Shifts in Military Culture: Insights from Lt General Rod Bishop

Is the U.S. military compromising its unity and readiness for the sake of progressive ideologies? Join STARRS & Stripes host Commander Al Palmer, USN ret, as he talks with Lt General Rod Bishop, USAF ret, about the controversial inclusion of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) initiatives within our armed forces. They tackle head-on the impacts these policies have on military cohesion and meritocracy, illustrated by examples like the production of a Black Lives Matter video at the Air Force Academy. General Bishop shares his candid thoughts on how these top-down ideologies may be eroding the foundational principles of the military.

Their conversation takes a deep dive into the heart of military readiness and the role of DEI policies in recruitment and retention challenges. Drawing insights from the Heritage Foundation and the work of Congressman Waltz, they explore the critical issues facing our military today and the pressing need to refocus on unity and operational effectiveness. Organizations like STARRS are essential in educating both the public and policymakers on these issues, advocating for a return to the core mission of military preparedness and deterrence. The stakes are high, and the declining ability to engage in major conflicts is a matter of national security.

They also venture into how progressive shifts in society, especially in Hollywood and education, are influencing military culture. From changes in school curricula affecting civics and patriotism to the nuanced challenges of transgender inclusion in the military, Al and Rod cover it all. Reflecting on the progress made in racial integration, they highlight both the camaraderie of past decades and the ongoing work needed to maintain unity. Through the efforts of organizations like STARRS, they stress the importance of focusing on what unites us as Americans, while addressing these complex and multifaceted issues. 

Join us for an episode that promises to challenge your perspectives and deepen your understanding of today's military landscape.

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For more information about STARRS, go to our website: https://starrs.us which monitors and exposes the CRT/DEI/Woke agenda in the Dept. of Defense and advocates a return to Merit, Equality and Integrity in the military.

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Transcript

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 0:13

Well, hello America. This is Commander Al Punited, Navy retired. I'm your host here at Stars and Stripes and we're here to tell you a bit about the problems and the solutions we see for reserving and preserving our military in the United States.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 0:33

And I'm happy here to be with you today to welcome our Schairman of the board, lieutenant General Rod Bishop. General Bishop is an illustrious command pilot from the United States Air Force and he's had an amazing amount of experience in command across Europe and South Africa portions of the world. So, rod, welcome sir. It's good to have you with us today.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 1:00

Al, I'm delighted to be here with you. Thank you for the invitation, Al.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 1:04

I'm delighted to be here with you. Thank you for the invitation. So one of the folks I flew F-4s with in the Air Force when I was in the Air Force that's a whole other story, but one of the guys I flew with was Ron Olds, who I think is your neighbor. Ron was in the class, I think, of 69. And he sort of got me interested in that because I was. We were doing a reunion here in san san antonio. Ron called me up one day and he said hey, something's going on now with the coaches. They're putting out a film and narratives about race. And he said it's just not right. And he was hearing back from the cadets too about that. And I think that was probably about the time that that started with you too, was it not?

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 1:48

Yes, sir, yeah, on and I met each other in 2011 when he retired, and we've been good friends, avid Dolphin football fans, et cetera. And it was actually Dr Scott, who I believe you've already done a podcast with, who alerted me to coaches that you just mentioned producing and putting together a video that essentially chanted Black Lives Matter seven times in a three minute video that I just had a hard time believing that that would be allowed to be posted on an official Air Force Academy website. Uh, and if anyone had the Academy had done their due diligence and research and known what Black Lives Matter was about, had looked at the Black Lives Matter website before they morphed it and you know it, they were against the Western nuclear family, they announced that they were against capitalism, et cetera, et cetera. Why we would want to use their slogan. That was really you know falsely, shall we say formed based on.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 3:00

I love what a retired four star told me. He said well, because he knew nothing about Black Lives Matter. But he was brought into the fray, so to speak, when this bunch of wayward grads, ie us, were creating a stir about it to try to mediate. They could tamp us down, and so we spent two or three weeks educating him and his conclusion was yeah, boy, it seems like black lives matter has been taken a page out of Sasololinsky's handbook for radicals, rules for radicals and bamboozled half of America. He said yes, sir, you got it. That's exactly what happened so.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 3:42

So how? But how does that happen in an institution? The military is different. I mean, we're pretty well structured and, as most people don't know on the outside, there is a chain of command in almost everything in the military. How did that get outside and make an end? Run around the chain of command, do you think?

