The new guy had his fireside speech last week.....it was a dynamic VTC type thing where folks over at the HQ's were able to walk in and the rest of us were just supposed to watch it via our computers and this fancy VTC ability on each CPU (more on this later).
The general was going to introduce himself and had an audience of a couple hundred folks from the HQ's building.
So at some point, he puts up two slides....."Ronnie's Rules", which kind of tell his basic rules of life and how you ought to view him.
They kinda lead off with a God-bullet. In the military, over thirty years of association, it tends to come up once in a while, and nobody much says much of anything.
Well.....some two-dozen-odd folks in DISA apparently took some heartburn with this God-business (if you look at slide one and two.....it was the first rule, and the last rule....so folks kinda absorbed this (some in different fashions). So the two-dozen-odd folks ran off and got some anti-religion group involved, and right now want the three-star in a court-martial. This pretty much went from first gear to fourth gear in just a week's time. It got into the Huffington Post, the CNN news, and even the Washington Times.
The jest is.....you just shouldn't have government officials running around and telling you to get good with God or Jehovah or Muhammad or whatever. But the flip side of this is a bunch of folks have turned a 1-star event into some media circus and dumped on some military executive guy who probably intended this to be a positive feel-good speech of his.
There are three observations I'll make about this. First, you would have thought some Major or enlisted guy would have been there to look over his slides and just told him honestly to tone it down a notch or two. There's a way to say what he mentioned, without ever upsetting any folks of any type. It never hurts to have someone to just read over what you wrote....to make sure you don't really screw up too badly. Maybe it happened in this case.....but I kind of doubt it.
Second, on my list of four hundred things that a boss or director could do to upset me....this doesn't really come up near the top, middle or bottom....it'd be like number 846 on my list of stupid things the boss could say or do. In fact, I suspect the vast number of folks I work with.....probably didn't even think about the obvious mention of God or religion. These two-dozen folks? I'd like to think they had good intentions....but I'm kind of wondering where those intentions are and where the intentions lead to. I can think of a hundred negative qualities of leadership that I've seen on the past thirty years.....and I'd prefer not to make them popular or standard amongst the bosses I work for.
Third, and final....we in the military world live in a pretty threatening world. A military guy has a higher chance of dying than most civilians will ever realize. So military guys tend to think about their demise or ending. They'd like to have higher odds. They'd like to have someone up there....looking over their life and giving a five-percent higher chance of surviving. Military folks would like to finish up a one-year tour in Afghanistan, and kiss American soil when he arrives back, and silently says some prayer to someone for getting him back to Texas, Miami, or Red Bay, Bama, in one piece. I wouldn't be blaming the general for his comments....he probably has appreciated higher odds like most other military guys.
The comical side of this is that this fancy VTC capability that these jokers at the HQ's have bragged about for two years, and mandated us to be trained on.....barely works, if ever. I actually missed the entire VTC and the God comments....because I consider any attempt to run the VTC to be a waste of my time. Most folks I work with....kind of feel the same way. So I'd like to think that the chief reason why nobody in my organization joined up with the two dozen headquarters folks on the complaint....was because we didn't have a problem with the comment. The truth is....we probably skipped the VTC.
How this ends? Leon (our Pentagon chief) will ask someone to waste a hundred man-hours and review the episode. Lawyers will ask the general what he meant. Some social scientist will ask the complaint folks how they feel. Eventually, Leon will ask the general to put out an apology of sorts, and regret the comment for upsetting folks. Then Leon will close the episode. The general will do what a good executive has to do on occasion, and live with it. The rest of us, will utter a moment of thanks to the good Lord.....for ending this stupid episode, helping Leon find the right ending, and end the torment for a few souls. Life will go on....thankfully.
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