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Confidence in U.S. Military Lowest in Over Two Decades (infosec.pub)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/politics

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

by Mohamed Younis

Story Highlights

Public confidence in the U.S. military continues to decline
Drops seen across party groups, but Republicans remain most confident
Independents least likely to express confidence this year

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans are now less likely to express “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the U.S. military, with a noticeable decline that has persisted for the past five years. The latest numbers are from a June 1-22 Gallup poll that also captured record lows in public confidence in several public institutions.

...

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[–] Hazdaz 42 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The wording of this question is strange.

What do they mean by "confidence"?

Confidence that they could utterly obliterate any other military on the planet? There is no question that the US military is miles aheead of any one else.

Confidence that our military leaders have democracy and the nation's best interests at heart? That's far more cloudy seeing as I think many realize that a LOT of people in the military are conservative and I have zero doubt that at least some of them are compromised and are MAGAt-loyalists.

Confidence that our military spending is helping bankrupt the country? Extremely confident in that.

Confidence in thinking that we jump to start pointless wars simply because it is so easy for us to do so? Also extremely confident in that. If all you have is a hammer, then everything starts to look like a nail.

Define confidence.

[–] TokenBoomer 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Exactly, if anything I have too much confidence in the American military

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 5 points 1 year ago

Conference in institutions is a multidimensional concept which generally refers to citizens' assessments or beliefs that several types of institutions such as political institutions, economic institutions, and social and cultural institutions, as well as their representatives, will at least do no harm to or best serve public interests.

This might be the first quote from my quantitative and qualitative research methods MA course I've ever been able to use in public. I asked that question back in 2018 after we did an independent study of government post 2016 (Trump Administration).

[–] Vamanos 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Agreed on all counts. The question is way too abstract to draw any meaningful conclusions from it. I don’t even know why they would bother posing the question or printing the results. Everything about the original is just meaningless.

[–] Hazdaz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Welcome to modern "journalism".

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 4 points 1 year ago

Gallup has asked the exact same question since 1975.

[–] GiddyGap 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree, but maybe the ambiguity and subjectivity of the word "confidence" is the point.

It's like when researchers measure the "happiest country in the world." Happiness is subjective, but that's the whole point. Whatever makes you happy is happiness and an objective, rigid definition would compromise the research. Maybe it's the same with "confidence"?

[–] Hazdaz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think a few of us are on the same page that it is purposefully vague, but that vagueness also makes the results nearly meaningless. Maybe not totally, but far more than if they had specific questions.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's not necessarily meaningless as there's value in tracking the change in the measure. Even if the objective measure is not as useful.

[–] SheeEttin 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's an open-ended opinion question.

[–] Hazdaz 6 points 1 year ago

That's the way I see it, but if you do that, then the results you get will be nearly meaningless.

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Who have no confidence in the U.S. Military?

I have no confidence in the Supreme Court, low confidence in Congress, mild confidence in the Executive, but high confidence in the U.S. Military.

[–] Purplexingg 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I'm confused by this too. Everyone I've talked to has just expressed concern in regards to who's running the military, the direction its internal politics are going, sexual assault issues. I've never met anyone who thinks it couldn't execute its mission properly. As a veteran, trust me people, there are some white-hot shit people at the tip of the spear and running all the way down it too. There's shit bags for sure but I'm pretty confident in it meeting most expectations.

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Throughout nearly all of the past 48 years, Republicans have been the most likely to express confidence in the military, and they remain so today -- but the rate has declined by over 20 percentage points in three years, from 91% to 68%.

So it is MAGA Republicans upset the military didn't support Trump's insurrection from the looks of it. Also probably enforcing vaccine standards.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fox keeps yelling that the military is woke and getting weaker because of its wokeness.

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The Department of Defense has been the most progressive division of the U.S. Government since it was created.

