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Ranger, you’re not anywhere near cynical enough. All it took was 9/11 and the plebs in middle America were lining up outside every army recruitment center. You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think patriotism for a war against China can’t be easily manufactured.
Eh, I’m more embedded in the bubble of people actually enlist and like half of them now root for Iran in international sporting events. The chuds will never be pro-China, but ‘let’s you and him fight, I ain’t joining the 7th fleet’ is entirely plausible.
Right wingers root for Iran in international sporting events? What bubble are you talking about?
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And all it would take today is Donald Trump (Jr.) saying 'Fuck China boys, they stole your jobs, grab your rifles and let's go.' If the war starts during a democratic administration, on the other hand...
"Fuck the Dems, they stole the election and are tied up with China RN"?
The rest could stay the same ;)
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The difference here is that the proles think the elites hate the country the proles are fighting for, much less the proles themselves. Proles fight for a country that their kin can succeed in, even if some haliburton exec profits more. Proles will not fight for a country that actively sneers and spits on them. White americans still have suburbs wherein the dream of an america that fights for them lives large, the modern scouser thinks Labour will sell his daughters for ISIS votes.
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I mean, this is how it's going to go: "Wait, so those coastals in their faggoty white collars are now going to be forced, from their Harvard mouths, to extend us some fucking courtesy, and this is a bad thing... why?"
US was significantly less divided in 2001 than now. Also,
Any more or less than it was for Vietnam?
Are you implying that consent will be manufactured by "extending the plebs courtesy"?
By what metric? US dividedness could well be argued to have the Shepard tone nature. Also, it might be worth noting that we are talking about the UK here.
To begin with, if anything the level of division regarding US adversaries seems to be lower now. Back during the cold war, it's widely known that Western societies were suffused with Soviet sympathisers. Nowadays, even on a contrarian forum like this one, the vast majority of people is enthusiastically aligned with the establishment position on Russia and China to the point that disagreeing will get you a wall of downvotes and actual social censure.
Wasn't the dissent there carried by a faction of elites, rather than plebs? They've learned their lesson; Harvard kids will probably not get drafted again.
I routinely and vociferously disagree with the elite consensus on these issues, but based on the number of downvotes it seems like there are more people opposed to criticism of nuclear power.
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No, I'm implying that any consent that can be manufactured is going to be very limited. The entire reason the elite has hollowed out the military is because expanding the military (and the manufacturing base needed to support it) also necessarily expands the middle class, which since they'll ultimately use some of that money to enact politics the elite doesn't like is obviously a challenge to their power.
Thus I predict a reaction of "oh look at that, all of a sudden you do need us after all; well, we don't come cheap any more, cost of living has risen mainly because of you so there will be no more of that and the F-15s you would want to use to force us to go anyway seem to be occupied at the moment". I don't think they'd sign up for the wages they pay now and, while a massive salary for a private [more for officers] that far outstrips what Buc-Ees can offer would fix that problem real quick, that puts the elite in a tough spot as far as what they want to fund: their foreign policy goals, or their domestic ones.
I don't believe that, in the 1970s, the urban power bases were even capable of outright saying they wanted to wage war on the half of the nation they don't like because they don't share the same aesthetics. By contrast the sitting President today has said outright that this would be desirable.
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Selective service just got expanded ro include women.
if you think the draft was unpopular when it was men coming back in body bags, then you haven’t seen anything yet
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Yep, the actual plebs beat up anti war protestors.
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The GWOT was a tempest in a teacup compared to any war with China. Bush didn't draft civilians, didn't mobilize industry, he and his successors funded the whole thing with debt. One could calculate that going off to fight was relatively low-risk - you have all the equipment, training, fire support and medivac on your side. You go on patrols and come back to a nice base somewhere fortified. The other guy has an AK, maybe an RPG and some dodgy roadside bombs.
China is a completely different story. That's America's biggest trading partner, Australia's, the EU's. Suddenly stores are empty of all kinds of things. People who thought they were comfortably retired wake up and see that their portfolio is down 30-40% and that the government has taken over much of the economy to regulate prices. Even the US Air Force relies on Chinese parts for its air to ground weapons, everyone else is going to run into massive supply chain problems.
Fighting China and Russia won't be like the wars in the Middle East, it will be absolute carnage. Massive swarms of drones hunting people down day and night, constant shelling, digging trenches, a 'safe' base getting hammered by missiles from thousands of kilometres away. There is no medivac, the other guy has the same tools as you do. One sunk destroyer = one year of Afghanistan deaths. It will be a real test of endurance on both sides even at the conventional level.
A short term burst of patriotic enthusiasm will dry up very quickly when people realize how many casualties are being taken and appreciate that conscription isn't just a joking matter. It won't be happening to other people, it'll be happening to us. All of this pain needs some kind of justification, leaders need to credibly explain why victory must be achieved at any cost.
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The aftermath of 9/11 by itself irreversibly damaged to middle class' willingness to sacrifice themselves for their country, and this is without touching the cultural humiliation during the 2 decades since. If you think anyone is signing up to fight for you, you're in for a surprise.
“Irreversibly damaged” like Vietnam, of course? We shall see. As this post itself discusses, the value of propaganda is hard to underestimate, many men have fought far more bravely for far less and with far less reason to want to do so in the past. If men are necessary to fight China, they can be made to want to do so, and there is very little anyone can do to stop that.
Those men of years past didn’t have twitter.
Elite human capitals propaganda is garbage these days. Haven’t you noticed? “The left can’t meme” is a truism for a reason
“Republicans are weird” seems to be working.
It's a forced meme followed by another forced meme that it's working. What I heard about Vance this morning from the mainstream was about him pouncing on Walz for claiming to have carried a gun in a war zone.
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In what context?
It does seem to be a popular meme on reddit, where literally anything critical of Republicans has had a solid chance of becoming a popular meme for approaching twenty years.
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Not that I've seen.
If there's any reaction, I'd likely chalk it up to being stunned and confused at the blatant astroturfing or utter hypocrisy, as the political side that's been using the term 'Weird' as a badge of pride for decades has now turned around and used it as an insult.
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It’s increased military enlistment amongst whites? That’s strange
Does ‘the left can’t meme’ only apply to memes targeting white men?
That’s a good question, but I’m not a memeaologist so I can’t say
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Those men couldn't even stop their countrymen from rioting 4 years ago. What makes you think they're going to fight an enemy that actually shoots back?
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