This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Failed to bring back the volunteers…in 5 days?
Does it not seem more likely that the US is at full employment and military pay is dogshit? Junior enlisted soldiers in the army are paid, it seems, less than $25,000 a year. There may be additional pay for various things, but given a young man (even with only a high school education) can make double that in some low skill jobs or triple (or quadruple) that in the trades, why would anyone become a soldier? In 2009 when there were no jobs anything was better than nothing. Today, blue collar work is in an extraordinary boom.
It’s interesting that many pieces note the last time there was such a big recruitment shortage in the military was in 1999. What else was the case in 1999? A booming US economy and a thirty year low in the unemployment rate. This seems like antiwoke opinion writers projecting their politics onto the more mundane material considerations that more likely affect military recruitment.
This is definitely a big component. I'm from a key recruiting demographic area (southern borderer whites and similar culture blacks, not a lot of jobs around) and over the 2000s and into the early 2010s a huge portion of the young men enlisted. Due to the massive amount of civilian contractor work available for people with a security clearance, bad job market, and lowered standards for the troop surge everybody and their dog enlisted.
It started seriously reducing in the early-mid 2010s, at first with the fracking boom when sitting in a company truck or hauling pipes in Texas or the Dakotas would make triple or quadruple in a season what a soldier makes in a year. Also there was a glut of 11B infantrymen coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan with no real job skills stuck working as mall cops, bouncers and corrections officers and telling all their younger siblings to do something else for a career.
Most subsequent cohorts of 18 y/os are going for learning a trade like pipefitting or electrical work and following plant shutdowns and startups around the country, doing a couple months insanely intensive work then just hanging out for a few months, on and off. Same story for seasonal tourist work waiting tables and guiding rich people that want to LARP as outdoorsmen in Alaska and Colorado.
If you're not planning to go to college anyway and think you're probably dying in your sixties, it's much more attractive to go with the higher paying job where you have some level of choice in where you work and what you do versus being Uncle Sam's bitch for years and getting paid peanuts at that.
I think the "troop surge" also did some damage. It was like a lite version of "McNamara's Morons" and all the meth tweakers, biker gang members, serial DUI offenders and Jerry Springer guest stars wandering around loudly crowing about their military status and still being general fuckups in life afterwards made it seem like less of a guarantee of a successful career than local civilian jobs, and did a real number on the amount of automatic respect one would get for having been in the military.
More options
Context Copy link
I have never known anyone to join the military because of pay. If anything, the military for many when I was younger was a way to receive training in some of the blue collar trades they would later join on discharge. Then of course some just joined to kick ass in Iraq (I was 21 when the Gulf War occurred.)
I was born and raised in the South fwiw, and though my own family also had its share of military service going back generations, I was, in my youth, much more a pacifist. I still did Peace Corps because you didn't just age up without serving your country in some way, or that was the thinking (and PC was in some way "serving" albeit that may have been my rationalization.)
Of course, times may have changed.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link