Why do vets / active duty military support Trump?

[RayDog 682]

There are groups that are conditioned to follow autocrats such as the religious and the military.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

17 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Nobody lived through it:

 

 

If I remember correctly the Ken Burns series Viet nam supported this as fact not myth (color me amazed the NY Times would try to debunk this). I believe they interviewed a woman who admitted as much or admitted she actually witnessed the events.   You should take a ganders at it sometime.

As for why the support for a GOP president from the military, it's MOSLTY because many on them left have had  straight up contempt for the military, and have made military personnel the brunt of jokes for decades.  Berkley, Ca.  banned or tried banning recruiitting offices in city limits, colleges have tried to ban recruiters from setting foot on campus. If you don't have an inkling about this FACT you should try doing some research before making such uninformed posts.

You think the military is just going to say oh we hate trump so lets support the democrats, who have bashed us since Viet Nam I might add ?  I remember hearing the Clintons hated the military. So you think they were gonna vote for someone who had such disdain for them ?  

For the record, the son is an AF LT, and hates Trump.  I bet a lot of younger office types, that haven't witnessed the lefts animosity over many years, share that sentiment.

[Art Vandelay 1710]

It's not just the enlisted who support Trump. This is anecdotal, but my brother-in-law, a combat decorated and highly ranking Navy and Air Force (yes, both) officer and pilot (now retired), and his 25-year-old son, a West Point grad and Army Ranger who's seen combat in Afghanistan and is currently serving in Iraq, are both big-time Trump supporters. In fact, my nephew was wounded in Afghanistan and spent time at Walter Reed recovering. While there, he was invited by Trump himself to attend the inauguration, which he did along with his family. I've been around a lot of my nephew's West Point and Army officer buddies who have also voiced their support of Trump.

I don't understand it either, considering things like Trump's draft dodging and disparaging comments of McCain and the Gold Star family, etc.

One thing I do get, though, is that guys like my nephew who are regularly in combat situations appreciate the fact that Trump has increased spending on things they need to help them survive (e.g. body armor), and has changed the rules of engagement, which had gotten extremely restrictive under Obama -- to the point that it was endangering soldiers' lives. So that part, I understand. Otherwise, I don't get the love for Trump.

I also think, as others have mentioned, there is a lingering notion that began in the Vietnam era that Dems/Libs are anti-military/aren't patriotic/don't love their country as much as Reps/conservatives. Sometimes, that belief is passed down from one generation to the next, as is the case with my bro-in-law and nephew.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

3 hours ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

If I remember correctly the Ken Burns series Viet nam supported this as fact not myth (color me amazed the NY Times would try to debunk this). I believe they interviewed a woman who admitted as much or admitted she actually witnessed the events.   You should take a ganders at it sometime.

 

So I need to watch a 17-hour documentary to support your vague memory of one woman's anecdote. I think the point of the article still stands -- no, the writer admitted, he couldn't prove it never happened, but he does debunk the idea that it was a widespread phenomenon worthy of the status it has occupied in our national psyche. 

And to argue down to your level, I think I heard a podcast about that article, where one guy might or might not have remembered either being spit on or hearing about it from a friend. You should listen to many podcasts and maybe you will find it. 

None of which to say is I don't doubt that Vietnam drove a wedge between the left and the military. Jane Fonda singlehandedly did more to damage that relationship than hordes of phantom airport spitters ever could. Her tactics, personally, crossed a bright red line, but you know what? On the whole, the left was right. We had no business being over there killing millions of them and dying by the tens of thousands ourselves. 

 

1 hour ago, Art Vandelay said:

 

One thing I do get, though, is that guys like my nephew who are regularly in combat situations appreciate the fact that Trump has increased spending on things they need to help them survive (e.g. body armor), and has changed the rules of engagement, which had gotten extremely restrictive under Obama -- to the point that it was endangering soldiers' lives. So that part, I understand. Otherwise, I don't get the love for Trump.

