This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
[Insert ad hominem fallacy on an account of foreigner category]/Joking.png
You could be correct, but you could be incorrect. It depends on more information than we have.
One of the weird things about the initial claim is that the Pentagon banned tiktok from government computers in 2023 barely a year and a half ago. In fact, there was an Army recruiting scandal in 2021 about use of TikTok when not supposed to. If an American recruiter is doing recruitment on TikTok, he is either doing something very wrong regardless of message/loyalty concern (violating policy), or may actually be operating within approved scopes (is operating within special exceptions).
If it's the later, there may be no violation at all. It may, in fact, even be the point.
More on that later, but it's not like the militaries lacks people who garner contempt for wanting to sit out specific conflicts. Kamalla Harris's vice president pick during the recent US election had the baggage that he tried to present himself as a service veteran despite possibly having arranged to get out of his reserve unit's overseas deployment. It's not exactly hard to find dissent within an institution over 2.8 million strong (standing military, reserves, support civilians), with some people shaping (or ending) their careers to not be associated with some conflict / etc. In past unpopular wars, it wasn't unknown for people to join entire other services (such as joining the Navy to avoid being drafted into the Army in Vietnam), or to unceremoniously retire to avoid deployments (in the Iraq War era there was a surge of American reserve / national guard retirements by people who were content to be in the reserves during the 90s when it was considered low/no risk).
Ultimately Ranger's argument relies on assumptions of a separate topic (presentation of loyalties, as opposed to policy adherence) where there's a perception of what sort of loyalty people think is required (members must be willing to fight all enemies and say so!) that is less absolute in practice.
It's less absolute because manpower is not only limited (there has never been an endless supply of ideal candidates), but manpower is often both fungible (one person here can free up another person to go there) and mutually exclusive (person trained for expertise A can't be used in occupation B anyway). Full-throated concurrence with all wars wasn't a requirement in the conscription era (where conscientious objectors / pacifists could sometimes be shunted to support roles, or just put in risk and expected to save themselves), nor is it typically demanded in a volunteer-service model (where service members have some significant influence over their careers as they reach higher ranks, and thus can choose areas where they're not likely to do what they really don't want to do).
There are certainly cases / issues when an expeditionary military says 'go' and the person says 'I don't want to,' but these are both very rare at the level of the recruiter in question, and, uh, wouldn't be present for someone who is a recruiter.
///
Now to return to the point passed earlier, where it could be a context of approved message. (Emphasis on could.)
Ranger's argument works from a perspective of how this is terrible because lack of loyalty and inherent untrustworthiness and mercenaries bad and yada. Ranger is also very clearly not thinking like a manpower-capability developer (i.e. recruitment at scale), but operating from a basis of purity politic demands. Purity politics is bad force generation policy. Even governments obsessed with ideological compliance, such as the Soviets, used a purity-cadre model (political officers) as opposed to a purity rank-and-file model.
Starting from the most obvious, monetary incentives are absolutely a basis of building and retaining talent. This isn't an issue of 'mercenary' pejoratives, it's a point that that in a volunteer service model the military is an employer, and as an employer they are competing with all other employers to recruit and retain. Fundamental disconnect there, and also woefully ignorant of why so many of the common US incentives include post-service benefits, like paying for college (i.e. investing in domestic talent development after getting your military use out of them). This is why in modern history the American military has been often seen approvingly as a 'way up' for underclass Americans- it provides substantial training / more structured environments / post-service education that people may not otherwise be able to afford. It's not a guarantee, but it's a powerful incentive. Someone who serves 4 years and than leaves to enjoy college is not a failure, it's a success story of how you got someone to successfully serve 4 years at the lowest runs of the military and then improved their national value potential.
Part of any recruitment pitch, in turn, comes with conveying the perception of costs for taking the job. If a recruiter says 'you may never go see your family abroad,' then that is a lot of people who might be willing to serve but not if it means they can't serve abroad. Similarly, if a recruiter says 'you must be willing to fight the Chinese state, no matter if the PRC attempts to use your family as hostages,' then again, you are winnowing the field. The US military is designed to fight on 2 different continents at any time, with at least Europe and Korea providing non-Chinese fronts.
Further, a recruiting pitch that can appeal to both hard-core joiners (the people who would be more gung-ho than the recruiter) and the wavering (ethnic Chinese who would share the sentiment of not wanting to join a war against China, but would also not want to fight the US) isn't inviting a trojan horse with the later category, it's getting an asset.
The chinese language is, in a word, hard, and there is generally a shortage in any non-Chinese government of people who can speak and/or read it. As a result, there is a demand that far exceeds the supply in people who can (a) read / speak Chinese, and (b) are willing to do it for the government. Someone who is (c) willing to do it at an enlisted soldier's pay (low) at (d) enlisted soldiers hours (no overtime pay) and in (e) enlisted soldier's living standards (non-affluent) and at a (f) enlisted soldier's 'can be moved across the world to where most conveneient (incredibly high) is incredibly good value-for-money.
There is, in other words, a great many useful / desirable roles that a government wants a Chinese-speaker for, many of them that do not require taking up arms against the PRC even in the course of a war against the PRC. Many of them require no access to sensitive material / networks / resources either.
The role of any human resources / recruiting institution is to try to match potential incoming talent to desired needs, not to refuse to accept valuable talents because it is unsuited for any particular need. 'Speaks Chinese, but is not willing to fight the Chinese state' is not a the most desirable recruit package, but it's a very useful one. The questions / investigations of loyalty / questions of what they are willing to do are real considerations, but they are more questions on how to direct talent to the best cost/benefit position after they joined, not whether to encourage them to join.
They are also, critically, questions that go on well beyond the initial recruiter pitch. As such, a recruiter who is authorized to make such a pitch agreeable to such people, may be doing nothing wrong.
I mean, let's be fair here, I'd refuse to fight
the Motherland or FatherlandBritain or Germany unless something had gone drastically wrong in those countries requiring liberation. But if something hadn't gone drastically wrong in those countries, the only reason I'd be being asked to do so is if something had gone drastically wrong here.Then again, I'm not in the Army (I'd kinda like to be in the Reserve, but I don't think they'd take me).
(Also, yeah, I know Chinese is hard to learn; I spent 3.5 years learning it in school.)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link