The inside story of how the Navy's top brass eliminated ratings

I personally think this is crazy. Granted, as a Marine, I hated having to figure out what someone's rank was through all their rating words, but it made the Navy who and what it was. Once you figured out what the ratings meant, it made it super easy to get things done. You now knew who you had to talk to about a situation.

Tradition is something that helps to bind a service together. As we continue to remove these traditions, this binding agent is weakened. No I do not mean the "tradition" of hazing. I am talking about the traditions that give a service its character, identity and pride. Whether it is Ratings, Unit Patches, or even individual Unit traditions. They all give a service member something to hold onto when the "going gets tough." Those who say that traditions are old fashioned and are not needed anymore, are the ones who have never had to face adversity. There is a reason why the Canadians brought back the names of 'Royal Canadian Navy" and "Royal Canadian Air Force" a couple of years back......

This is not about gender neutrality, it's to fulfill a political agenda. First it was the uniforms, then it was the idea behind the "seaman" "yeoman" issue and now rather than discussing and getting other opinions about a large decision as this one was, he just decides to Nuke everyone enlisted and have them mourn the loss of their ratings. As much as I shouldn't do it, I can't conform to this change. I know that individuality is a very different concept in any branch of the military, but why destroy a 241 year tradition on the basis of having a gender neutrality, when the comrodery within the Navy, within the ratings was never about gender; it was about working together as a team; accomplish the mission with the best that we, as sailors, could do. It was about joining together with our differences (THAT MAKES US WHO WE ARE) and putting aside drama, bullshit and just have the common respect that everyone was a sailor.....a shipmate; here to do a job and to make the mission the top priority. Being active duty for 4 years, I NEVER SAW ANYONE OFFENDED, NEVER SAW ANYONE BUTT-HURT OVER RELIGION, COLOR, RACE, GENDER, SEXUALITY, or ANY- FRICKING -THING on the ship. We were a team, a brotherhood/sisterhood that we could trust and work with to get the mission completed and the job done right the first time.

I really dislike HRC and Trump (and most other politicians), but when the circus is over, I will forget about them. Mabus is the only one (and has been even before this latest fiasco, starting with when he thought it was appropriate to name a ship after a civilian shooting victim who never did anything but get shot by some asshole) that I imagine I will daydream about meeting in a dark bar in Asia somewhere for quite some time to come. I cannot overstate how much I despise that despicable man.