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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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Sure, but the country does need things from the red tribe- like being willing to join the army during a general shortage of blue collar male labor- that the red tribe can just withhold if they feel like they aren’t getting a fair shake.

If the blue tribe needs red tribe warm bodies to fight blue tribe battles, most likely Red will just respond to calls to patriotism. But if they don't, there's always force (the draft).

I think a modern draft would be a disaster. The draft was bad in the 60s and 70s. It would be horrible today. The backlash and mass noncompliance would disgrace our nation.

Too bad we collectively expended all unpopular draft resources on fighting North Vietnam. To this day there's none left over for anything important.

The draft will never, ever happen. TPTB know that a draft which doesn’t exempt blacks will burn New York City and DC down simultaneously and a draft which does will result in widespread noncompliance and fragging.

will burn New York City and DC down simultaneously

Why is that certain? This is a community that has a high rate of general crime, but is otherwise highly atomized. They have been drafted before. Most are very much apolitical. Drafting would likely only happen in the event of war with China, and they sometimes have a contentious relationship with Asians anyway.

I wouldn’t say it’s certain, but pissing off young blue collar males specifically is highly likely to be expressed with ‘oh the nigs are burning the city down again’ in the specific case of highly concentrated and very badly educated urbanites(which big chunks of the black community are) in close proximity to seats of power.

You’re correct that the black community is not very politically aware, but that political lack of awareness is generally expressed through ‘of course we get the short end of the stick every time’, which is a bad combination with a policy like a draft which by its very nature is going to impact poor young men- the violent demographic- the hardest anyways. And to the nybbler’s suggestion of not formally but de facto exempting blacks that probably won’t stop either black draft riots(lots of these people tend to read anything except explicit favorable special treatment as discrimination when they’re pissed off which they will be because draft) or widespread red tribe resistance. You’d probably just get the cops getting out of the rioters way and pointing them at elite neighborhoods- after all, their kids aren’t getting exempted.

Draft riots are historically common and we know the black community rioting is a thing that happens from time to time. The draft would be a highly unpopular policy without recent precedent and the working class population is likely to view it as a beyond the pale onerous imposition.

Why is that certain?

Nothing is certain, but I'd say it's a very good bet. I'm pretty sure getting the public to comply with a draft requires more social trust than, in the words of the economist, "getting credit cards to work".

It won't exempt blacks. It will merely allow hardship exemptions, including exemptions for being a member of a marginalized class and whose ancestors were once held in an enslaved condition within the United States.

That would be my rough assessment as well.

Blue Tribe excels at soft control, but that does not translate into hard control. They win when they can isolate a situation and then drown it in "process". You can't isolate a draft; it's everywhere and all at once. Likewise for firearms confiscation, or even firearms registration for that matter, or arresting state governors.

There was the draft, in a previous society posessed of a great deal of social cohesion. That society no longer exists.

The draft doesn't require social cohesion (as we had in WWII), just government force (as we had during Vietnam)

The draft not working very well in Vietnam was why we got rid of it, though.

You can have broad based conscription(WWII), you can have hyper-limited conscription of ne’erdowells and people who opted in(GWOT featured a lot of troops who did not particularly want to be in the military), you can’t thread the needle.

The draft not working very well in Vietnam was why we got rid of it, though.

We got rid of it because we withdrew from Vietnam

I don't think press gangs are going to work in the US. Vietnam turned out the way it did for a reason.

The propaganda is going to have to get a lot better too, I could be convinced of domino theory and the commies being a legit threat, but the idea that China is more interested in my demise than Western elites at this point is a hard sell.