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Notes -
John Carter: The Bud Light Military
(Or, to use the better title from the comments: "Achilles Shrugged")
I'm not familiar with the author, who seems to be yet another online right substackker. He asserts that America's military capabilities are being stretched increasingly thin (Ukraine, possibly Israel, potentially Taiwan) while the armed forces are missing their recruiting targets. This is the background to his main claim: that the core demographics of America's fighting force ("the Scots-Irish of the Appalachian regions, the good ol’ boys of the South, and the farm boys of the Midwest. Hillbillies and rednecks") have become so sick of the sneering racist abuse that they aren't signing up to fight any more, and while the US Army has tried to go back to a more "traditional" style of ad where white men parachute out of a helicopter, it's failed to bring back the volunteers. Carter compares a previous ad for the US Army ("Emma", the girl with two moms who operates Patriot missile defense systems, roundly mocked at the time by comparisons to a Russian recruiting ad) to the new ad that dropped on 11/6, "Jump" (Twitter, YouTube). Carter parallels it with the attempt at brand rehabilitation like the one Bud Light tried after the Dylan Mulvaney boycott, and if the comment sections of Twitter, YouTube, and his article are anything to go by, it's not going to work either.
Well, I buy into it, but then again, I would.
It won't be the only tell, but I think this thesis would more or less be proven out if you began to see the same leviathan of three letter agencies and NGOs that appeared so often in the Twitter Files turn it's baleful gaze on any and all reporting that disincentives people from joining a woke military. Articles like this one at Newsweek may find themselves getting the Hunter Biden Laptop treatment, being utterly memory holed or suppressed on social media. Or maybe they'll pluck some low hanging fruit and throw a few poor tempered journalist into solitary confinement for raising awareness that the government hates you and you shouldn't fight for it.
That's the thing, isn't it? When the author equates Briseis with (waves hands) everything: the economy, housing unaffordability (including BlackRock namedrop), the degeneration of The American Woman, the lack of respect from all of society including the command hierarchy, it'll either resonate with a reader as a summary of all the wrongs that have happened lately, or be an unconvincing gish-gallop of vibes. It's not clear to me how much traction articles like this one will gain outside of the online twitter right. Is there any way to know?
These are all largely the same thing. From the perspective of the heterosexual male warrior-type, the ability to support and defend a woman/family is extremely important. He's not tying it in to everything, all of those seemingly disparate concepts roll straight back to being able to satisfy the drive for a woman to have kids with.
And now I'm reminded of a recent IRL conversation where someone made a similar point in the course of arguing that white, working-class Republican voters are fascists.
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I mean, it's a vibes based world. And it's impossible to avoid the vibes, as a normal white married male or female with kids, that all the institutions of this country now hate you. No matter where you traverse, you'll have you own bundle of malicious slights that didn't used to be there. Whether it's because you were extirpated from media, hobbies and fandoms you used to consider yourself a part of. Or because your kid's school district is teaching them nightmarishly evil things that seek to actively undermine every moral lesson you'd want your kids to learn. Or maybe it's just the relentless parade of celebrating everyone else's identity... except yours. Maybe it's how casually and nonchalantly every talking head on every radio station, news channel, or local newpaper blames nearly every social problem on you via privilege discourse. Maybe it's the way literally every single story you grew up with and learned moral lessons from has been purposely inverted. Not only do your ancestral tales not even feature your people, but they teach precisely the opposite morality.
Did turbo autist on 4chan really stop an invasion of Syria? No, I doubt it. I think that had more to do with Trump's reticence to start any new wars. Maybe he really does have good instinct. Although if I recall correctly, he did bomb/missile the shit out of Syria in a token response to the most likely faked gas attack. Even so, while that author probably has a different set of personal anecdotes to justify his vibes, it's impossible to avoid the vibes.
It’s really not a vibes-based world. It’s a team-based one where the teams are perfectly capable of mining the relevant Facts and Logic for their position. That this author chooses not to do so, and leans into the vibes, is not particularly encouraging.
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I don't view this as disproving anything. The existence of popular counter programming means little. Sure it might have stellar ratings. But as a proportion of content it's scant. It's also relentless maligned, lawfared, keeps shit canning it's most effective programming, and takes on more and more appearance of just being controlled opposition. It's either fake, or legally prohibited from living it's values. Which does a lot to undermine those values.
In my opinion, the existence of Fox News does no more to disprove my point than the existence of pirate radio in other oppressive regimes, no matter how many people desperately tune in to hear their values reflected and not feel alone and crazy. That some small counter programming exists doesn't change the fact that demoralization propaganda is being piped at you from literally every institutional organ of society 24/7. The small light in the darkness doesn't remove the vibes from the massive shroud of darkness hovering over every aspect of your life.
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