The Social Fabric Has Come Undone, Part II
You’ve got to wonder: if our trust in institutions isn’t what’s holding this country together, what is, then?
Anger. Unbridled anger. That’s what I felt when I saw this.
More surveillance footage has been made available showing what happened inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas last month, where 22 were murdered by a crazed psychopath.
Basically, not much happened, at least on the police side of the question. Despite hearing screams of children being slaughtered (graciously edited out of the video), the cops are standing in the hallway, waiting… for what, exactly? An order? Are we at the point where the screams of children aren’t enough to mobilize our “finest” into action without being told specifically what to do?
Rod Dreher had this to say about the symbolic significance of the footage:
Watching this, I felt that this is a metaphor for our country now, and our civilization. We can plainly see things falling apart, and children in danger from these damn groomers who want to destroy their psyches and their bodies — yet nobody does anything meaningful. The one politician in the West who takes strong action to keep this infection from his nation’s children, Viktor Orban, is widely denounced in Europe for it. Thankfully, some American GOP leaders, like Gov. Ron DeSantis, are pushing back — but it’s going to take crowds of angry moms and dads in the streets to hold these corrupt elites accountable, and force them back. As I mentioned here the other day, some states are moving to allow young teenagers to seek cross-sex hormones and the rest, without parental consent.
If we were not a demoralized country, there would be mass protests in the streets, and the politicians, school board members, activists, doctors, and others behind this evil would beat a hasty retreat. But we are not that country. Most of us sit in the hallway while evil people do unspeakable things to our children.
I agree with Dreher: this country is demoralized. But I don’t think this is why there aren’t mass protests in the streets. Dreher, by his own admission, focuses on culture, so his analysis tends to be oriented in that direction. I think the answer is more practical. Rather, despite all our problems, life’s still fairly comfortable in the United States, at least compared to the rest of the world. Despite the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) report coming in at a whopping 9.1%, inflation is still far less severe than it is in other countries in the developed world. America is currently in a place where you can kind of sort of pretend bad things aren’t happening, especially if you belong to the professional-managerial class, because for the most part, our needs and wants are being met. They just cost more.
As I explained a few entries ago, until the issue of debt becomes something we can no longer willfully ignore, awful things can happen to this country and we’ll still manage to muddle along with some semblance of normalcy. The more our culture and politics has come to resemble professional wrestling, the more important it is to preserve kayfabe. Otherwise, the whole system comes crashing down. One reason why professional wrestling isn’t as popular as it was almost a generation ago is because it’s become much harder to preserve kayfabe. As you might expect, it’s become less interesting to watch.
One thing which can no longer be faked is the way Americans feel about their institutions. Americans have never, in living memory, trusted our institutions all that much, but its a safe bet to conclude we’ve never had so little trust in our institutions than we do right now:
Not a single institution gained trust. They almost all lost it:
You’ve got to wonder: if our trust in institutions isn’t what’s holding this country together, what is, then? It certainly isn’t a religious faith, nor is it patriotism. The most trustworthy institution in America today is small business, which gives you a hint as to what that thread might be that’s keeping our social fabric intact.
The next two institutions most Americans still have great confidence in are the military and police. However, even these two institutions have suffered a big hit. Since 1993, America’s confidence in law enforcement has dipped below 50% only twice - 2020 after the death of George Floyd in police custody and 2022. In the three decades Gallup has consistently polled Americans on their confidence in the police, the two times half of respondents didn’t say they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in them came in just the last two years. We’re currently in the midst of a crime surge sure to get worse in the years to come. If that doesn’t tell you something about how disorderly and violent our future will become, I’m not sure what will.
The military is particularly eye-opening, because our men and women in uniform have, for decades, been something of a sacred cow for the American public. Just a few years ago, it seemed like the public’s faith in the military was unshakeable, but the results of this survey prove nothing lasts forever. What’s especially eye-opening is that the biggest confidence drop in the armed forces came from Republicans, who have historically been its biggest supporters (largest changes highlighted in white):
Just as it speaks volumes Republicans and the Right are losing confidence in the military, it speaks equal volumes that Democrats, historically more skeptical of the institution, have come to trust the military more, close to even with Republicans. It says something about the politicization of the military and how it’s come under firm control of the Regime and, ideologically, aligned more with the Left and the Democratic Party. I warned a few months back how the military is increasingly coming to be viewed as a weapon to be wielded in the culture wars against “Red” America or any Regime dissident. As we all lose trust in the police, the Left, more and more, eyes the military as posing greater utility.
