Enlisted men?
*NEVER* as Republican as one would think--and less so now over the span of the same period
They use to lean GOP but we're talking 55/45 not 70/30
The plural of anecdote isn't data, but one of my friends made recently is a vet from Iraq who saw some Shit, absolutely made his way out of the darkness as an angrier young man.
You know the sort of people he really can't stand? Insurrectionists and Nazis.
Federal law enforcement (unlike certain local PDs) *cannot STAND* those people either
I've known FBI agents--they're super square Dudely Do-Rights who hate law breakers and political extremists, period, left or right
The problem when your slogan becomes "ACAB" without a hint of irony is when you start slapping every authority figure under the status of "cop" and just sort of tip your hand by revealing the Bad Guys are Anyone Who Tells Me To Do Things.
absolutely
and also i think addressing policing through a variety of attrition policies has limitations and will at some point get met with police coup on municipal or state government which you’ll want the army on your side to address
No polling place I've ever been in my life has cops.
And after Harris was elected VP, a cascade of replacement elections had me voting close to 20 times in the next 18 months.
Ive worked several elections (I’m a blue voter in a VERY red area) and never seen a single cop except when they show up to vote. No uniforms, no weapons, & no hanging around, either.
The only guy I know still enlisted, in the Navy, is closer to an anarchist than anything. Loves his job though. Strange guy, but his heart's in the right place.
I think I have heard there is also a thing that they specifically did move more Republican in 2016 because this was the one demographic that was /genuinely/ pissed off over the Clinton email server thing?
For what the anecdata is worth. my brother (Air Force, enlisted, nominally Republican but hasn't voted R for president since... Bush I, I think) was legitimately pissed off about the email server thing, but he hated Trump even more. He voted 3rd party in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
In my experience in federal civil service the federal civil service was always more Republican than I expected but also I am hoping Schedule F is something they hear about because they also don't like electeds messing around with federal civil service (I was USDA & Air Force civilian civil service)
Anecdotal, but the ROTC guys I know from Cornell, who were never all that liberal in the first place (one is VERY pro-Israel), absolutely hate Trump. Hate him.
They don't like it much but yeah they are being dragged over, particularly the younger ones and, to the extent I can tell (small sample size), flag officers.
Then again there has always been a bigger chunk of liberal and outright leftist military members/veterans out there than people realize.
Look, you can be a progressive who likes to shoot machine guns and blow stuff up, and if you wanna get paid to do it the military’s the only game in town
Yeah. As a Texan, I hope this means we'll be able to shutdown Abbot's border stunting without too much hullabaloo soon; I know morale among the guards frogmarched into it is shockingly low; the only organizational enthusiasm seems to be from Abbot, ICE, and the regional NG commander |:T
