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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   11436 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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I doubt the military would go along with any red tribe attempt to subvert the constitution.

My hope would be that the military would not go along with attempts to subvert the constitution by any tribe.

I am sure that the Obama administration picked military leadership leaning blue (or at least these able to cosplay someone caring about DEI) on general principle, just like Bush picked generals leaning red before. But I think neither picked people specifically who would more loyal to their tribe than the constitution. When Clinton lost to Trump, despite a general doomsday mood among the blue SJ people, the outgoing administration did not try to flip the game table. Nor would the military have gone along with it.

Generally, I find that different political attitudes come with different ideas on how to enact their policies. 'At the end of the day, what gets done is what men with guns and a willingness to kill want' (which I have seen expressed here, e.g. arguing against women's franchise) is very much right wing, MAGA. You will find rather few left wing activists cosplaying as a militia in military style outfits, or studying at an officer academy so they can later decolonize the US using tanks.

The SJ left really favors civilian institutions for enforcing their policies. Sure, at the end of the day, the decisions of these institutions are backed up with threat of force (e.g. the police), but that is an implementation detail any anyway their expectation is that it will not come to that. (Arguably, when protesters are hampering ICE, they are relying implicitly on institutions, e.g. due process and civil rights. In a state without these, like North Korea, it would be suicidal to annoy people enforcing the will of the government.)

The short version is that a central example of MAGA playing dirty is Trump sending his supporters to break into Congress and 'stop the steal'. A central example of the Dems playing dirty is them using prosecutorial discretion to engage in lawfare against Trump over real and imagined misconduct.

When Clinton lost to Trump, despite a general doomsday mood among the blue SJ people, the outgoing administration did not try to flip the game table. Nor would the military have gone along with it.

They did. It was called Crossfire Hurricane, and the intelligence community and FBI did go along with it. And it was extremely dangerous to our democracy.

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