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[Sirus]

Except the top brass has been targeted as well, if I remember correctly. Politicians or not, they can't be happy with the way Trump can go from singing an officer's praises to acting as though he's never liked them in the blink of an eye.

[nenjin]

Except the top brass has been targeted as well, if I remember correctly. Politicians or not, they can't be happy with the way Trump can go from singing an officer's praises to acting as though he's never liked them in the blink of an eye.

But this hasn't occurred in the Republican party with a few exceptions. If there are gold digging Republicans out there willing to kiss Trump's ass and eat whatever shit he flings at them in order to advance themselves, would that not be true of the military leadership? Or are they so secure in their positions they don't play the same game as the rest of politicians?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Military brass doesn't have much to gain from RNC endorsements, so far as I can see. They've already got serious power on their own, even retired like Mattis is, and hence why Trump fucking around with military authority is a dangerous game. I don't think there's anything unusual about it, historically speaking. Why be concerned with the President's games when you've got men with guns, no matter how you use them? But deploying them domestically against protestors crosses a line, starts fucking with those guys and the confidence their people have in them.

[Dostoevsky]

At the high-level officer realm, military is basically a separate civil service with its own realms of politics and desires, and doesn't neatly map onto the usual liberal/conservative spectrum. That civil service structure can also make it harder to heavily politicize, as it's more difficult to do the sort of 'house cleaning' or other threats that appointees do in other executive agencies with weaker bureaucracies.

Also the case that it's got a lot of its own long-standing corruption going on, and rocking the boat can be bad for that regardless of being 'good' rocking or 'bad' rocking. Also also, like other 'unelected' folks they often have sensitivity to their image & reputation and so try to mitigate obviously awful things. (see: Supreme Court)

Things are a little different at lower levels. Anecdotally, I've heard that it sort of varies by branch/unit as to how much MAGA there is.

[SalmonGod]

My more cynical take.

The thing that separates Trump most from previous administrations isn't as much the things he does.  It's the things he says.  He says things that you're really not supposed to say.  And I don't mean the fascist rhetoric.  That only tars himself and his party in electoral politics.  I mean things like openly stating to press "We have the oil.  We left troops behind only for the oil."  That rips masks off everyone, depriving them of their rhetorical plausible deniability.  They don't like that.

Elected officials have a different set of concerns regarding how they position themselves in relation to a figure like Trump than an unelected official like someone high ranking in the military or intelligence communities.  Unelected officials aren't concern with maintaining the energy of a specific voting base.  They just want to stay out of the spotlight so federal budgets can continue feeding them endless money without issues, and so they can keep recruiting up.  Now you've got a whole generation of kids who tell military recruiters "Sorry I don't want to work for an oil company".  Or after these protests genuinely weighing the possibility that if they join up, they might be ordered to fire on their own friends and family.

[nenjin]

Your more cynical take makes the most sense to me. Staying under the public's radar is in the military's best interest, so the money can continue to flow.

[scriver]

The military is generally not themselves the ones who profit from American warism, though, are they? I guess I might be overlooking how much of the military-industrial complex might be run by old military rather than business types.

[Dostoevsky]

I think your take isn't necessarily conflicting with mine, SalmonGod.

And as to profiting... there is indeed quite a revolving door between the military industry and the military service. And the military's budget these days has only gotten more gigantic. Possible case-in-point: military using COVID funds both to make sure their industries keep running, and in some cases literally just buying more military gear.

(There is something of a theory to that former bit - since the military may be your only customer, even if the govt isn't actively buying e.g. a tank they have to finance the continued existence of the industry. Y'know, the sort of thing that we should have been doing for COVID shutdown & other businesses, but I digress...)

[Lord Shonus]

The important thing is that the military structure is almost wholly immune to attempts by the President to shove yes-men in charge. He can shuffle the top assignment slots, but the only people that can fill those slots are high-ranking officers with 30+ years in the service. That produces problems in and of itself, but largely insulates them from Presidential whim, and prevents a loyalism mindset.

