President Trump’s tweet, claiming a ban on transgender people joining the military, has many people up in arms. I think most are against the announcement, which really does have weak justification at best. But I also see that it is a big happy day for Trumpists for some reason. I suppose this is a win, considering the rest of the stories in the news.

But then, I think about how these same people love giving as much money as possible to defense spending, without any information on how it is spent. Now they are applauding this ban, and justify it with extremely vague arguments that it will save money? I guess they think that something is true as long as Trump says someone helped him with it. They’ll just assume that this will actually help in some way. This is all looking at things optimistically, in terms of their intentions.

The research on this issue reports a minimal likely impact on force readiness, should we allow transgender people to serve openly. It also says that the Department of Defense would benefit from a more inclusive workforce. Do people believe that making the workforce less diverse would make them more effective, just because Trump says so? It is widely accepted in the business community that their organizations benefit from diverse workforces. Do people believe that this concept only applies to corporations, and not a large military? Even if the military seems to be our biggest job & insurance program?

I’m not buying it. There are plenty of people referring to the bigotry of this policy and the equality violations involved, but even if you take the most optimistic outlook to the argument, it fails. I can understand getting excited that Trump is doing something other than insulting Jeff Sessions, but take it with some moderation. After all, it doesn’t actually make sense.