It was the first U.S. Government division to allow all black units (1778), the first to allow remote absentee voting by mail (1864), the first to allow women to serve equal to men in the draft (1914, yes skilled women were elisted into non combat military roles in WWI & WWII), the first U.S. Government division to integrate in 1948, began accepting lgbtq members silently in 1993 and openly in 2010.

As a left leaning military veteran it floors me that so many young progressives have a negative view of military service. The amount of humanitarian service opportunities I had during my time serving was incredibly, far more than you would see in the Peace Corps.

I was on the ground in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I helped built a school in Kabul Afghanistan in 2008, I worked logistics on Operation Tomadachi to aide Japan after the 2011 earthquake.

That doesn't even touch that progressives in the military promote faster on average and become the best leaders. Eisenhower being a major progressive as was Theodore Roosevelt.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Young progressives are not the ones watching Fox and hearing that the military is weak because it's woke.

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not sure many young progressives are ever exposed to what the military is like unless they come from military families.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You're focused on young progressives for some reason. I'm talking about the Fox viewers. The Fox viewers are the ones that have had "wokeism is destroying our military" being yelled at them since Biden took office.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for your service, and I am happy that you had some positive experiences.

Otoh, I had a friend conduct 4 tours in Iraq/Afghanistan...

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you for paying your taxes!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

"Peace" has also been the main thrust of the Russian psyops since the invasion of Ukraine.

Republicans believe whatever they're told to believe.

[–] NevermindNoMind 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm wondering if this is the "military has gone woke" crowd, or if this is part of deep state conspiracy theories. The decline in confidence started pre-Trump though, so I'm not sure that tracks. It could just be a part of the overall decline in institutions as a whole. Interesting result though whatever the cause.

Edit: Someone linked the Gallop poll below. They don't really offer an explanation, buts it's notable that the drop was biggest among Republicans, down from 91 percent to 60 something percent. Democrats and independents confidence also fell, but not nearly as much. I'm still not sure what to make of this.

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 6 points 1 year ago

Hard to prove but the DOD vaccine stance and the military not joining in the insurrection are good places to start.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Not starting Y at 0 seems misleading

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

why is the start date when we got rid of the draft? would be much more interesting to see before that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I believe 1975 was when they started asking the question regularly. That's normally how Gallup does their historical data in these articles.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I was thinking maybe they did not have data before. Just to bad we don't have it.

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 0 points 1 year ago

Hopefully never. What we want is a draft that includes males and females. I can see a future where we use the draft for humanitarian reasons with the environmental and climate crisis. That means more college educated middle to upper class draftees, those with experience. Sorry Millennials and Zoomers.

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Link to the Gallop poll

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did the link not come through? I thought I included it when I posted.

[–] YoBuckStopsHere 1 points 1 year ago

It only posted the picture. You can't post a url and a photo, but you can edit it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Data doesn't line up perfectly but I gotta think at least part of this is that Republicans (since at least Vietnam) were historically the more military-loving party, but their party leader since 2016 is isolationist and thus less reverent of the military as a separate institution.

Numbers stay flat in 2016-2020 because partisanship keeps the Republicans saying that any part of the government is good, but then the numbers fall off a cliff when the next administration comes to power and partisanship flips, Republicans turn against the government institution when controlled by people they disagree with politically, and they were the party that approved more to begin with so there's a bigger drop than normal. Their usual military loyalty does not prevent this as it once did.

[–] AbidanYre 4 points 1 year ago

That would line up well with what had happened in the past. Approval of military action in Syria had like a 70 point swing under Trump vs Obama with conservatives. Liberals pretty much stayed at the same level.

[–] xylogx 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This graph is useful https://i.imgur.com/E0OiAvH.png

[–] SulaymanF 2 points 1 year ago

The Why is interesting. My guess is that the right is losing confidence given it is smeared as being “woke” and generals actively stopped Trump from doing stupid things with nuclear weapons.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

The military is probably the only thing I actually still have confidence in as it relates to our government at this point.