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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 16, 2023

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The assumption is that most of the army and the cops are red. I personally believe they'll still mostly be on the establishment's side. You don't become a soldier to be a rebel.

The history of civil wars and military coups tells us that in conditions of political turmoil, military loyalty lies not in declared offices but in personal friendships and commands. Administrative leadership fades away in the confusion and what ends up mattering to who controls divisions is who actually leads the men.

This is why dictators so often bear the rank of colonel. The best position to hold if you want to take power by force is that of a relatively young, charismatic leader who has seen combat and is trusted by his troops. The man Burke calls "a charismatic lieutenant" in Reflections on the Revolution in France before his name came to be that of General Bonaparte.

In the context in question, the higher strata of officers are blue and the lower strata down to the troops are red. Which makes it difficult to see who would remain loyal to whom, especially without a particular circumstance. If the Joint Chiefs of Staff start ordering civilians rounded up and executed it's not the same as if they order a crackdown on a terrorist group, and yet in the conditions of confusion and disorder that usually lead to civil wars, the difference between these becomes extremely subjective.

But though as you say one shouldn't underestimate the loyalty that's been trained into these men (and the amazing inertia of power), one also shouldn't forget the special luster glory has to young military men. Many a rebel were soldiers.

To be honest, given the availability of weapons, military experience and defensible terrain, I predict a second american civil war would be an incomprehensible mess of warlords where distinctions like "democrat" and "republican" would soon become meaningless. That is how modern civil wars have looked like since the 50s, after all.

The conversation in JTarrou's infantry threads around the fact the in the modern military even very low-level officers rarely see combat seems relevant too -- I get the impression that the point of the spear sees the officer class in general as more something to be worked around than a group of people to whom they would feel personal loyalty.

The whole point of having a commissioned officer corps selected through a process other promoting from the ranks is to prevent large-scale organisation of the rank-and-file against the State. Even if JTarrou's Point of Empire crowd represent most of the combat power of the US military (as opposed to representing most of the type of combat power that happened to be most useful in Afghanistan and post-Saddam Iraq - note that the Point of Empire don't drive the tanks or fly the drones), they are split across multiple units (and even multiple armed services with different cultures) in different places such that they don't constitute an organised power bloc if the officer corps don't want them to.

FWIW, if the Boogaloo goes down, I don't think Red vs Blue is the right way of thinking about it. I think right now you have a 2x2 division in American politics - Right vs Left and pro vs anti establishment. The anti-establishment right is almost entirely Red, and the anti-establishment left is almost entirely Blue/Black, but there is much more crossover between tribe and politics when you look at the pro-establishment factions. The officer corps are mostly pro-establishment right, with a smattering of pro-establishment left in roles which are unlikely to involve commanding combat troops. It isn't clear how the infantry divide between pro-establishment right and anti-establishment right (not to mention that if things go down a lot of black soldiers will turn out to be aligned with the pro-establishment left) - the whole point of military culture is to make the grunts more obedient than they otherwise would be.

Right now, with the game played mostly through the ballot box, the pro-establishment right are getting creamed, both by the pro-establishment left and the anti-establishment right. But they still have c. 20% of the citizen population, c. 30% of the cash, c. 50% of the riflemen who can shoot straight (a group that, when it comes down to it, includes most but not all POGs), and the vast majority of the big guns. If the game is played through credible threats of political violence, then the pro-establishment right will be kingmakers.

You will notice that the I didn't mention the anti-establishment left. They only matter in that they can burn down buildings with the permission of the pro-establishment left, permission that will not be renewed any time soon because the pro-establishment left have realised that granting it was a mistake. Even though they have c. 25% of the population, they won't matter unless they wash, shave (both sexes), orient themselves to reality, and learn how to do at least one of make money, win elections, or shoot straight.