The more disorderly society becomes and the more rancorous the Regime’s dissidents get, the more likely it is the military could be called upon to play some role in establishing order or enforcing the Regime’s dictates. It seems unconscionable, but the Left didn’t pursue a full-blown cultural revolution in the military for no reason. They did it so the people with guns would be on their side in the coming upheaval. Keep in mind, 25 years ago, this was what the Regime was worried about:
These isolating trends are occurring amid broader cultural changes in the military—notably the politicization of the officer corps. Of course, military culture has always had a conservative streak, just as journalism has always had an element of anti-authoritarianism. I suspect, however, that today's officers are both more conservative and more politically active than their predecessors.
Admittedly, the evidence is hazy and the data are skimpy—in part because "conservative" is almost impossible to define. Nonetheless, the few indications available today are strikingly at odds with the conclusions Janowitz reached. Janowitz found that many officers continued to avoid open party preferences, but also detected a trend toward more liberals among military officers. He found the military becoming more representative of society, with a long-term upward trend in the number of officers "willing to deviate from traditional conservative identification." And he detected a correlation between higher ranks and greater intensity of conservative attitudes.
Today the available evidence indicates that all these trends have reversed. The military appears to be becoming politically less representative of society, with a long-term downward trend in the number of officers willing to identify themselves as liberals. Open identification with the Republican Party is becoming the norm. And the few remaining liberals in uniform tend to be colonels and generals, perhaps because they began their careers in the draft-era military. The junior officer corps, apart from its female and minority members, appears to be overwhelmingly hard-right Republican and largely comfortable with the views of Rush Limbaugh. Air Force Colonel Charles Dunlap observed in a recent essay published by the Air Force Academy, "Many officers privately expressed delight that" as a result of the controversy over gays in the military, the Reserve Officers Training Corps program is producing "fewer officers from the more liberal campuses to challenge [the Air Force officers'] increasingly right-wing philosophy."
Today, you have those who speak on behalf of the military saying openly what the institution needs is more, not less, politics [bold mine]:
In practice, that looks like retiring the military’s ambiguous “apolitical norm” and replacing it with new practical rules of thumb about what topics are off-limits for those in uniform. We don’t want a military that is “apolitical”; we instead want a military that avoids partisanship, institutional endorsements, and electoral influence. Those topics should stay off limits, but politics are too critical to be entirely ignored by the military. The military is a political creature — it’s time for it to consider what that means in a more practical and appropriate manner.
More:
Indeed, following the death of George Floyd, it took nearly a week before any of the service chiefs released statements to their service members about the killing or the unrest that had consumed the nation — although for at least a few of them, that silence was almost surely informed by heavy pressure from Secretary of Defense Esper to refrain from commenting on these issues at that moment. In fact, it wasn’t until after Kaleth O. Wright – in his own words “a black man who happens to be Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force” – posted a powerful Twitter thread on June 1stthat they did so. Since then, a flood of senior military officers have released statements and videos to their units, affirming the core values of the military, condemning racism, and promoting diversity and inclusion both in the military and in society — issues that, we hasten to add, should not be seen as political and instead rather as the ultimate comparative advantage of a capable U.S. military and society.
In response, I said in an earlier entry [bold added]:
There’s some serious mental gymnastics at work here. No matter what anyone thinks of what happened to George Floyd, there’s no evidence, then and now, that his death was the result of racism and insufficient diversity and inclusion in the military and society. The only reason why military leaders felt the need to chime in on the matter is because it became a moral panic which whipped up an alarming, self-destructive frenzy and nearly ripped the nation apart. However, instead of reassuring Americans that they stood ready to provide support and render assistance necessary to restoring order (which is exactly what the military’s role would’ve been, had they been called into action), military leadership took sides. Granted, they took the side which had the most popular support, but, in doing so, they validated the burning, looting, and, in some cases, killing, in the name of George Floyd. It’s not often the military provides cover to chaos and disorder, but that’s what happened in June 2020.
This happened even as 58% of Americans supported the deployment of troops in the streets to stop the rioting. This open display of defiance towards the president, who never gave the order for troops to deploy, and self-righteous indifference towards Americans victimized by the mayhem of that crazy month two years ago, should tell you where the military stands in all of this and why Republicans and Independents are losing confidence in the military, while Democrats are gaining it.
It’ll be interesting to see this evolve in the coming years. For now, I feel uncomfortably confident in saying that I expect the military will continue to gain the trust of the Left as the Regime tightens its control of the institution. Like most of us, they don’t have much faith in our institutions overall, so it should be very concerning that the one institution they’re gaining confidence in are those charged with exercising violence on our behalf. History shows the military is often turned against its own people because, when it comes to oppression and enforcing tyrannical rule, nobody does it better.
Just another one of those things that haven’t happened to us yet, but you can see it from here.
Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.
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