 

Dubya's Iraq invasion force was famously underequipped -- remember all those Marines asking their parents to send them batteries for their night vision goggles and welding sheet metal (bought out of their own pockets) to their HumVees? -- and yet it led to no groundswell of support for Kerry.  Maybe Kerry was dumb enough not to campaign on that issue....

[RDCanecutter 26249]

19 hours ago, Mdhorn said:

The military apparatus performs best when all thinking is done by command while the main goal of college is to teach students to think for themselves.  

This is a common misconception. Allow me to address each half.

1. Military performs best when all thinking is done by command: Yes, BUT-- "Command" has been going in the direction of decentralization for more than 100 years. From the top you get an overall plan, a mission, and various details that will help to to keep from getting blowed up by your own support fires, sir. This ends up as Operations Orders on down the line to smaller and smaller units, who will be more aware of things they may have to tweak to better perform the mission.

Now, I mentioned decentralization. By this I mean, where in the Civil War you had units maneuvering in their hundreds or even thousands of men, commanded by one voice. From WW1 to WW2 to Korea to Now, the size of a unit where somebody is making decisions has been getting smaller and smaller. Armies that decentralize faster than their opponents (German Stosstruppen in late WW1, US Marines vs Japanese in WW2)-- you'd have squads (about 10 men) or even 3-man fire teams, moving, firing, and "thinking" as part of a plan, multiplying their effectiveness against a similarly-equipped enemy with more centralized control, ie, able to move, shoot, and "think" only in larger chunks.

tldr above: A Modern Army will have 19-year-olds making real decisions.

2. Main goal of college is to teach students to think for themselves. Yes. Does it happen? I guess. I don't know how you'd measure it, but my impressions based on College Me and the College Others that I know, is that they really don't come into their own until after they've been in the Real World a couple of years.

 

[Hank Scorpio 17721]

I didn't read any of this thread but the answer to the OP's question is "because they are fucking stupid" 

Thank you for your service. 

[Gil Bang 25897]

10 hours ago, Art Vandelay said:

It's not just the enlisted who support Trump. This is anecdotal, but my brother-in-law, a combat decorated and highly ranking Navy and Air Force (yes, both) officer and pilot (now retired), and his 25-year-old son, a West Point grad and Army Ranger who's seen combat in Afghanistan and is currently serving in Iraq, are both big-time Trump supporters. In fact, my nephew was wounded in Afghanistan and spent time at Walter Reed recovering. While there, he was invited by Trump himself to attend the inauguration, which he did along with his family. I've been around a lot of my nephew's West Point and Army officer buddies who have also voiced their support of Trump.

I don't understand it either, considering things like Trump's draft dodging and disparaging comments of McCain and the Gold Star family, etc.

One thing I do get, though, is that guys like my nephew who are regularly in combat situations appreciate the fact that Trump has increased spending on things they need to help them survive (e.g. body armor), and has changed the rules of engagement, which had gotten extremely restrictive under Obama -- to the point that it was endangering soldiers' lives. So that part, I understand. Otherwise, I don't get the love for Trump.

I also think, as others have mentioned, there is a lingering notion that began in the Vietnam era that Dems/Libs are anti-military/aren't patriotic/don't love their country as much as Reps/conservatives. Sometimes, that belief is passed down from one generation to the next, as is the case with my bro-in-law and nephew.

I know one infantry soldier (N=1) that saw a lot of combat in Afghanistan.  I asked him if he ever felt that the rules of engagement were too restrictive.  "Fuck no...somebody fucked with us, they got killed".  

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

1 hour ago, Gil Bang said:

I know one infantry soldier (N=1) that saw a lot of combat in Afghanistan.  I asked him if he ever felt that the rules of engagement were too restrictive.  "Fuck no...somebody fucked with us, they got killed".  

 

[Mdhorn 5911]

3 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

This is a common misconception. Allow me to address each half.

