During a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee, several enlisted personnel members of the U.S. military testified that the House Republican mindset that “woke” initiatives was hurting recruitment, was not founded.
During the hearing, Florida Rep. Cory Mills, a former Army sergeant, asserted his belief that the ”woke ideology” the military was now supportive of, and has been promoting, was impacting recruitment.
“I’m curious as to, when I talk to people and say, ‘Well, why aren’t you looking to join the military?’ A lot of them say, ‘Well, the military has been over-politicized. Well, the military has gone woke.’ … We’re saying that this new focus, this new shift, this new kind of woke ideology is not impacting recruitment and not impacting our readiness and lethality? I have a hard time believing that,” said Mills.
Mills also questioned the military’s lowering of standards to allow enlisted personnel to use pronouns.
On Dec 20, 2022, the U.S. Air Force became the first military department to allow the use of pronouns in signature blocks of emails, letters, and papers.
A week later, at one of his congressional town hall meetings, Rep. Mills mocked the “woke” military.
A sarcastic Mills stated.” I will tell you with absolute confidence, the United States of America can out pronoun every one of our adversaries, I promise you we can he/him, she /her better than anyone else. I know how scared China and Russia is about that. It’s laughable.”
Mills’ criticism of the new socially-driven U.S. military and how recruitment has dropped as a result of its newly-found ‘wokeness,” appears to be justified.
In February, the U.S. Army reported that its recruitment has fallen off by 15,000 soldiers.
