It seems as if every day lately there is another reason to break out the champagne in Moscow and Beijing, and Saturday was no exception: it was the day of Joint Base Langley-Eustis (JBLE)’s first “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Summer Festival,” featuring (what else), a drag show. What does all this woke nonsense have to do with winning wars? Oh, never mind that; that’s the old, white supremacist military! The new diverse military has other priorities altogether.

The festival, according to the Daily Wire, will feature “a series of performances and speeches, including a poem on ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion' and a drag show by Joshua Kelley, who performs under the moniker Harpy Daniels.”

This isn’t some outsider, non-military-grade drag show, either. Harpy Daniels is a yeoman 3rd class in the United States Navy, and you can just imagine how proud John Paul Jones and Chester Nimitz would be if they saw young Harpy in action. He joined the Navy to finance his drag career. Back in the bad old days, young men joined the Navy out of a sense of patriotism (and no doubt a desire for adventure), but for Harpy, it’s just a means to an end: “With drag being my number one passion,” Yeoman Harpy explained, “it quickly became costly. On top of just struggling to make ends meet and then pay college loans, the Navy became a great option to get myself situated in life.“

They’re going to get a bravura performance at JBLE because Harpy gives it his or her or xis all: “Doing drag allows me to embrace my feminine side and allows me to bring my diversity and creativity out. When I put on a face, it’s a face of art and creativity, not just a face of make-up. To hear people cheer, laugh or cry, or even join in with you during a performance is an absolute thrill.”

Those straights and dweebs over at the Daily Wire note primly that Harpy’s “professional Instagram page features dozens of photos of him in drag, many of them heavily sexualized. Some of the photos show Kelley nude, though the photos themselves appear to not violate Instagram’s nudity policies.” My fellow Americans, this is your United States Navy!

The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Summer Festival was the brainchild of the JBLE Breaking Barriers Alliance, a committee in the base’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. How much attention JBLE’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, or its JBLE Breaking Barriers Alliance, devotes to actual efforts to defend the United States from military threats was not disclosed. The whole thing was approved at the top: JBLE’s commander, Colonel Gregory Beaulieu, green-lighted the festival, and it was off to the races, er, that is, off to the drag show. And not just a drag show: the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Summer Festival will also feature “bouncy houses and face painting for the children” who get bored with watching Harpy Daniels cavort.

A notable stick in the mud in all this has been Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Military Personnel, who dared to point out that the U.S. military should devote its attention to winning wars, not to woke virtue-signaling: “Diversity may be a strength for America, but it cannot be an organizing principle for the Pentagon. Actual strength — physical strength, mental strength, and overall end strength — is our strength. DEI initiatives risk sapping this strength. By co-opting the Woke Left’s obsession with racial and gender diversity, the Pentagon’s DEI evangelists are ironically stifling the very type of diversity that might improve military performance: intellectual diversity.”

The U.S. Air Force didn’t even have an Office of Diversity and Inclusion until Old Joe Biden started pretending to be president. But now that seems to be all that it’s about. JBLE explained in a statement that the goal of the Summer Festival was to “provide education and awareness, increase collaboration through outreach, and recognize the diverse composition of JBLE….JBLE leadership is committed to celebrating differences and cultivating an inclusive environment where every Airman, Soldier, and civilian feels valued.”

Well, heavens to betsy. We certainly don’t want our airmen or soldiers not to feel valued. Some curmudgeons might prefer that they feel equipped to defeat the enemy in combat, but come on, man! This is the twenty-first century!

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~ BY ROBERT SPENCER