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 4:02

Well, in this particular case, particular case, al, I think it came from the top down. I mean, we uh, you know we've given this a lot of thought how did this creep into our military? And unfortunately, lately it's been more than creeping. I like what matt loehmeyer wrote in his book I think it may have come originally from Hemingway where he says you know, this happened gradually. Then all of a sudden, suddenly, and here we were.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 4:30

So we had political ideologues in the White House that you know were pushing this critical race theory. Notice how critical race theory has disappeared from the vernacular. Now it's diversity, equity, inclusion because those are nicer sounding words in my mind yep. Or, as we've said in stars the last four years, it's the practice of critical race Theory. So, um, we know if you've and we watched when the Secretary of the Air Force testifies that he's a big proponent and thinks it's the greatest thing to come along since sliced bread. I'm putting the little words in his mouth there, but that's, I think, how he feels about it.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 5:11

And you know the the superintendent I mean, when Ron alerted me to that Gazette article and we saw the video the superintendent who is now a retired three-star. When he was a colonel. He worked for me over in Europe and I put him in my only one-star maker slot that I had, which was working directly for SACEUR, as one of the executive officers, and we chatted about how would you allow this to happen? And he's telling me oh, you don't understand. You don't understand. And of course it was, you know, colored by what was happening in our country right in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 5:55

And a lot of people, you know were just taken back by how such a death could occur in the way it did without anybody stepping in. And, of course, those that want to create discord use that to their great advantage during the following few months.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 6:16

Well, and so too the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General CQ Brown, when he was the PACAF commander, developed his own version of DEI that ended up being the command direction, and I think that's still pretty much something he's championing, because he's big on diversity and having his own staff become diverse, which kind of puts a quota into it, rather than meritocracyocracy, where you get the best guys, the best public affairs officer, the best cop on the beat, so to speak, and putting those people in rather than just doing a diverse thing.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 6:59

Yeah, that's exactly right, al. You know, I just got off a Zoom which began with General Mookie Walker, who's a black retired Air Force general officer, telling us about being deposed for the Students for Fairness and Admissions lawsuit against, in his case, annapolis, although SFFA has lawsuits against both Annapolis and West Point and what he passed on to us soon to be the Air Force Academy as well. To put that in context for our viewers, in the aftermath of the SFFA versus Harvard and UNC Supreme Court case, I think, as most Americans realize, the Supreme Court declared that discriminating in college admissions is illegal, it's against their constitution. But they did not have the service academies and so SFFA now is going to address the service academies.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 8:07

It's amazing to me that dod, you know, has said that it's a national security imperative. When you know, you look at the numbers, the academies provide a pretty small amount of the leadership. You know the officer corps that enters in any of the services. But they've made that, you know, a line in the sand that they want to stand firm on that. In essence, they're saying we have to discriminate because it's a national security imperative. And if you get real specific on it, what DOD is wanting is the percentage of the officer corps to match the percentage of the enlisted force in each one of the services, and I would hope that the great majority of Americans would. If they understood that, would just step back and say, well, wait a. You know, I want the best possible leaders that we can have in our military to lead our men and women into battle. I mean, I don't know if you watched any of the olympics, but there isn't any picking of race in the olympics. We picked the best exactly, exactly right sports.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 9:25

So why, in the a matter of national security and life and death, would we not want the best? And unfortunately we have overwhelming evidence that there is, you know, pretty significant discrimination going on. I mean at west point, where we have probably the best data, because we have some people who are in the know there and liaison officers who know how the admissions work can outright show us where we're picking unqualified minorities to go into West Point and letting you know much higher qualified non-minorities, and I guess I would include Asians in that non-minority category, because we're not discriminating to get more Asians, so to speak. So I mean what you were just talking about was the reason behind the Zoom and Mookie alerting us, General Walker alerting us, and STARRS, the Calvert Group and the MacArthur Society that we were about to become famous, if we weren't already. So we'll see how that— I think we probably already are.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 10:46

Well, there's— that's that. I think we probably already are Well there's some great opportunities to educate the public. Exactly, and that begs the question.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 10:59

So if it's the leadership that's failing here, why? I mean, they're the people who have been war fighters in their younger years, they're the ones that have been leaders of people and they've had to deal with these problems before, for years. All of a sudden, are they just going along to get along when it gets to the Pentagon?

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 11:20

Well, I addressed that a year ago, may, and I was contacted by the chief editor at the Washington Examiner who asked the assistance of STARS to quote flood the zone on the negative impact of DEI in the military. And real proud of Star's response, they published 56 articles, I believe 56 op-eds, over a week and Star supporters wrote about half of them. I think it was exactly half, and the one I wrote exactly goes to the question that you just asked me, al, and that's what's happened to the leadership. And so I I get it that military leaders follow the lead of the civilians appointed over us, but and and I think maybe just some went along to get along. But my article addressed is well, why don't you listen to your people? I mean, I, I was blessed um, we didn't talk, thankfully, as much about my career, but I was blessed to command seven times in the air force and two times in the joint world and you know the trust and confidence, um, and it goes up and down the chain of command. You have to listen to your people and if they were listening to the people, for example, I live right outside that 80% of the cadet wing does not buy into what the DEI, you know push is.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 13:10

You know they consider it being jammed down their throats and the reason I can say that is because I have quite a bit of interaction with cadets. I teach them how to ski. You know we go back and forth on emails and the whole sponsorship program which I know you're familiar with, where you kind of provide a home away from home. We've been involved in that. We're now I think that's indeed 26 cadet that we were sponsored. So you get a lot of first-hand feedback. And I have a hard time believing because I've heard stories where cadets have said you know, this is a bunch of bs and have gotten up and walked out of the room but for some reason but they probably do- that, though, that they're just to some of their own jeopardy, right?

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 13:54

I mean, they're not. That's not that's frowned upon in the academies anywhere yeah, I mean so far.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 14:03

I mean there's one dad in particular that I just spoke with this past week and I asked him how his son was doing. He said he's just so depressed because he just doesn't like what is happening. In this push I brought a dad of a cadet last fall to a football game, a dad of a cadet last fall to a football game and to show, I mean, let me back up and just address the words, if I could, for a second Al on diversity, equity, inclusion Nobody, no commander who's worth his salt is not pro-diversity, is not pro-inclusion. I mean, any commander who's worth salt looks to. I mean, in my joint commands I wanted to make sure I was getting the input from officers who were different and people that were different from Air Force officers. Hey, well, come on, what do you Army guys think? What do you Marines think here? So you look for that diversity, but unfortunately, in our society of today, diversity has almost essentially come to mean Black. You know, you have to have that Black minority and, as I mentioned before, we don't talk Asians. We don't really even talk Hispanics too much because they're well represented, but we're talking almost exclusively our African-American brothers and sisters. And I think the dream and the vision of our founding fathers was for all of us to be Americans, americans, period and thought, with no hyphen before us. You know, not black Americans, not Hispanic, we're just Americans. So that's the diversity piece, the inclusion piece. I mean again, leader worth of salt is looking around the room and if someone's not participating, you call them out in a nice way, say hey, what are your thoughts? You're trying to get everybody included in the team, nice way, and say, hey, you know what what are your thoughts? You're trying to get everybody included in the team.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 16:07

Now the word equity. I think those who came up with this dei made a mistake when they came up with equity, although they have bamboozled, as every third four star has shared with us half of america with that word. Equity is exactly the opposite of what our forefathers and our founding fathers dreamt of, what america should be about. It was equal opportunity for all. It wasn't equity, which I'd describe as the government cooking the books to ensure equal outcomes. You know, we all come from different backgrounds. We're not all going to be equal. I mean there's. You know we all come from different backgrounds, we're not all going to be equal. I mean, I played basketball in high school but I sure couldn't have played with LeBron and you know everybody on our gold medal Olympic team.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 16:54

Well, it seems that equity is better ascribed to the old Soviet Union, or perhaps North Korea or Cuba, where everybody is the same and treated the same, and to people like that that outcome is not one that we would want, and you're right, I think even de Tocqueville and some others celebrated the idea of America being a place where you could use your own labor, your own merit to succeed in life, and that's kind of what we're proposing. We do.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 17:28

Yes, sir, couldn't agree more on what you just stated there.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 17:36

So, General, you did some work with the Heritage Foundation and you did some work with the Heritage Foundation and Congressman Waltz. I think in looking at the readiness in the military and how things were working, can you tell us a little bit about what you found in that.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 17:56

Yeah, before I do that, though, let me jump in, because it's a great opportunity. What our volunteers out there can be doing. It drives home that I say a lot, and that is we are only as good as our intel. So three years ago, this coming Labor Day, my wife and I sponsored a tailgate party and I asked Dr Scott and his wife Mary to help co-host, and we had been silent on the critical race theory DEI front for a few months. We were pretty well immersed in the vaccine mandate issue, but on the DEI front we just didn't have anything that we could publicize.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 18:43

So I rang a little bell at the tailgate party and I said you know I don't usually interrupt this time of camaraderie, but you know, here's the deal. I mean, we're all in this, our intel. You know, if you see anything, can you get it to us. So we can, you know, publicize and help educate our fellow Americans on what's happening inside our military. Within a week, one of the cadets that was present sent me the I think, fairly infamous slides now, because they were all over news media, at least on the conservative channels. Fox made great use of them for about a week, of the briefing that was given, the critical race theory training that was given to those cadets that month, which said no more mom and dad. Basically don't don't your parents mom and dad, you know, call them parents or guardians. And, and the one that didn't get as much publicity but is probably more egregious is don't be color blind, be color conscious, I mean.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 19:47

Yeah that was mystery, wasn't it?

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 19:51

so, um, that got us the attention of Congressman Waltz and, uh, and actually had a conversation with him about that time and he said, man, man, I'm going to make hay with this. This is ridiculous. You know, we're just going the opposite way of what we should be going in our military to be, you know, welcoming and unified and cohesiveness. And so it wasn't all that long after that that I got a call from his staff asking if I would participate in that national independent panel on military and service readiness NIPSMER, I think, was the acronym we came up with, but there were a lot of, you know, very, very good people HR McMaster, morgan Ortega, who we see on TV quite a bit, former spokesperson for the State Department. And now to your question what did we come up with? We essentially did for Congress.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 20:53

I think what Project 2025, that has gotten such a bad name and bad press undeservedly so, in my opinion was trying to do for this administration that's what the NPSPR was trying to do for Congress is to give them a blueprint of how this DEI indoctrination was dividing. We highlighted retention that really hadn't shown itself yet, but the retention rates are declining and certainly one of the biggest things that, of course DOD won't acknowledge is the negative impact that DEI is having on recruitment. Yes, you know how that is in the tank and, yeah, I get it. On recruitment, and how that is in the tank, and, yeah, I get it, you got the economy, you got COVID, you got all these reasons. But I've heard firsthand from lots and lots of families that have shared with me that I serve but I just don't want my son or daughter or my grandkids serving in this environment, and one of the reasons why that's so important is we rely on those families to have children and relatives who will take that service as being so good that they want to join.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 22:17

They want to experience that and they're happy to even risk their fortunes and lives to do it. I don't see that sense existing in the outside part of our society right now. I think there's too much focus on entitlement, too much digital work of various kinds that take away the reality of what our country has to do to defend itself if we have another conflict, and it's just like the report they just gave to the Senate on national defense strategy that said, we're the least able now to fight a major conflict since World War II in 1945 than we've ever been. So that's alarming, and do you think that the public understands that?

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 23:11

Yeah, unfortunately, you're pointing out parts and pieces of a RAND report that just came out that says you know, unfortunately the public doesn't understand that we're living in one of the most riskiest times, and so you know again another reason why do we want to distract our military members by forcing upon them an ideology which seeks to divide, when we all know divide, when we all know that you know, the uh, core value of any military unit I mean, we, we learned this from clausowitz, we learned it from napoleon is that unity, cohesiveness, that that brings everybody together and it's all one team, one fight, and you, instead of dividing up people and putting them into identity groups, it's, you know, and that's exactly why STARS was formed to educate the American populace, first and foremost, to educate members of Congress to work the issues in the courts like we have to.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 24:20

You know, hopefully, turn this thing around. We're not out there advertising. We're going to go to war with China over Taiwan or whatever, but these are dangerous times and I think people can see that portion although they're not educated to the extent that they need to be of the threat that we face. And so part of our mission at STARRS is to try and get the military to refocus its attention on what the military is supposed to be all about that readiness, that ability to deter and, if deterrence fails, to win the wars.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 24:55

So if the leadership in the five-sided puzzle house was able to put itself together and say stop this right now, Could that happen fairly easily if they had the will to do it.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 25:11

