The top states of origin of US military personnel by raw numbers are California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. By percentage of the respective state population they are South Carolina, Hawaii, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, Alabama, Texas, North Carolina and Nevada. ht…
The top states of origin of US military personnel by raw numbers are California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
By percentage of the respective state population they are South Carolina, Hawaii, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, Alabama, Texas, North Carolina and Nevada.
This implies that, not unexpectedly, red states are somewhat more likely to produce military recruits, but also that blue and purple states account for the overall majority.
I doubt you can infer from that that bicoastal liberals are responsible for rushing naive Americans into wars, unless of course you include the Bushes in that category.
Now consider that California has the highest total number of conservative voters in any US state. On a per capita basis *within* blue states, who do you think serves more, the conservative voters or the liberal ones? I know that when I served from 2004-2008 in a combat arms job that there was nary a liberal in sight, even though liberal NYC was quite literally Ground Zero for the war's initiation (global war on terror that is). Know how many liberals I saw at MEPS in NYC? Very few. I served with 85+% conservatives and was forgotten about by liberal friends back home VERY quickly after joining. I imagine that anyone who came from liberal America who joined around that time met a similar fate.
I agree. I expect that even a lot of the Californians, New Yorkers, Ilinoisans, and Pennsylvanians come from the redder parts of those big, diverse states.
Check the "under-represented states" map in this link and you'll see that I'm basically right. At best, California hits the median only because of the rural conservatives joining + the conservatives in places like San Diego.
What years did you serve during and what was your MOS? I'll probably be able to tell you why we had different experiences just based off of the answer to that question.
That, good sir, is why we had very different experiences. I gather by the length of your service/contract and the chosen word "flew" that you were an officer yes? If so, those first few years were dedicated to you earning your wings. Depending on what kind of 130 it was, you MAY have been on fire support missions if it was an AC variant, but if not you were probably shuttling troops/equipment back and forth to the combat zone or doing fuel runs.
And again, per our convo in the comments below, being a minority does not auto-equate to being liberal. Plenty of minority conservatives out there, particularly in the latino demographic.
Blacks and Hispanics make up about half the US military. Are you suggesting the vast majority of them voted for Trump?
Moreover, knowing the obvious risks, why would isolationists be so eager to join the military?
The obvious inference is that the latter is the best available source of employment and job training for a large number of people with no particular foreign policy bent.
In other words, they are not joining because they want to pick up guns and shoot them at the enemy.
In which case perhaps the military itself is guilty of false advertising. Though how large numbers of recruits could have been fooled still escapes me.
Take a look at racial breakdowns of *combat arms jobs*, not just servicemembers. The bulk of the dudes I saw on foot patrol with the infantry were white or latino and were not liberal. Were there black dudes out there? Sure there were. But the infantry and ground combat jobs in general are mostly filled with white/latino conservatives.
Isolationists will join because of patriotism, family roots in the military, or good old poverty. Others will join simply for college benefits while staying away from combat jobs. They will try to learn a technical trade and then use their GI Bill plus military experience in that trade to make something of themselves when they get out. Only 1-in-every-9 jobs in the US military is a ground combat job. The rest are logisticians, supply clerks, bulk fuel specialists, ordnance handlers, helicopter crew chiefs, etc. The bullet-dodgers are mostly the kids with the lower ASVAB scores who can't make it into technical jobs. I was one of the crazy kids who got a 110+ GT score and could choose and job I wanted, but asked for infantry because I didn't want poor rural kids from W Virginia or Pennsylvania doing the fighting for me when it was my city that had gotten hit, my people who were jumping 1300+ feet out of skyscrapers to their deaths. That's why I joined. I saw a lot of different reasons why others joined only after I got into the service.
So you're implying that you volunteered for combat as much out of guilt as outrage, and it apparently annoys you that more well heeled liberals didn't do likewise. Meanwhile you suggest that most "bullet dodgers" were assigned from the bottom of the achievement scale. That sounds more like an indictment of the military than of the proverbial chicken hawks.
Are you saying that anyone who doesn't qualify for jobs outside of the ground combat ones are somehow at the bottom of the achievement scale? Just because someone doesn't have higher aptitude doesn't mean they should be looked at like a sub-human. Do you get why MAGA hates people like you who look down on the lower-aptitude cohort now? No offense, but you come off as sounding like someone from one of the higher rungs of society in Brave New World here.
