Since 2015, the U.S. Navy has enacted several “one-time resets” that lower sailors’ physical standards. This time, the excuse for this “one-time reset” is the lockdowns. That seems like a thin cover for what’s really happening, which is that the U.S. Navy, which has become increasingly woke, seems determined to destroy its legacy as a proud, honorable institution that has been protecting American interests for 228 years.

The Navy Times reports on the decision to erase any physical fitness failures from sailors’ records:

Sailors with a physical fitness assessment failure on their record will receive a clean slate that will allow them to remain in the service, under a new Navy policy unveiled Thursday.

The shift is part of a Navy-wide campaign aimed at improving accessions, retention and attrition so the service can hit its end-strength goals for 2023, according to Rear Adm. James Waters III, director of military personnel, plans and policy.

“This is connected because it clearly affects attrition, right? It will reduce attrition if we do not separate sailors based on past PFA failures,” Waters told reporters Wednesday. “But it came about through all of the analysis for this campaign plan, through a recognition that we don’t want to punish sailors because gyms were closed during the pandemic. We don’t want to disadvantage sailors.”

The Navy contends that this is a “one-time reset” to counter sagging enlistment and reenlistment, but you and I know that’s not true. Back in 2017, the Navy also did a “one-time reset.”  Again, the problem was sagging enlistment. And in 2015, the Navy had another reset, changing its body fat requirements to help deal with an increasingly unfit American population.

Image: Navy recruits doing planks. U.S. Navy.

It’s certainly true that Americans are bigger and less healthy, especially since the lockdowns. However, the real problem is that people don’t want to be in America’s military, and who can blame them? It bugged out of Afghanistan in a humiliating and deadly way, and the top brass is obsessed with racism, sexism, homosexuality, and gender identity.

I’m inexorably reminded of going to the downtown San Francisco public library in the late 1980s to get a book I needed and finding myself trapped in one of several endless check-out lines. I soon saw that all three lines were staffed by obvious affirmative action hires who, regardless of their actual abilities, knew that they couldn’t lose their jobs. Knowing that fact, they were expending the bare minimum of energy without regard to speed or efficiency. Put another way, if you’re not committed to the job and you can get away with less, why do more?

One smart, fast person could have done all their work and done so much better, and all at a significant saving for San Francisco taxpayers. I mark that moment as one of the many little light bulbs that went off over my head, steering me inexorably toward conservativism.

The lesson for me was that affirmative action gods demand expensive sacrifices, and the people suffer. In the same way, our increasingly woke military is regularly signaling that America must be prepared to suffer in service to the woke gods. It will put increasing emphasis on people who would never have been considered fit to serve, whether physically or psychologically, aided by the fact that too many Americans, wedded to TikTok and junk food, become ever more incapable of physical activity.