My dad was a 23-year-old U.S. Marine who drove a tank onto the black volcanic sand beach on day one of the WW II battle for Iwo Jima. While I still miss my dad, I’m also at peace in knowing he isn’t around to witness the absolute madness of today’s U.S. Marine Corps — and that of the entire U.S. Armed Forces.

In the latest bit of “woke” nonsense infecting America’s fighting forces, the Marine Corps is under pressure to ban recruits from respectfully addressing drill instructors as “sir” or “ma’am”  —to avoid “misgendering” and offending them.

As reported by the Marine Times, an effort is underway to integrate Marine Corps boot camp, including dropping the gender-specific salutations, but service leaders aren’t convinced they want to take the step. Too bad: A lengthy report, commissioned by the Corps from the University of Pittsburgh in 2020 and completed in 2022, notes that half of the military services have already eliminated gender identifiers.

Employing gender-neutral identifiers eliminates the possibility of misgendering drill instructors, which can unintentionally offend or cause discord,” the study said.

“By teaching recruits to use gender-neutral identifiers for their drill instructors, Services underscore the importance of respecting authoritative figures regardless of gender.”

Instead of saying ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir,’ recruits in these Services refer to their drill instructors using their ranks or roles followed by their last names. Gendered identifiers prime recruits to think about or visually search for a drill instructor’s gender first, before their rank or role.

According to the Times, the proposal was under consideration by a Marine Corps leadership team assembled to guide service efforts to integrate boot camp, Col. Howard Hall, chief of staff for Marine Corps Training and Education Command, told the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services in December. However, Hall appeared to have reservations during a committee meeting on December 6:

That’s going to take some effort. Honestly, that’s not a quick fix. What are inculcating in our young recruits that will or will not be reinforced when they graduate and enter the fleet Marine force? So again, we want to avoid any quick-fix solutions that introduce perturbations down the line.

I have an idea, Colonel, which you can pass all the way up the line to Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: Knock off the woke crap before you completely destroy the most lethal fighting force on the planet.

As reported by the New York Post, the 738-page two-year study by the University of Pittsburgh’s Warrior Human Performance Research Center said that “the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard effectively de-emphasize gender in an integrated environment.”

Given the amount of woke nonsense already spewing from the no-longer-hallowed halls of academia, much of which is used by public school systems across America to indoctrinate young children with everything from so-called “gender fluidity” to Marxist-derived “critical race theory,” the prospect of these radical leftists also programming U.S. Armed Services is terrifying.

Finally, Colonel Hall cautions:

We’ve got a history of ‘sir, ma’am, sir, ma’am.’ If we change something at the root level, how do we make the corresponding change at the Fleet Marine Force? So it’s not ours to implement alone.

Excellent questions, colonel. And questions that shouldn’t even have to be asked, much less answered; by the radical woke left and its hellbent drive to upend every facet of American society.

Semper Fi, indeed.