As Pete Hegseth noted in his new book, “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” West Point issued a five-year plan, spanning the years 2020 to 2025, “that focused on ‘inclusivity’ as equal in importance as marksmanship under fire.”

That bodes well for our future.

Merit is overrated! We don’t really care if our soldiers can function under pressure or hit the broad side of a barn when shooting, as long as they help to diversify the force.

Gotta stay laser-focused on what matters, right?

“Well, applicant A is better under pressure, and applicant B is a much better shot, but applicant C is a pagan pansexual Pacific Islander! We need that! Applicant C it is!”

Maybe someday the United States will return to being a serious country. But I doubt it. And it is rapidly running out of time. (Calling Donald Trump! And Pete Hegseth.)

Let’s apply the same radical agenda to, say, the NBA:

“Hey, coach, how come Goldstein made the team? I mean, he’s kinda slow and he can’t dunk.”

“Well, Johnson, to comply with our new DEI policy, we needed a non-binary Jewish dwarf to round out the squad. And Goldstein’s pronouns are ‘they/them.’ Don’t forget it!”

Think that little vignette sounds crazy? Similar policies are in place in many corporations, academic institutions … and, of course, the United States military. In the still fanciful NBA illustration, a basketball game could be lost. In the case of the military, lives will be lost.

We’ve apparently already lost our minds.

Image: Gage Skidmore, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed