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The rivals were already calling shots in the institution. The two-mothers, non-binary woman ad came from inside the house.
By your own account police departments are red-triber enclaves. But I think blue states made their displeasure felt after George Floyd and other such incidents. Budgets were cut, people were made uncomfortable enough that older cohorts took retirement...
The reason "DEI" has taken over as a general online-conservative curse-word is cause it allows them to express the insight that not all institutions need to be taken over from the bottom-up.
Police have been doing a lot of organized demonstration of their disapproval, though. By staying in the force and simply refusing to do their jobs, in a bid to prove how much they actually mattered. It's been hard to ignore, not that their governments haven't tried.
If white people exile themselves from the military, the woke mindset, I think, will suddenly sympathize with it more. They're going to start wanting to pay soldiers more and it's going to become our most dearly beloved institution instead of an evil tool of oppression. All leaving does is surrender yet another avenue of control to that camp. Even if there's already a relative top-heavy disparity in power, it would only get worse. If there's ever to be a reversal, it would happen a lot quicker if the entire ground level composition of the military wasn't comprised of woke-preferred individuals. Just like with colleges- that's how you set yourself up to lose an institution for more than just the current day, but for generations.
The military is one of the conservatives' last bases of power, even if their opponents pull the strings, it still has a high degree of conservative symbolic meaning and representation in the lower ranks in particular. Willingly ceding that leaves them with nothing but a bunch of alienated and isolated white dudes with no sense of unity. Seems a lot easier to maneuver around. What's left, farming?
Retirements spiked. Part of the "success" of the strike was forcing cities to work with less experienced cops or to try to hire new ones.
That's assuming what some people like about the military (and police) isn't inherently offensive to progressive mindsets. It requires the belief that the American empire is good and that coercing the "oppressed" like the Houthis - aka people whose maliciousness outstrips their capacity for warfare - into acting in its interests is acceptable.
I can accept they want to take over the military - because that's how totalizing ideologies work - but that is not the same as actually valuing it.
The sort of people drawn in by the "two mommies" ad were a) not likely to join in the first place and b) were likely not going to be as reliable in the event that some Oct. 7th thing drew the US into war.
Fair.
Police retirements spiked, but famously so did those in every profession.
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