The top states of origin of US military personnel by raw numbers are California, Texas, Florida, New York, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
By percentage of the respective state population they are South Carolina, Hawaii, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Colorado, Alabama, Texas, North Carolina and Nevada.
https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:7a63e706-a9ea-3e4b-b8ec-f655fb1e3d1f
This implies that, not unexpectedly, red states are somewhat more likely to produce military recruits, but also that blue and purple states account for the overall majority.
I doubt you can infer from that that bicoastal liberals are responsible for rushing naive Americans into wars, unless of course you include the Bushes in that category.
Now consider that California has the highest total number of conservative voters in any US state. On a per capita basis *within* blue states, who do you think serves more, the conservative voters or the liberal ones? I know that when I served from 2004-2008 in a combat arms job that there was nary a liberal in sight, even though liberal NYC was quite literally Ground Zero for the war's initiation (global war on terror that is). Know how many liberals I saw at MEPS in NYC? Very few. I served with 85+% conservatives and was forgotten about by liberal friends back home VERY quickly after joining. I imagine that anyone who came from liberal America who joined around that time met a similar fate.
I agree. I expect that even a lot of the Californians, New Yorkers, Ilinoisans, and Pennsylvanians come from the redder parts of those big, diverse states.
Check the "under-represented states" map in this link and you'll see that I'm basically right. At best, California hits the median only because of the rural conservatives joining + the conservatives in places like San Diego.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military
You and I had very different experiences after we joined. And I joined from a liberal part of NY.
What years did you serve during and what was your MOS? I'll probably be able to tell you why we had different experiences just based off of the answer to that question.
2005-2012, I flew 130s in the AF.
That, good sir, is why we had very different experiences. I gather by the length of your service/contract and the chosen word "flew" that you were an officer yes? If so, those first few years were dedicated to you earning your wings. Depending on what kind of 130 it was, you MAY have been on fire support missions if it was an AC variant, but if not you were probably shuttling troops/equipment back and forth to the combat zone or doing fuel runs.
None of that changes the fact that 48% of 11Bs are minorities.
And again, per our convo in the comments below, being a minority does not auto-equate to being liberal. Plenty of minority conservatives out there, particularly in the latino demographic.
Peep the bar charts for the USMC here:
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military
Blacks and Hispanics make up about half the US military. Are you suggesting the vast majority of them voted for Trump?
Moreover, knowing the obvious risks, why would isolationists be so eager to join the military?
The obvious inference is that the latter is the best available source of employment and job training for a large number of people with no particular foreign policy bent.
In other words, they are not joining because they want to pick up guns and shoot them at the enemy.
In which case perhaps the military itself is guilty of false advertising. Though how large numbers of recruits could have been fooled still escapes me.
Take a look at racial breakdowns of *combat arms jobs*, not just servicemembers. The bulk of the dudes I saw on foot patrol with the infantry were white or latino and were not liberal. Were there black dudes out there? Sure there were. But the infantry and ground combat jobs in general are mostly filled with white/latino conservatives.
Isolationists will join because of patriotism, family roots in the military, or good old poverty. Others will join simply for college benefits while staying away from combat jobs. They will try to learn a technical trade and then use their GI Bill plus military experience in that trade to make something of themselves when they get out. Only 1-in-every-9 jobs in the US military is a ground combat job. The rest are logisticians, supply clerks, bulk fuel specialists, ordnance handlers, helicopter crew chiefs, etc. The bullet-dodgers are mostly the kids with the lower ASVAB scores who can't make it into technical jobs. I was one of the crazy kids who got a 110+ GT score and could choose and job I wanted, but asked for infantry because I didn't want poor rural kids from W Virginia or Pennsylvania doing the fighting for me when it was my city that had gotten hit, my people who were jumping 1300+ feet out of skyscrapers to their deaths. That's why I joined. I saw a lot of different reasons why others joined only after I got into the service.
So you're implying that you volunteered for combat as much out of guilt as outrage, and it apparently annoys you that more well heeled liberals didn't do likewise. Meanwhile you suggest that most "bullet dodgers" were assigned from the bottom of the achievement scale. That sounds more like an indictment of the military than of the proverbial chicken hawks.
Are you saying that anyone who doesn't qualify for jobs outside of the ground combat ones are somehow at the bottom of the achievement scale? Just because someone doesn't have higher aptitude doesn't mean they should be looked at like a sub-human. Do you get why MAGA hates people like you who look down on the lower-aptitude cohort now? No offense, but you come off as sounding like someone from one of the higher rungs of society in Brave New World here.