My niece and godchild, whom I dote on as her adoring auntie, is in the Air Force.

She was always the most splendid little one, the bouncing baby of the family, bashful, diminutive, sweet, and always good, and I will always see her that way.

After finishing high school as a state-ranked tennis champ, she surprised everyone by deciding to join the Air Force. No one saw that coming. She's now flying elite jets twice a week (Update: as a flight engineer) in service to our country.

She's 18.

So when I read this news about Tim Walz expressing contempt for his own National Guard troops based on their ages, I just about blanch with fury.

According to Streiff at RedState:

As Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and his police chief were frantically calling Governor Tim Walz in the summer of 2020 to save a besieged police precinct, Governor Tim Walz refused to send National Guard soldiers to help the beleaguered police officers. Later, in rationalizing and justifying his conscious decision to let riots metastasize, Walz said the Guard wasn't up to the task.

I don’t think the mayor knew what he was asking for. He wanted the National Guard, and what does that mean? I think the mayor said, 'I request the National Guard, whew, this is great. We’re going to have massively trained troops.' No, you’re going to have 19-year-olds who are cooks, in some cases.

He went on to say, "Putting a young troop with limited experience in the military with a loaded automatic weapon in the middle of a system with no one giving him direction -- they don’t have zip ties. They don’t have legal authority," 

That was on Wednesday, by the time Walz finally authorized the deployment of "19-year-old" cooks, the Minneapolis Third Precinct had been sacked, and the riots were widespread.

What? Did I just read that right? He views National Guard troops as "19-year-old cooks" instead of the trained professionals they are?

His contempt is unbelievable, and worse still, he expressed that contempt to justify his own failure to protect his city as maniacs were burning it down.

It's unbelievable how contemptuous he is of our stellar service members, for the most hideous of reasons, their youthful ages.

Young people have always been the backbone of our military and fact is, do absolutely amazing things to serve our country.

These teenagers fly jets, drive tanks, scale and rappell cliffs, swim in black water, haul gargantuan loads on marched marathons, steer aircraft carriers, rescue from helicopters, organize refugee lifts, serve meals to a thousand people, counter computer hackers, and above all, destroy our enemies.

It blows one's mind to think about what these teenagers can do.

In today's soggy Kardashian-ified youth culture, it's probably natural to think that the younger generation can achieve nothing, but that's a problem of this society failing to give meaningful missions to the young who excel in so many areas -- because they are young. The Olympic athletes we just saw performing amazing feats of physical excellence, after all, were almost all young, too.

The military is loaded with young people who don't have that aimless absence of a mission and Walz's low expectations about them.

As the great Ronald Reagan explained in 1985:

Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem.

Streiff at RedState noted that troops are only as good as their leaders, and their jobs done reflect on their leadership.

What's disgusting here is that Walz blamed the troops for his own lack of leadership during the Minneapolis riots. He delayed dispatch of the troops by claiming the job was too big for them, and when he finally got around to dispatching them to restore order, they performed their job perfectly.

So not only is Walz a man of stolen valor, in bugging out on his troops ahead of their dispatch to the war zone in Iraq, he's also a creep trying to steal the valor of those who really do have valor. Since he has none, he's now belittling the others.

How many Americans are going to hear those words and think about the 18-year-old or 19-year-old they know in the service? How many young people themselves, who are already battling society's low expectations of them are going to hear that and know exactly what Walz means?

Is Walz the most repulsive person in government? He is to me.

Image: Screen shot from Fox9 video, via YouTube