Well in my mind there's two things where we can make a change and you know I have to be careful here because we're a 501c3 but certainly a change in leadership at the top um, that is of a different mindset. That is not pro this, you know. Again, this is where people can use more education. If they understood the marxist roots of critical race theory, it might, yeah, cause more people to. Well, wait a a minute, why are we indoctrinating our military in something that has Marxist roots? So that's one aspect and the other aspect that can change things and hopefully, if they could be combined, I think we could accelerate the change that we needed.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 25:59

But the other aspect, of course, is Congress. I mean it's in the Constitution that Congress has the you know, on its job jar is oversight of the military, and so they have the power in their hands. Of course there's a lot of members of Congress who support critical race theory and DEI. But if you know, if you can get those two branches of government acting in concert, we could make some progress. The problem is, I believe, is that there's a certain percentage, although not a majority, there's a certain percentage of military members serving who have bought into the ideology and have been indoctrinated. Thankfully again, as I said a couple of times, it's not a majority, at least based on what cadets who I interface with tell me.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 26:55

So, as the rest of the force, though, continues to work every day as they do, to be great warriors, great leaders, performance is rewarded and trust is reinforced. That bunch of people, though, still is there, and they're still doing their job every day. Maybe that will catch on if the leadership can get behind that again, because I see that. I mean, from the time I was in the old Air Force and Navy flying, you couldn't slack off. If you did, you know, somebody got hurt, somebody died and those are very unforgiving circumstances.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 27:34

So that pushes people to be pretty good at what they are, and your analogy with the Olympics is absolutely perfect. You know you don't want somebody on your team who's going to be a slacker in any case.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 27:51

Right, yeah, I think you have Matt Lohmeyer, our executive vice president, on your list of people to interview, your list of people to interview, and he speaks very well along these lines, as well as a father of a cadet who I know both the dad and the cadet very well. His dad is always counseling his son. A lot can happen from the top down, but it's those of you who are serving that also have to stand up and push back. And you know, unfortunately that's what I wish had happened at the leadership levels within our services, but it didn't. I mean, if you know, it's probably for a variety of reasons. People are enamored at getting their next star, people bought into it. Some, some just went along to get to get along and didn't want to make waves. But to me, their time for using going along to get along as an excuse is about up, because you can see the detrimental effect that it's having, many of which we've talked about retention, recruiting, morale.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 29:08

So, especially though among the officer ranks I mean, when we all went through officer training, whether it was an academy or OCS or ROTC, one of the things that was always drilled into us was integrity and honesty and being a good example for others to follow, and we sort of had that forgotten by some people, you think.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 29:36

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be as much emphasis on character, as much emphasis on character, although, you know, at our alma mater they talk about, you know, building leaders of character. The new superintendent made that one of his three focus areas, um, but at the same time we see the honor code uh, being watered down a little bit. So I think there is some of what you have to say. You know, I think you're an old weasel pilot, if I remember correctly, and, uh, you know, one of my heroes, heroes in the Air Force, has been General Fogelman, and I loved, when he was the chief, that he instituted integrity first, service before self and excellence in all that we do. But ask a cadet today if they hear that as much as they hear diversity, equity, inclusion.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 30:33

Yeah, that's it. It's a drift away from the warfighting ethos of the military and substituting it.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 30:42

Some of it.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 30:42

I think is budgeting, programming, managing HR, those other corporate kind of things that have certainly been important in managing the forces. But we can't leave the, the leadership and the war fighting skills behind. You know, I'm kind of prejudiced and I'm afraid but that that's just my sense of it that we're starting to have some drift there and boy.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 31:06

Those are the those, those are the guys, especially things like SEALs, special ops guys. But but even just the mechanics on the line. Taking care of aircraft is as you know from your great days of being a commander and a leader. You can't have that disappear. When you do, it affects all of the war fighting. That goes with it.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 31:28

And I worry we're drifting a little bit there all over the place and maybe it's time to get back to the reality of look, you know, this is not a country club. You're not bringing your golf clubs and your tennis rackets to the Air Force Academy or the Naval Academy or West Point. You're here to learn and to serve your country and you know, maybe it's time to get back to some of that in my own little bit.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 31:54

No, you, no, absolutely One of the stars initiatives that we've got going on. Now, alice, we're trying to hopefully have some influence although I think at least the Republican transition team will have the sight picture on changing the culture. We have to recapture the culture of our military and refocus it. Now, you know the initiative is we're putting together point papers and we have a board of the advisor member who has been asked to be on, uh, republican transition team, but that you know we're, we're an all-equal uh, uh, we we'd love to talk and brief to the democratic transition team as well.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 32:42

