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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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I didn't downvote, don't know either.

I'm still fairly confident that Southern White men are integral to the strength of the US military. Total numbers are one thing, boots on the ground are another. The primary sacrifices in war (and the key to victory) comes from those who are doing the fighting. Military enlistees includes maintenance, catering, admin and so on which are all important but secondary to the primary combat function.

See an article complaining that there aren't enough Blacks in combat arms, meaning they can't be officers, meaning they can't get high-ranking command positions: https://mwi.usma.edu/strategic-problem-army-doesnt-seem-care-african-americans-arent-branching-combat-arms/

This article says that US casualties in Iraq were predominantly White Southern men from working class backgrounds: https://www.baltimoresun.com/2005/10/30/iraq-war-casualties-mostly-white-working-class/

I think I'd maybe slightly disagree with that because occupations are fungible, but not really that strongly and I don't know much.

My much bigger disagreement is I don't understand why that undermines DBDr's original post. He's insulting the South for bad reasons, but (see math below) the south is like 9% "warrior" while the non-south is 6% "warrior", so it doesn't feel like the insults are motivated by, or really related to, that 'warrior class' aspect. And I think it's quite plausible (not true though) for the South to have significant negative cultural features while also providing 41% more of the military than you'd expect, and it'd reasonable to criticize those. If, hypothetically, the black community provided much more than its share of America's soldiers, I'd still support far-right statements about black culture because they're true!

occupations are fungible

Are they though? Are you ready to march off to war, not merely to some IT/intel-analysis job that befits our class but actual boots on the ground? I'm not.

What I'm trying to say is that the people he sneers at provide a useful service to the 'rich technocratic part of the country', who also have many serious flaws. They do things we don't want to, it's division of labour. A country is at its best when united, not divided.

Furthermore, OP didn't provide reasonable criticism. He's not saying 'and some, I suppose are good people'. He's saying that the South consists of unreconstructed (literally) traitors and some combination of proudly stupid hill people and pretentious faux-aristocratic hedonists. He's saying everything's really simple, that there's a broadly good North with some bad elements and a totally worthless South that needed/needs Forceful Correction. That's a gross and aggressive simplification. Imagine if I just valorised our special forces or the working class and demonized the elites like that, it would be a distortion. He even got modded, it was an egregious post.