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Many have professed to find “two Americas” in the nation’s economic and racial divisions, but nowhere is there more of an estrangement between Americans than in the political and cultural realms. A fresh indication of that comes from the center of the loony left, the California S.S.R. itself, where a top National Guard commander proudly displayed a gay flag in his office and promptly got a promotion from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Make Me President). Well, of course he did. The meteoric rise of Major Gen. Matt Beevers is an indication of how spectacularly insane the left has become.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that Beevers “featured a flag that read ‘gay as f**k’ in his office at the California National Guard’s headquarters in Sacramento, the July 2022 photo taken inside his office shows.” Imagine how Patton or Marshall would have reacted to the sight of a senior officer displaying such a flag. But they lived a long, long time ago, and instead of removing Beevers from command or even reprimanding him, Newsom promoted him to head of the National Guard in California. Apparently being “gay as f**k,” or thinking that being “gay as f**k” is terrific, is a prerequisite for advancement in Gavin Newsom’s military.

Beevers is married to a woman, which suggests that either he has a decidedly unconventional marriage, or that his support for the left’s efforts to destroy the traditional family and normalize all manner of delusions and perversions does not emanate from his personal proclivities, but from his deeply held convictions. Even if Beevers rejects the trans madness and everything that goes along with it, which is extraordinarily unlikely, his display of the flag still represents a common but nevertheless unacceptable lack of attention to what the National Guard is supposed to be spending its time doing. As President Trump has emphasized, the military should be concerned with protecting Americans, not with advancing social agendas. Gavin Newsom obviously has different ideas.

The Free Beacon notes that this was no perfunctory or pro forma bow to the prevailing winds. On the contrary, “the flag was displayed in Beevers’s office for several months before a servicemember of the California National Guard took the photo.” And now that Beevers is in charge, “former California National Guard officers who served under Beevers said the vulgar display—and his other actions in office—raise serious questions about whether his focus on ‘woke DEI priorities’ over operational excellence has hampered the Guard’s ability to properly respond to natural disasters including the deadly Los Angeles fires earlier this month.” Excellent questions. Will Gavin Newsom answer them? Come on, man!

Newsom will ignore Beevers’ “gay as f**k” flag despite the fact that the woke general’s “decision to dismantle a highly trained volunteer firefighting force under his command just months before the outbreak of the Los Angeles fires” turned out to be “a move that rendered the Guard incapable of sending a complete firefighting force to the city until 10 days after the fires broke out.” Was Beevers too distracted with his duties advancing the gay agenda to pay attention to such mundane matters? After all, didn’t he have some illegal migrants on hand to do the jobs he didn’t want to do?

Beevers appears to be just the kind of military commander that Newsom likes. The far-left governor and 2028 presidential possibility “appointed Beevers acting head of the California National Guard in August 2022 following years of what critics describe as performative woke virtue signaling from the military commander.” This “performative woke virtue signaling” has been just as absurd as you’d expect: “In 2014, as Beevers served as deputy adjutant general of the Guard, he participated in a ‘Walk a Mile in Her Shoes’ event in Sacramento, where Beevers was pictured wearing what appeared to be black flats and carrying pink high heels.”

Lovely. And that’s not even close to all: “the Newsom appointee has also been a mainstay in California gay pride events since before the pandemic, participating in pride parades across the state in his capacity as a general of the National Guard every year from 2018 through 2022.”

Back on planet earth, a retired California National Guard colonel, John Haramalis, explained what’s so terribly wrong with Beevers’ activities: “The purpose of the National Guard is to fight the nation’s wars and handle emergencies in the state. You don’t prepare for that with woke DEI policies and agendas and marching in parades. The impact for Californians is what you see now. You have very little ability to handle emergencies properly, and the people of the state of California are going to continue to suffer as a result.”