Um, so I mean, and oh, by the way, how about all the new members of congress that will come along come november 5th in both houses? So we have our job cut out for us and I think one of our I know our strongest messages is we have to recapture that warrior ethos that you talked about. We have to change the culture back and you know it goes to your question again is can we do it? It's something that we may have already lost it. I hope they are wrong. I think we can prove them wrong if we're given the opportunity.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 33:26

So I remember, you know, in the old days, you know Hollywood and the media folks and TV in the early days they had all kinds of things about military service, especially about submarines, aircraft, carriers, aviation of all kinds. That was a staple of Hollywood in the old days.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 33:49

Now it's all about bad Batman and Transformers and who knows what. There have been few films and productions made that are, I think you know, honest and straightforward about military service, so that may be one of the solutions here. When they made Top Gun, there were young ladies lined up at the gate of Naval Air Station Miramar trying to get in on a Wednesday night to see Tom Cruise, and it boosted retention and recruitment amazingly, and it's occurred to me that we probably ought to be able to do more of that. But that's a big hurdle for that crowd out in Hollywood, I know.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 34:35

Yeah, unfortunately, hollywood is a part of our society that you know, I think most of us would say went woke first and maybe the hardest, and, like so many elements in our society that have gone down that road, we've've lost, as I think you're indicating in what you just expressed, al uh and, and I'd say it begins, you know, in our great schools.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 35:02

Uh, yeah, I don't believe. From what I've seen and looking at the curriculum, I helped for rather considerable people here in summit county, which is a very left-leaning part of Colorado, run for the school board and they all lost. And when we're reviewing their curricula of what they're teaching, there's not a lot of civics, there's not a lot of what you and I learned in grade school that has to have. I mean, look at the polling on patriotic feelings that people have. You know that has significantly gone down over the years. And instead, I mean I was out actually campaigning one night and one of the people it was Halloween and they closed down a main street in a nearby town and I was asked, not not once, but like three times out of maybe 50 people I spoke with well, is this candidate pro-transgender?

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 36:04

and my answer was well, you know, I've never specifically spoke to him about transgenders, with the exception exception of I know he's a Christian and as a Christian he's taught to be welcoming for everybody. But he thinks, in terms of what age level is appropriate for kids to be taught about the transgender movement, should be as best decided by the parents and not the government. And in two of those three conversations I had I was oh no, I, I believe you know transgender. Should, the transgender theory should be taught from kindergarten on, and so you can see how part of our society is, you know, going down, going down a road that I guess lends itself to the weakening of our moral culture that we once had. I'd like to recapture it. I'd like to recapture it, and certainly I mean.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 37:14

One cadet at going to the Air Force Academy sent me an advertisement for free transgender luncheons for the first 50 cadets that show up. So I sent a note to the superintendent that how many transgenders do we have at the Air Force Academy? And as best as we can ascertain, there's somewhere between two and four. So are we advertising? Are we trying to get more Going?

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 37:44

the wrong direction on it, even my most liberal friends who I have that are ski buddies up here. I ask them all that question what do you think about transgenders in the military? And I haven't gotten you know, well, yeah, we need to have them from anybody. What I've gotten is well, they come with a whole lot of baggage and a lot of issues, but yet you know, that's the road our military has gone down.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 38:17

I want to be welcoming and I believe that many transgenders although you know, if you ask an Air Force doctor or another doctor, they'll tell you they commit suicide at a much higher rate probably have more mental, probably have more mental challenges, et cetera. So why we want these people serving in wearing a uniform you have to scratch your head a little bit on that because they put more of a onus on the unit, their comrades, if they're off with a surgery or the chemical aspects that they're going through. Pete Hegseth writes in his book having to have all these chemicals available in the war zone. Do we really want to be inclusive to that extent? I mean, why can't they serve our country as a civil servant in our military?

