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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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.
Exactly, if anything I have too much confidence in the American military
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).
It’s an open-ended opinion question.
That’s the way I see it, but if you do that, then the results you get will be nearly meaningless.
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.
Welcome to modern “journalism”.
Gallup has asked the exact same question since 1975.
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.
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.
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.
Fox keeps yelling that the military is woke and getting weaker because of its wokeness.
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.
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…
Thank you for paying your taxes!
Young progressives are not the ones watching Fox and hearing that the military is weak because it’s woke.
I’m not sure many young progressives are ever exposed to what the military is like unless they come from military families.
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.
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.
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.
This graph is useful https://i.imgur.com/E0OiAvH.png