1. Military performs best when all thinking is done by command: Yes, BUT-- "Command" has been going in the direction of decentralization for more than 100 years. From the top you get an overall plan, a mission, and various details that will help to to keep from getting blowed up by your own support fires, sir. This ends up as Operations Orders on down the line to smaller and smaller units, who will be more aware of things they may have to tweak to better perform the mission.

Now, I mentioned decentralization. By this I mean, where in the Civil War you had units maneuvering in their hundreds or even thousands of men, commanded by one voice. From WW1 to WW2 to Korea to Now, the size of a unit where somebody is making decisions has been getting smaller and smaller. Armies that decentralize faster than their opponents (German Stosstruppen in late WW1, US Marines vs Japanese in WW2)-- you'd have squads (about 10 men) or even 3-man fire teams, moving, firing, and "thinking" as part of a plan, multiplying their effectiveness against a similarly-equipped enemy with more centralized control, ie, able to move, shoot, and "think" only in larger chunks.

tldr above: A Modern Army will have 19-year-olds making real decisions.

2. Main goal of college is to teach students to think for themselves. Yes. Does it happen? I guess. I don't know how you'd measure it, but my impressions based on College Me and the College Others that I know, is that they really don't come into their own until after they've been in the Real World a couple of years.

 

2. It's debatable whether it's learned but critical skills are presumably taught in most academic fields: science, philosophy, art/music, literature, architecture/design, engineering...Worked in the trades putting myself through college, and listening to painters and plumbers talk shit about engineers is interesting.  If you're educated, there's a divide.  

[Mdhorn 5911]

3 hours ago, Hank Scorpio said:

I didn't read any of this thread but the answer to the OP's question is "because they are fucking stupid" 

Thank you for your service. 

If you're middle class, you have family in the service.  

[bad_teammate 13132]

Cops and troops love authoritarians, what the hell is this a whole thread with long posts for?

[DixonHur 11171]

The answer is, that without the draft, the military has a self-selection bias.  There are only 2 types of people who voluntarily join the military.  Those who have no other option, and those who are nationalistic.  Often they overlap. 

I was the second type until I realized that the concept of American exceptionalism is bullshit.

[Guest]

The age of guilt is well upon us...LOLz.

 

How do y'all function with that burden on your heart?

[RDCanecutter 26249]

12 hours ago, Mdhorn said:

2. It's debatable whether it's learned but critical skills are presumably taught in most academic fields: science, philosophy, art/music, literature, architecture/design, engineering...Worked in the trades putting myself through college, and listening to painters and plumbers talk shit about engineers is interesting.  If you're educated, there's a divide.  

Probably similar background here. Family ranges from people who can make (not "fix", make) anything, to those who can barely accomplish any task not based completely in theory. Family reunions are like looking at one of those charts where they show that every mammal on earth-- wolves, deer, monkeys, whales-- evolved from the same original little chipmunk-thingy.

My undergrad (pre-military) was Art and Languages. Art classes were like the Big Lebowski scene where he walks in on Julianne Moore and David Thewlis tittering in Italian. Studio classes were an odd mix of gritty technique, and the professors exuding an aura "Well of course this is the existence one has when inhabiting this social class", whatever the hell that was. My salvation was a depression-era former Disney cartoonist from California who was terrified that we would all starve if the trust funds went bump, and would teach us all sorts of 1930s hobo skills like sign-painting for restaurants.

Language classes started based in reality (this word is French, that word is not, no matter how you feel about it), then proceeded to loopy professors ruining perfectly good books by making us jibber-jabber about them in little papers dashed off at the last minute. I came up with a Random Paper Generator, where I would roll dice and consult the indicated pages, compare them and pretend to fret a little about the implications. As and Bs. It was good practice learning where the accents go.

tldr. I think the whole world is funny.

[Chad Fuck 17559]

Are you really Julio Cortazar?

[RDCanecutter 26249]

3 minutes ago, Chad Fuck said:

Are you really Julio Cortazar?

