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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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Same as everywhere else, the people who made the decision are true believers who think this is a great idea for the Navy and/or for their moral/ideological goals.

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...

There's a weird tendency to personify institutions and act like principal-agent problems don't exist, like how people will tie themselves in knots trying to come up with explanations about how corporations with SJW institutional capture are actually profit-maximizing. Why would someone with a Navy recruitment job care more about "doing the best job possible to slightly improve Navy recruitment numbers" than "making the world a safe place for LGBTQ+ people"? Even more importantly, why wouldn't someone with such an ideology sincerely believe that he can do both? People are biased about the merits of their ideology in other circumstances, they don't turn that off when they're making decisions on behalf of an institution. They can tell themselves something like "This will boost recruitment by showing the Navy is an inclusive place for young people, anyone bigoted enough to object is an asshole who would cause problems anyway." and believe it.