As someone who's probably considered part of the target audience (college-aged adult) for the ads they put out, this would be the biggest (medical issues aside) negative for me. Eye-roll worthy ads and some of the other things they do that I don't necessarily agree with (though I do seem to be less negative towards some of them than most on this board) don't change my desire to serve Americans. As it stands, though, in some ways I feel that over the past decade or so, being a nurse or firefighter or some other job that serves the public at large would be serving my fellow countrymen more than joining up. That actually would would steer me towards something else. To be clear, I'm not trying to diminish the service or sacrifices of anyone who has joined recently (or ever), but with the hindsight of how Afghanistan ended and how much contempt the current administration seems to have for its citizens, its easy for me to imagine an alternate reality where I would be looking elsewhere even if the military was an option for me.
These sentiments are *precisely* what I meant above when I said "from a tactical recruitment standpoint" and my reference to the overton window moving.I have a son who is target age (18). Actually, I have a few kids who are target age, but he has researched joining and has been very interested. For lack of a better word, the 'wokeness' has pushed him away. He said this weekend he has abandoned plans to join.
I can tell you from my very often and close interactions with the larger recruiting command and the day-to-day interactions with 15-35-year-old candidates- the military recruiting services are run by folks who are 1 to 2 generations out of date and have been indoctrinated/influenced by the ideologies we are all talking about. They see "these darn Zoomers and their tik tok dances and making sure everyone knows how woke and inclusive we are" because that takes up 80% of online content. The dirty secret is that it's focused on 2% of the actual population that care about those things, and the 2% it's focused on arent qualified for military service anyway, e.g., woke white liberal/progressive women and weak chinned males.
It's *exactly* what we saw with Bud Light. Completely out of-touch academics are speaking to what they think is the majority instead of the actual majority, which is remarkably silent and completely sick and tired of this nonsense.
The only evidence I have is 100 people a week contacting me directly to ask, "It seems like everyone is focused on this crap and that's not me, and it's not why I want to serve- should I still consider joining?"