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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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Something I've seen today:

US Navy Used Drag Queen Influencer To Attract A ‘Wide Range’ Of New Troops As Recruitment Plummets

So, admittedly, I do not know much about the recruiting to the Navy (or any other military branch) and as a first generation immigrant, may misunderstand some larger things. But does it really make any sense to anybody else? I mean, sure, there are people that choose to lead this lifestyle, and I personally have no problem with that. But I always thought the intersection between them and the people that go to the military - and also the people that the military actually wants - is if not zero then small enough. And yet, this is what is happening, and I am struggling to make sense of any of it.

As I see it, the military is probably the last place that would be under pressure to go woke - the Left hates it unconditionally and passionately anyway, it is impossible to "cancel" it in any meaningful way, you can not really orchestrate an ideological boycott against the military (they have trillions of dollars, and most businesses would give an arm and a leg to be a military supplier, as I understand... maybe Google can afford to choose, but even they at the end are glad to be friends) and the advancement system does not really depend on the SJWs in any way up to the very top where only the very few get the chance to be anyway.

So, I see only these possible explanations:

  1. Army recruiting is stunningly incompetent and literally has no idea what they are doing and why, they literally are desperate to try absolutely anything, on the tiny chance it may work, because they are completely out of ideas and can not think of anything that would attract the youth to join the military anymore, so they are just running through the options, however bizzarre, because it couldn't be any worse than it already is. Are things really this bad?

  2. It is part of some kind of 4D chess complex strategy that I fail to understand because I am too dumb. Please ELI5 it to me then.

  3. I am stunningly ignorant and there's actually a huge untapped reserve of drag queens that dream about joining the Navy (and the Army, and the Marines) as long as their penchant for womanface performances ceases to be a barrier. This is so significant audience that the need to address it absolutely overrides any negative effects that can be caused by such outreach effort to traditional macho-man audience which has been the traditional target of the military recruting efforts before. Is that the case? Any data I could see that supports it?

Any other explanations?

man, this just conjured a kindof funny thought. What if in the future the thai hookers warn the locals about american navy crew being lady-boys and not real women? could make a decent boomer facebook meme outta that.

I mean, SSBNs dont tend to make many port calls, so I'm not sure this'd really be a "Boomer" meme.

Sorry, couldn't resist. I'm still disappointed the future USS Oklahoma is going to be a Virginia class rather than Columbia, so there won't be any "OK boomer" jokes about it.