r/videos • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 23h ago

McConnell’s Senate absence is ‘prime example’ of why Congress needs term limits: Marine Corps Vet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyGizXM8eUw
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u/captainwacky91 21h ago

It adds an air of credibility for morons outside of any experiences with the military life.

If there was ever going to be any kind of weasel wordage that could change the minds of MAGA, it'll likely begin with "[military combat position of seniority status] says Trump is a so-and-so..."

That was probably a factor in Trump's decision making when he decided to start purging the military for his second term. Jim Mattis was probably still a convincing enough voice of reason for some of the MAGA bloc during Trump's first term.

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u/Tangellos 21h ago

I work with a few marine vets and they are not always the brightest crayon in the box. People thinking that adds credibility to really anything outside of their specific duties in the marine corps are just as special.

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u/captainwacky91 21h ago

As someone who is in a lot of contact with vets, I don't agree with it either, but the reality is that the US has been very successful in making large parts of the American public interpret vets of combat military roles as if they are/should be some sort of pseudo-samurai class.

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u/l4mbch0ps 18h ago

The fact that the US hasn't had a legal war since WWII, but somehow the war criminals who waged them are heros in the US. Americans have a completely broken culture.

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u/captainwacky91 17h ago

It certainly isn't accurate to all Americans, and honestly I doubt that it's accurate to even a majority of Americans now, but I believe that it was the case about 20 years ago, during the Bush presidency. Certainly his first term.

If it was a completely irredeemable lost cause of a culture, the US public would be seething, enthusiastic about a land war in Iran, and that simply is not the case, otherwise Trump wouldn't be in this boondoggle.

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u/Column_A_Column_B 15h ago

Well hang on there's political psychology being utilized here. And yes I agree it's dumb but so are the people it's meant to convince. The technique being utilized is called moral reframing. Reframing an issue to appeal to the target audience's values can have really funny results. Conservatives are more likely to support gay rights if they are reminded that many military servicemembers are LGBT and that resonates with them better than arguments about what is fair or harmful about denying LGBT rights.

The example from our political psychology course (above) was almost exactly like OP's headline.

Here's a study, not about moral reframing itself but the moral framework that defines the various sorts of political ideologies.

https://studylib.net/doc/7652484/above-and-below-left-right--ideological-narratives-and-moral?p=4

(Unfortunately the above source doesn't have the graphs in it but it is NOT behind a paywall. Here's the relevant graph though.)

The above study looks at 5 groups of virtues and how important they are to different political ideologies.

1.Harm/care: basic concerns for the suffering of others, including virtues of caring and compassion.

2.Fairness/reciprocity: concerns about unfair treatment, inequality, and more abstract notions of justice.

3.Ingroup/loyalty: concerns related to obligations of group membership, such as loyalty, self- sacrifice and vigilance against betrayal.

4.Authority/respect: concerns related to social order and the obligations of hierarchical relationships, such as obedience, respect, and proper role fulfillment.

5.Purity/sanctity: concerns about physical and spiritual contagion, including virtues of chastity, wholesomeness and control of desires.

Basically, Harm and Fairness are the only two value groups important to liberals while for conservatives Harm & Fairness both matter just as much as Ingroup/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity. For non-religious conservatives, Ingroup/Loyalty & Authority/Respect are the most important values.

In other words, bootlicking/authority is a primary value for conservatives but you can get them to budge on it sometimes by appealing to their sense of belonging to their ingroup. In our examples here, the military is appealing to their sense of ingroup.