[Ghoulish Delight]

I feel ya' Scrooge. But I'm finding it harder and harder to get worked up about these "set backs". I'm starting to come to the conclusion that honesty and straight forwardness in this process is an impossibility. It sucks, it's miserable, and the anger at it is justified. But I really believe that the truth of the matter is that if Obama tomorrow signed the necessary executive order, the path to integration would actually become that much harder.

Even if every top military official were on board, the fact is that there remains a lot of things that need to be addressed before it happens. There will be resistance, it will be ugly. The military does NOT deal in chaos. They are not going to just open the door and see what happens. They want to have a plan, they want to be ready to absorb the backlash, and adjust the "culture" on their terms.

And so the charade goes on. I can get myself no more worked up about it than I get about anything regarding the military. It is what it is. I truly believe that privately and internally they are preparing for the inevitability. But until they're ready to go, it's a matter of the devil they know vs. the devil they don't know. I'm convinced that their thinking is, "We're going to have to put a lot of time and effort into successfully integrating gays into the military. We'd much rather spend as much of that time and effort in a status-quo mode. We've been dealing with the "Repeal DATD!" anger for years and can continue it for a little longer. We do not want to try to plan for the major changes we foresee AND deal with a whole new form of anger, from within and without." And as soon as anything concrete happens, like legislation passing, that shift is going to happen. They're going to have to deal with unrest from the ranks, from veterans, and unrest from a different segment of civilian population.

I'm not happy that this is the situation. I certainly wish honesty would work, that the country could just be fvcking adults about it. And perhaps Obama should catch sine flack for promising something he can't publicly admit to working towards. But, I do believe progress is being made, and I don't feel like my anger, protests, letters are going to alter the course any at this point.