Nope. Joined up as a stylish Cav Scout, so more likely Juan Garcia Esquivel.

[FartingMonk 3606]

I'm gonna go ahead and say the majority of the people on this thread have no idea what the hell goes on day to day in the life of a modern day military person and just think the shit is like the movies where they got 150 people in a room with cretins for NCOs doing cruel things to them.

[Fudge Nuggets 19146]

I remember seeing a poll where the military vote was split pretty close to 50 / 50.  I don't think the grunts deviate from the regular people as much as Fox News would want the rest of the dumbasses to think.

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

I'm gonna go ahead and say the majority of the people on this thread have no idea what the hell goes on day to day in the life of a modern day military person and just think the shit is like the movies where they got 150 people in a room with cretins for NCOs doing cruel things to them.

All they care about is making it to tomorrow. After that?  The rest of the world can fuck off. 

[Fudge Nuggets 19146]

8 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

I'm gonna go ahead and say the majority of the people on this thread have no idea what the hell goes on day to day in the life of a modern day military person and just think the shit is like the movies where they got 150 people in a room with cretins for NCOs doing cruel things to them.

Never been there and thank God every day I never had to do that shit.  But my idea of the day to day life of a modern day military person consists of scraping by month-by-month, probably making a little more than minimum wage, never knowing where you will live next month, might be getting shot at tomorrow.

But said person perseveres and serves their country valiantly knowing that we the people of the USofA are right there behind them to support them through any difficulties they may encounter.  Wooooah.... hold up, as long as said difficulties don't result in a tax hike.  Can't be having any of that shit.

'Murica!!!!

[YChang 3430]

On 8/23/2018 at 2:36 AM, FartingMonk said:

So it's not that the majority of the military or vets support Trump, it's the pendulum swung a little too far to the fucking left with Obama and they wanted to shift back a little to the right, but I'm afraid.  It's shifted way too far right.  

Umm...so some in the military swung too hard to the right because corrupt soldiers abused the rules... and there was too much training on it?

[Fudge Nuggets 19146]

On 8/23/2018 at 10:58 PM, RDCanecutter said:

This is a common misconception. Allow me to address each half.

1. Military performs best when all thinking is done by command: Yes, BUT-- "Command" has been going in the direction of decentralization for more than 100 years. From the top you get an overall plan, a mission, and various details that will help to to keep from getting blowed up by your own support fires, sir. This ends up as Operations Orders on down the line to smaller and smaller units, who will be more aware of things they may have to tweak to better perform the mission.

Now, I mentioned decentralization. By this I mean, where in the Civil War you had units maneuvering in their hundreds or even thousands of men, commanded by one voice. From WW1 to WW2 to Korea to Now, the size of a unit where somebody is making decisions has been getting smaller and smaller. Armies that decentralize faster than their opponents (German Stosstruppen in late WW1, US Marines vs Japanese in WW2)-- you'd have squads (about 10 men) or even 3-man fire teams, moving, firing, and "thinking" as part of a plan, multiplying their effectiveness against a similarly-equipped enemy with more centralized control, ie, able to move, shoot, and "think" only in larger chunks.

tldr above: A Modern Army will have 19-year-olds making real decisions.

2. Main goal of college is to teach students to think for themselves. Yes. Does it happen? I guess. I don't know how you'd measure it, but my impressions based on College Me and the College Others that I know, is that they really don't come into their own until after they've been in the Real World a couple of years.

 

Again, never been in the military but from historical accounts I've read RDC has this right.  One of if not the main reason we whipped the shit out of the Germans in WWII was because we had guys in the field that could make their own decisions - they didn't have to wait for orders from "high command".  If stern discipline was the end all be all for winning a war then the Germans would have kicked ass.

Some of that was taken away in Vietnam and the results show.

[Fudge Nuggets 19146]

23 hours ago, Mdhorn said:

If you're middle class, you have family in the service.  