[nenjin]

The military is generally not themselves the ones who profit from American warism, though, are they? I guess I might be overlooking how much of the military-industrial complex might be run by old military rather than business types.

Consider that the military is the first in position during a conflict to benefit from back room negotiations about contracting, rebuilding, sourcing. Wars generate demand for war-time goods like weapons, uniforms, supplies, all of which can be sourced from American companies. And hey, if a 4 Star General has a connection to a business that produces these things and they get preferential treatment during the bidding process, and that 4 Start General happens to get a nice little kickback when the contract is awarded to their buddy....

It's essentially the same crap that happens with lobbyists in regular civilian governance vis-a-vis congresscritters. The difference being it's under an even deeper layer of government that is really only accountable to the Congressional Budget Office and Inspector General, IIRC. When a private American company is building a new fighter jet for example, and wants a multi-billion dollar contract to make them for US Armed Forces, it's the top brass they make their sales pitch to.

[Madman198237]

(There is something of a theory to that former bit - since the military may be your only customer, even if the govt isn't actively buying e.g. a tank they have to finance the continued existence of the industry. Y'know, the sort of thing that we should have been doing for COVID shutdown & other businesses, but I digress...)

This isn't a theory---the US military forbids a lot of things from being exported, and since civilians can't own things like modern MBTs, fighter jets, or plutonium pits for nuclear weapons, they have to make sure that the infrastructure stays put even when their demands (say, for new tanks) are minimal or even nonexistent, because it would be slightly embarrassing if, say, we didn't maintain the industrial know-how as to what must be done to build tanks quickly and efficiently, and then ended up in a war where we needed more tanks.

And for what happens when you let a specialized industry like that dissolve for even as little as 15 years, well...look at the WWII German navy. Hideously inefficient ships (Bismarck, with protection, firepower, and speed inferior or merely equal to several 1920s designs yet a displacement very nearly fifty percent larger) with several nearly crippling design mistakes because the know-how for building warships properly had vanished due to the Treaty of Versailles.

[Dostoevsky]

-snip-

Yep, I agree, I was just being rather flippant in my phrasing. Sorry 'bout that.

[Madman198237]

-snip-

Yep, I agree, I was just being rather flippant in my phrasing. Sorry 'bout that.

Not intended as a serious criticism, mostly an excuse to rant in short form about the Bismarck

[Rusty]

My more cynical take.

The thing that separates Trump most from previous administrations isn't as much the things he does.  It's the things he says.  He says things that you're really not supposed to say.  And I don't mean the fascist rhetoric.  That only tars himself and his party in electoral politics.  I mean things like openly stating to press "We have the oil.  We left troops behind only for the oil."  That rips masks off everyone, depriving them of their rhetorical plausible deniability.  They don't like that.

Elected officials have a different set of concerns regarding how they position themselves in relation to a figure like Trump than an unelected official like someone high ranking in the military or intelligence communities.  Unelected officials aren't concern with maintaining the energy of a specific voting base.  They just want to stay out of the spotlight so federal budgets can continue feeding them endless money without issues, and so they can keep recruiting up.  Now you've got a whole generation of kids who tell military recruiters "Sorry I don't want to work for an oil company".  Or after these protests genuinely weighing the possibility that if they join up, they might be ordered to fire on their own friends and family.

Consider that the portion of society that is participating in the protests is not, and largely never has been, the demographic that is enlisting in the military.  The military is disproportionately rural.  Putting aside whether they agree or disagree with the message (they do), they're generally not going to be part of the kind of protest that gripped, say, Minneapolis.  So when the average enlisted person thinks of scenarios where they might be ordered to fire on friends and family, a protest like this is not the scenario that comes to mind.  The prospect of riot control in the city is not something that gets them fired up.

[Max™]

When you look at census numbers you would find something like 10% of rural adults are veterans while only 7% of urban adults are, accordingly you might think there is a significantly larger number of rural enlistments, but we're looking at 10% of less than a fifth of the population vs 7% of the rest of the population aren't we?