest deviation from the standards that had existed for so many years was met with outrage in my day. The idea that we would deviate from the uniform standard was bad enough, but to change the physical fitness standard to accommodate those who could not pass it would have been shocking. No less shocking than the pronouncement about Pride Month.

A tough nut to crack

The battle wasn’t easy because those who seek civilizational destruction knew that the Marine Corps would be a tough nut to crack. It started with President Clinton’s election and the pressure he was under to change the military into a social laboratory and accept homosexuals. He finally agreed to something he called “don’t ask don’t tell” which at the time seemed like a fair compromise. That is a far cry, however, from Pride Month. It has been evolving over the past 30 years a little at a time until the Biden Administration.

President Clinton famously said when he was Governor of Arkansas that he loathed the military. At least he was honest about how he felt which is more than I can say for Biden. I don’t know if its his advancing age, his obvious mental decline or whether he has always been this way, but he doesn’t respect or even care about the military. For example, his disgraceful retreat from Afghanistan leaving 13 dead Americans and many more left to the mercies of the Afghan Taliban. Number two his ignoring the 78^th anniversary of D-Day last Monday, just as he ignored the Battle of Midway 80^th anniversary and the Doolittle Raid 80^th anniversary when he spoke to the Naval Academy graduates on May 27^th.

Last-second acknowledgment of D-Day

I suppose I shouldn’t say he ignored D-Day because when his Twitter kept lighting up his staff at 8:45 PM EDT after the day was over in France, he issued a statement:

Today, we mark 78 years since D-Day and honor those who answered duty’s call on the beaches of Normandy. We must never forget their service and sacrifice in defense of freedom, and we must strive every day to live up to the ideals they fought to defend.

A very pitiful last second, oh wait a minute I forgot something, effort. There was so much more he could have said to honor those men some of whom are still living. He could visit a veterans’ home or veterans cemetery and give a brief talk and that way he could see the results that people like him have inflicted on so many men over the years. The Afghanistan withdrawal was the worst, because he was warned that the Afghan military would collapse and that if he closed Bagram before the evacuation there would be no air cover for those troops, but he did it anyway. During the ceremony of their bodies returning to Dover air base he was seen on video checking his watch several times.

Not a matter of pride at all

This is so infuriating and so vile and disgusting I can’t talk about it anymore, but I must, and I will if for no other reason than to honor my fellow Marines who have served and died over the centuries to preserve an ideal and a way of life that he obviously doesn’t appreciate or understand. But wait a minute folks, maybe I’m overreacting, maybe this isn’t as bad as I am making it sound. On second thought no, I’m not overreacting, and it is that bad. See folks, what the president doesn’t understand is why they did it and continue to do it whenever asked.

There are nebulous concepts like freedom and democracy but the real reason for most military sacrifice has to do with home and family and a way of life that is or was unique in all of mankind’s history on this earth. From the time the revolutionaries founded this government based on the concept of the rights of the individual over those of the collective, people have sought to destroy the idea in the minds of the people. That’s why politicians constantly talk about democracy and never say the word republic. They want the word to lose its meaning in our minds and they have been very successful in that.

We won’t believe them

After all the sacrifice of World War ll the government continued to call them to arms and they trusted their government to have the best of intentions. They never suspected for a minute that their government would consistently lie to them, but in Vietnam, and in its aftermath they found out. Robert McNamara, in a televised interview with Walter Cronkite, said it was all a mistake and we shouldn’t have made it. Never again will we believe the group of power seekers who constantly rattle the sabers, always ready to fight to the last drop of our blood.

Because they didn’t know what they were fooling with

Let me quote author Richard Fernandez for a moment to see if he can give a more eloquent answer than I have been able to give.

What a wonderful feeling to be in command. The elevator rose because the passenger entered it. The radio spoke because someone turned the knob. The cellphone works because the on switch was pressed. But change the problem a little, and because we have omitted all the understanding, the magical appliance may not work at all, and we have no way to fix it. This is perhaps the reason why our politicians, the modern sorcerers, with all the clanking machinery of The End of History at their disposal, are surprised when their confident plans to boost the economy, flatten the pandemic curve and replace nuclear plants with windmills unaccountably take off in unknown directions. The usual explanation is its not that Woke sorcery has stopped working; its bad luck. Or maybe it’s because they forgot they were standing on the shoulders of giants and carelessly discarded what came before.

Things to take pride in

Yes Mr. Fernandez, well said, they stand on the shoulders of giants, but sometimes today those giant shoulders are commanded by those who seek a level of destruction and extermination that is unknown in our history. In other words, its not a mistake or just a bad day at the office for them, its intentional. But for the Marines, current and old, living, and dead, we can take a common pride in our calling. We are united by shared pride in courage, honor, loyalty, and history and so we are still needed though often unappreciated. Knowledge is hard won, our understanding imperfect, our survival always in question, is never guaranteed.

We take pride in our old martial spirit and our willingness to make war on our enemies. War, today, has morphed from military to economic, but we failed to notice the change. The results, however, are the same. The defeated have lost their land, property, and freedom, but if they are good boys, the conquerors will allow them to continue their existence as minimum wage debt slaves.

No loyalty downward

The people who make the decisions to corrupt the Marine Corps with “Pride Month” have no loyalty to us. They do not love us or even respect us. Their loyalty is to the globalist ruling class—the superelite globalist corporations and not to us. Semper Fidelis is the motto of the Marine Corps and that means always faithful. Now I have to ask, faithful to what or to whom? Just as the medieval knight pledged faithfulness and loyalty to his liege lord, that lord earned it. Faith must be earned, not required. They have not earned our faithfulness, not by a long shot, but then, we don’t do it for them.

In conclusion folks, I don’t celebrate anything, whether a month or a day that seems stupid and a meaningless virtue signaling gesture. A month that celebrates a form of behavior and has nothing to do with any accomplishment is a stupid idea and is more in the nature of culture destroying than celebration and honor. It started out as Gay Pride Month, but so many different people wanted in on the deal that it had to be shortened to Pride Month. In my view if you are defined by your sexuality and have nothing else to recommend you then you might not be worthy of celebration, and perhaps you have no reason to have pride. Doesn’t anyone have any dignity anymore, any modesty? I guess not.

Not worthy

Finally, folks, those men who defeated Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and who fought so gallantly against the spread of Communism for so many years just to see their victory simply replaced with a new enemy. This country is no longer worthy of them.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle.

From castlereport.us, appears here by permission.