I don't.  I'm an only child and all my male cousins are Republicans.  They don't serve.

Edited August 25, 2018 by Fudge Nuggets

[FartingMonk 3606]

11 minutes ago, YChang said:

Umm...so some in the military swung too hard to the right because corrupt soldiers abused the rules... and there was too much training on it?

To put some context to it.  The president read an extremely biased report about Sexual Assault in the military.  The one that used the same criteria as the one about Sexual Assault on college campuses which includes "unwanted staring, overhead suggestive language" and the statistics came at alarming rates like 50 percent of women have been sexually assaulted!  So the military was ordered to "fix" this issue.  So any accusation real or not was treated like someone was raped so convictions went up to show how much the military cared about stopping sexual assault.  We had some people just absolutely refuse to do stuff because they knew if they got forced to they would just go and say they were being harassed.  So people just left them alone.

[YChang 3430]

17 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

To put some context to it.  The president read an extremely biased report about Sexual Assault in the military.  The one that used the same criteria as the one about Sexual Assault on college campuses which includes "unwanted staring, overhead suggestive language" and the statistics came at alarming rates like 50 percent of women have been sexually assaulted!  So the military was ordered to "fix" this issue.  So any accusation real or not was treated like someone was raped so convictions went up to show how much the military cared about stopping sexual assault.  We had some people just absolutely refuse to do stuff because they knew if they got forced to they would just go and say they were being harassed.  So people just left them alone.

Gotcha thanks for the clarification.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

59 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

I'm gonna go ahead and say the majority of the people on this thread have no idea what the hell goes on day to day in the life of a modern day military person and just think the shit is like the movies where they got 150 people in a room with cretins for NCOs doing cruel things to them making them do stupid, tedious shit.

That's my son's version of life at Camp Casey anyway. 

[FartingMonk 3606]

Yeah, we did the exact opposite except for the whole cleaning thing.  You were either studying for your job, doing your job and the people who were qualified took college courses.  There has been a huge push for enlisted folks to take college courses and many commands embrace it.  If they aren't doing it, it's mostly because the enlisted guy is a lazy piece of shit and is trying to blame the command with one excuse or another.

[blackmarketbaby 118]

We all fart

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

4 hours ago, blackmarketbaby said:

We all fart

The OP's assertion is a fart.

[blackmarketbaby 118]

34 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

The OP's assertion is a fart.

Be careful, it's quite apparent you if say something wrong (they don't like) these farts swarm like bees .

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

17 minutes ago, blackmarketbaby said:

Be careful, it's quite apparent you if say something wrong (they don't like) these farts swarm like bees .

More like gnats 

[RDCanecutter 26249]

10 hours ago, FartingMonk said:

Yeah, we did the exact opposite except for the whole cleaning thing.  You were either studying for your job, doing your job and the people who were qualified took college courses.  There has been a huge push for enlisted folks to take college courses and many commands embrace it.  If they aren't doing it, it's mostly because the enlisted guy is a lazy piece of shit and is trying to blame the command with one excuse or another.

It was hard to make upper enlisted rank 20 years ago without a college degree. Wasn't required, but if the other guys trying for the E-7 slot had college degrees, it was kind of dumb not to also have one.

Edited August 25, 2018 by RDCanecutter

[RDCanecutter 26249]

14 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Never been there and thank God every day I never had to do that shit.  But my idea of the day to day life of a modern day military person consists of scraping by month-by-month, probably making a little more than minimum wage, never knowing where you will live next month, might be getting shot at tomorrow.

A lot of the scraping is self-inflicted. If you are frugal (and why would you volunteer for the military if you were money-hungry?) the system is damn near perfect Scandinavian socialism inside the US, meet the standards, dodge budget cuts, and you're living OK, medical, housing, clothing, food. Enough pay to get anything you actually need.

