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20 December 2016

Navy Give the Fleet an early Christmas Present Ratings Restored!

Braking News according to Navy Times a NAVADMINwill be released on the 21st restoring Navy Ratings to the fleet.
(UPDATE: Here is the NAVADMIN)
The controversial dissension to effectively taking away ratings in October and was met with much resistance by enlisted and retired sailors alike.  A Petition on Whitehouse.gov was signed by over 100k people and the response from the Whitehouse was less then promising.  The last paragraph from the response summed up





"Organizational changes that require a cultural shift can cause friction
during transition periods, but the President has confidence in the
decisions made by U.S. Navy leaders and agrees that the benefits in future years
will outweigh growing pains in the next several months. Whether one's
Navy career occurred under the former rating structure or today's
modernized system, the President maintains his steadfast pride in Sailors
who have sacrificed and worked hard to serve with distinction."







So after all that why did the Navy decide to shift back to the rating system?  I think you could look at one phrase "cultural shift."  in the past we have had many cultural shifts as a Navy we no longer glamorize drinking and have shifted from the stigma of the drunken, fighting, cursing sailor.  Why I think this "cultural shift"  was not accepted is because is was not a "cultural shift" it was a changing an attempt to change tradition. If you have been in the navy for more then a day you know tradition is the backbone of the Navy, going back farther then American history.  As soon as you get to boot camp you are told about navy tradition and its importance.  When something that has been a tradition for 200 years it is very hard to change that.  There may be no other reason then it is tradition to have ratings to keep them but  to quote Mark Twain


The less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it” 




Hopefully this whole ordeal will help more sailors understand the meaning of tradition, that it is not just history, or something we do, it is who we are, tradition builds a bridge from the sailors of 1775 to the sailors of 2017.


Marry Christmas to all and a Happy new years

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