Military cohesion, social discord

[bemildred]

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Without the statistics, Downing makes a similar point.

The rank and file of the US military come disproportionately if not mainly from small towns and rural areas, culturally distinctive parts of the country that instill beliefs and outlooks conducive to vigorous community life and also to ties among soldiers. While people in many urban and suburban areas over the last few decades have become highly individualistic, those in small towns and rural areas have maintained traditions of interdependence. Respect for authority in almost all forms took a beating during Vietnam, but regained strength away from the cities, especially during the Reagan years. Further, people in these communities view themselves as composing a redoubt of morality and tradition in a country that has become far too secular and hedonistic. Pride in military service is an integral part of community life in small towns and rural areas, though it has faded if not disappeared elsewhere.

The real question here becomes just what is the price, in national social cohesion, of America populating its armed forces from such a relatively small sub-section of its population, the rural, in many cases rapidly depopulating small red-state towns and communities of its between the coasts "heartland".

Downing's article is mostly upbeat, he hails the social cohesion of the American armed forces in Iraq as a marked contrast to the chaos of Vietnam. I wonder. Many political observers and commentators have noted the ugly political and social polarization of current American public life. This phenomenon is blamed on many factors, such as the increasing economic divide between rich and poor, the decline in influence and power of the two major political parties, the rise of talk radio and bloggers, the treatment given to prospective Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas in 1987 and 1991 respectively, etc.

The yawning divide between America's rural core and its cosmopolitan coastal periphery is one of the most obvious points of political and social division and polarization. After the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, Democrats noted with despair the county by county maps of the election results, with huge swaths of the American heartland painted red, denoting a George W Bush victory, and a smaller number of much larger population areas in and surrounding most major cities painted blue, denoting areas won by Al Gore or John Kerry. (As an example of this polarization, in 2004, Bush won Garfield county in Montana 90-8%, at the same time losing much larger San Francisco County in California by a similarly lopsided 83-15%.)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA17Ak04.html

[tabasco]

1. A LOT of questionable info in that article with no sources.

It claims the military is less racially diverse because of the lower number of black recruits, totally ignoring the increased number of Hispanic recruits.

When I was a commander in 10th Mountain, most of my soldiers came from NYC. I would like to see actual statistics of the percentage of military from rural vs. urban. Most of our population is urban and I suspect most of our military comes from urban areas.

[bemildred]

2. Yah, real numbers would be nice. nt

[Dogmudgeon]

3. It's the same old narrative: Virtuous Hick vs Corrupt City-Slicker

"Tune into any one of America's country and western radio stations, and you're likely to be bombarded with screed after screed positing that urban American values are corrupt and inauthentic, with the real values that made America great are now found only in the heartland."

It's a good article, one of the best of its kind, even if it's a tad slanted. The country mouse/city mouse dichotomy seems to date back to golden-age Greece, even though they didn't have C&W or Jack Daniels or Copenhagen. "Pagan" means "hick" in Latin; Gaulish warlord Vercingetorix is usually reported to have been a blond with a bushy mustache and a mullet hair-do. All he needs is a pack of Marlboros to roll into his sleeve and he could meet a cliche from 2000 years after his death at the hands of suave, urbane, disco-sleek Caesar.

"C&W or Jack Daniels or Copenhagen" ... "a bushy mustache and a mullet hair-do ... a pack of Marlboros" ... if that makes a person Country, what makes a person urban? According to legend (some of them 3000 years old), city slickers are intelligent but can easily be shown to be stupid by any random rustic. Philosophers and psychologists receive special scorn.

The city-slickers have their own tales. The Romans thought that the Gauls were sexually deviant cannibals; we have our own stories in Deliverance and stand-up comedians' routines about Bubba, the Prison Rapist. The Druids were the theocrats in a superstition-ruled rural culture; backwoods snake-handling churches are part of American lore, and modern New-Agers venerate Eurasian folk shamans.

Where does the military come into this? These days, the cultural narratives work better with the "country mice", as much as they worked for the "city mice" in (ancient) Rome and Athens and Constantinople and Baghdad ...

... Same Story, Different Era.

--p!