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 39:16

Well, it makes them undeployable as well, which then puts them out of action, and it puts a burden back on the rest of the troops in their unit to have to pick up the slack for them.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 39:30

Exactly. Yeah, matt Lohmeyer tells a great story on that one. I don't want to steal his thunder, but he talks about. You know, one of the best officers he had was transgender, but yet that officer put a lot of extra burden on the unit when he or she was off. You know having operation here or there.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 39:54

But it's also about team building and bonding together in an effort. That's really critical and that's something you get out of that.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 40:04

when you're in the combat arms, you know you don't forget those times when you're in the foxhole or you got you know four guys on your six and you're trying to get somebody to help you. You know it needs to be somebody that you can trust imminently and that's the trust that's kind of hard to build when you've got people in aggregates of affinity groups or people who are of like minds, not interacting with other people and getting their trust.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 40:34

Very true. Two quick stories from two different cadets. One I was driving up here from the Air Force Academy, I believe November, december time frame. I was going to teach him how to ski and I asked him so what do you think about transgenders at the academy? I mean, do you know any of them? And he says no. He said, but I know one thing for sure is I don't want to shower with anyone. That's transgender, yes. And another cadet was very upset that he was being forced, potentially forced to room with one who was transitioning, and he was very religious and said this is against my religion. So, in an effort to be inclusive, on one hand, the whole transgender issue, I believe, is excluding a number of Christians who, you know, have told me firsthand that you know what somebody does. That's up to them. I just don't want to be forced to accept it, forced to celebrate it, forced to you name it.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 41:44

So we've been pretty good, I think, in general about identifying a lot of the things that are wrong these days with life in the military, but on the other side of that, there's some really positive things that are still happening.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 41:56

And.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 41:57

I know STARS is really good about trying to bring that out as a way to remedy some of the things that need to be helped at all. So you know, I really applaud what you and Colonel Scott are doing to focus the efforts that we're doing on trying to get the message out about. It's not all wrong, it's not all terrible, but we got a lot of work to do here.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 42:21

I appreciate you saying that, al, because we really have spent a number of conversations, zoom meetings, board meetings. You know we just don't want to come across to American public as negative and that's why we have. You know, I believe Cindy could jump in here and tell us is it a whole page or whatever? I believe it's a whole page. Last time I looked at what STARRS stands for, that this is what we're for, the values of the values and vision of our founding fathers, and you know these are all great, great concepts. I mean unknown, unbeknown to man beforehand, that all men are created equal and that you know our rights come from our creator and that it's we, the people, the governed, who you know say yay or nay. So those are all great values and we seem to be, as you indicated in some of your comments, going down a road that you know is taking us away from some of those core values that we once held dear as Americans.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 43:31

And you know I, just in my own life, I look back to the 50s and 60s, and you know even the 70s, with the exception of the civil rights riots in the 60s. You know it was a much simpler world. I think it was in many ways a happier world. You know it was a much simpler world. I think it was in many ways a happier world, uh, that we lived in here in america.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 43:55

But now, yeah, there seems to be a a lot of discord and and I thought I mean one of the greatest senses of of, uh, just accomplishment that I would have like at commander's calls, accomplishment that I would have like at commander's calls when you command big units, the commander's calls are in the hangars and you'd look out and just see the face of America across all those roles I mean black, white, asian, hispanic I said, man, what a great country. And I'm glad we had those. I'm not glad that it took us, you know, 200 years or 100 years plus after the Civil War, to get where we were. But I thought we were there and we're making pretty darn good progress. And you know, then we had this ideological invasion, so to speak, that kind of torn some of that down.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 44:54

You know, I remember, because I grew up in a military family and when my dad was stationed overseas in Europe in USAFE right after the war, I went to school with all kinds of kids. There were Black, white, hispanic, asian, even European kids, because some of their fathers were serving there at the time. We all went and we had dances together, we had sports, we did everything together, lived together. There was no discord at all, none at that time, and it was because we all were there for the same reason. I'd love to get back to that, yeah.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 45:36

Well, you're helping us out, so maybe we will get back to that if we're successful.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 45:44

Listen, I'm hopeful we'll be as successful of that as the things that you and I have done in the service in the past. General, and I'm so grateful to have you heading this outfit and with that we'll invite our audience, the viewers of this. If you want to help out, you can go to starsus, find a way that you can volunteer to help and also catch up on what we're doing and stay current with it, because this is not going away. This is going to be an issue that's going to be around for a while, no matter what the outcomes of elections or anything else are. My view is we're still going to have a lot of work to do with this going forward and I'm happy to be a part of it and I'm pleased to have you here.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 46:30

And thanks for our audience for watching and listening.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 46:35

Thanks.

CDR Al Palmer, USN ret: 46:36

Al Pleasure we're out of here. We'll go back into the nuclear-hardened bunker General.

Lt. General Rod Bishop, USAF ret: 46:44

Sounds like a plan. Thanks Al. We'll be right back. Thanks Al.