But drive past any post. You will see car dealers, tattoo parlors, scrip joints, bars, all booming because Low Credit, Slow Credit, No Credit, Nobody Walks Away. 18-year-olds get shiny objects for low monthly payments because part of a company commander's job is ensuring that his troops do not run around kiting checks. Hell, I got paid once when a soldier bounced a check on me by asking if he wanted to pay me with a good one, or should I ask his CO. Worked like Exlax to get those funds moving.

But with all that, you get soldiers super-credited out, I guess like typical civilians. But the soldier will be housed and fed (something) no matter how deep in debt.

[RDCanecutter 26249]

13 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

That's my son's version of life at Camp Casey anyway. 

If your son sits waiting passively for something interesting to happen, well, short of a war, he'll be painting rocks outside the mess hall for the Sergeant Major until the day he musters out.

He needs to show some initiative. Find some project that matches his skills and interests, and then trick an officer into ordering him to do that thing every day while the others are disassembling and reassembling their bunks. Is there a vintage military truck sitting next to the motor pool, that could be painted and restored? A unit history to be written, with the Colonel's name on it? He sounds like he has some imagination and basic skills of connivery. Let him use them.

csb: When my unit went to Italy, my Captain somehow got the impression that I spoke Italian. He wanted the troops (mostly coming off Desert Storm) to have some downtime they could enjoy, in Italy. But they didn't speak any Italian, didn't know how the trains and buses worked. I got myself ORDERED to travel the local area, all day, in trains and buses. I wrote down my findings on a note card plus useful phrases, and next day took 5 Sergeants with me to do all the same things, including hitting the same bars. Then with their own note cards, they each took a group of soldiers around. This was all done under orders and while getting paid.

[FartingMonk 3606]

Exactly.  If you're sitting around doing nothing someone is going to find something for you to do. The military has a lot of downtime.  They make you stay at work all day because if they sent you home at 9 am.  The soldiers would be drunk by 915.  If you are actually doing stuff you get left alone. 

[RDCanecutter 26249]

6 minutes ago, FartingMonk said:

Exactly.  If you're sitting around doing nothing someone is going to find something for you to do. The military has a lot of downtime.  They make you stay at work all day because if they sent you home at 9 am.  The soldiers would be drunk by 915.  If you are actually doing stuff you get left alone. 

My former father-in-law turned a Korea-era gig in the Artillery into a couple of years playing minor-league baseball for the glory of his unit.

[Nivek 16853]

3 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

My former father-in-law........ for the glory of his unit.

huh...

Edited August 25, 2018 by Nivek

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

3 hours ago, RDCanecutter said:

If your son sits waiting passively for something interesting to happen, well, short of a war, he'll be painting rocks outside the mess hall for the Sergeant Major until the day he musters out.

He needs to show some initiative. Find some project that matches his skills and interests, and then trick an officer into ordering him to do that thing every day while the others are disassembling and reassembling their bunks. Is there a vintage military truck sitting next to the motor pool, that could be painted and restored? A unit history to be written, with the Colonel's name on it? He sounds like he has some imagination and basic skills of connivery. Let him use them.

csb: When my unit went to Italy, my Captain somehow got the impression that I spoke Italian. He wanted the troops (mostly coming off Desert Storm) to have some downtime they could enjoy, in Italy. But they didn't speak any Italian, didn't know how the trains and buses worked. I got myself ORDERED to travel the local area, all day, in trains and buses. I wrote down my findings on a note card plus useful phrases, and next day took 5 Sergeants with me to do all the same things, including hitting the same bars. Then with their own note cards, they each took a group of soldiers around. This was all done under orders and while getting paid.

MaC Jr is enjoying Korea to the hilt (probably too literally) but I don't know if he's mastered the art of doing it on Army time. He's been whitewater rafting, bungee jumping, and entertaining old stateside school days crushes in Seoul, but that's all been on his off time. His sister is a little cynic -- she's 13 going on 50 -- and her take is "I don't think he's doing much for America over there, dad."