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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27198 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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So now we will be having New Atheist influencers peddling this stuff harder (and old fighters for Pure Reason like Gad Saad will be asked to pipe it down with habitual anti-whitey remarks). We'll also be seeing more "based" recruiting ads for the Army. As Trump has proven, the Republican base only asks for tokens of respect, nothing more, so I expect this vulgar pandering to work well.

That this is what they will be trying to do seems to be the consensus in the dissident sphere, whether it will work is a subject of some debate. Between the crazy activist types already being in positions of influence, and people already throwing jokes like "welp! there's white guys in military recruitment ads, looks like we're going to war!" around, the result doesn't look obvious to me. The failure of Bud Light to do damage control might be the blueprint for what's about to happen to the American establishment.

The problem is that these people were a little bit too successfully dunked upon in years where great power conflict seemed less probable, and warm bodies less needed, than in the near future.

Right, and the problem with reversing course is that while they don't require more than a few tokens of respect, the dunking may have gone so far that there might also be a "we're sorry" needed to bring them back into the fold. It's not a lot, but I doubt it's possible to provide without having the blue tribe rebel.

the result doesn't look obvious to me

It’s more of a dilemma, though. You might not want to join an institution that you perceive as hostile to you, but you also probably don’t want your military, which is also the most powerful military in the world, to be staffed by your enemies.

If the US military goes blue top to bottom, any kind of red tribe insurrection in the US becomes substantially more difficult.

In any case, all they need is Donald (upon returning to office if he makes it back) to say that they should join the military and it’ll be fine, as Dase said.

If the US military goes blue top to bottom, any kind of red tribe insurrection in the US becomes substantially more difficult.

Wouldn't you argue that optimizing for insurrection conditions, by adding your body to the mutiny pile at that, is a ludicrous political agenda in any case? I would. Like, this is some 1907 Russian sailor shit.

I don’t know if they still do, but a few years ago French nationalists were very concerned about the ever growing numbers of Maghrebi soldiers in the French military (it’s France, so data on how many there actually are is extremely scarce). Germans are constantly hand-wringing that the Bundeswehr essentially consists of BND/BfV agents and neo-Nazis with little in-between (but plenty of overlap). US red tribers have trusted certainly since the early-mid Cold War that the military is if not a conservative organ then certainly a red-adjacent organ, at least in the enlisted ranks.

but you also probably don’t want your military, which is also the most powerful military in the world, to be staffed by your enemies.

I might. What good does it do me to "staff" the military if people like me are cannon fodder, and all the officers are my enemies?

If the US military goes blue top to bottom, any kind of red tribe insurrection in the US becomes substantially more difficult.

Thing is - if they could achieve that, they already would have. Arguably that was the whole point of these weird woke military recruitment ads. The fact that they're reversing course shows it was not a viable strategy.

It's also interesting to consider if blue tribe grunts would even remain blue for very long, if they had to do a tour of duty in a war zone.

In any case, all they need is Donald (upon returning to office if he makes it back) to say that they should join the military and it’ll be fine, as Dase said.

Maybe, maybe not. Trump was also very pro-vaccine.

Trump was also very pro-vaccine.

Trump was out of office by the time the vaccine became widely available. I think the counterfactual where he’s constantly tweeting about how great the vaccine is and bragging about it in every daily press briefing is quite different.

Again, it's possible, but you're way to certain of this, and you're fatally misunderstanding the entire Trump phenomenon if you think this is a sure thing. It's not a cult of personality, he's popular because he's good at pandering. There was a brief period where it looked like his base might turn on him, and it was when he had some Iranian guy killed. Nothing came out of it, so people moved on, but I'm really not sure if he could get people to reenact the Bush era.

There was a brief period where it looked like his base might turn on him, and it was when he had some Iranian guy killed.

You mean the immensely popular decision that 85% of Trump’s voters approved of (vs 70% disapproval from Democrats)?

Very online dissident rightists aren’t ‘the base’, boomers in MAGA hats who care about Israel, abortion, bringing jobs back from Jyna, The Wall and trans bathroom policies are.

Again, you're talking about the attack itself, and I'm talking when people thought this meant another war.

I think everyone in the foreign policy establishment (including neocons) knows that war with Iran is unwinable. Nuclear and other military sites are extremely fortified and very well dispersed around the country, the military is relatively well trained and equipped, the population is very large, it’s a middle income rather than poor country, commanders have been battle tested, the IRGC has extensive experience in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The US military hid in their little bases in Afghanistan and Iraq because they were too scared that more than a couple hundred US casualties a year would kill the occupation outright; invading Iran would mean tens of thousands of US casualties. The US knows it and the Iranians know it, which is in part why they’re so openly doing what they’re doing.

The main risk to the leadership in an extreme escalation scenario is some kind of brief naval conflict and targeted, Libya-style air strikes on the leadership in Tehran that kill enough mullahs and politicians to cause some panic. Boots on the ground isn’t going to happen.

But we were talking about whether or not Trump's supporters will follow him anywhere he goes. Whatever the establishment thinks about the war is irrelevant to whether or not Trump supporters were briefly wondering "oh shit, are we going to another war?", and what their reaction would be if they did.

One important difference today might be the lower percentage of young Americans eligible for military service. 77 percent of Americans age 17-24 can’t hack it, an increase from 71 percent six years ago.

That stat becomes a lot less alarming when you remember that 50% of Americans that age are women.

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