👋 Kent State grad here with 26+ years in the Guard and Reserve. - ThreadSky

rpg-volley.bsky.social • 16 days ago

👋 Kent State grad here with 26+ years in the Guard and Reserve.

i also frankly think a lot of you would do well to actually talk to anyone who serves in the guard or who is active duty military, because it's clear to me that these people are mostly an abstraction for you

Comments

rpg-volley.bsky.social•16 days ago

🧵 These comments are hypothetical, are not presented in an official capacity and do not represent any DoD or affiliated positions.

rpg-volley.bsky.social•16 days ago

2/ It gives Allison & Zellikow’s “Bureaucratic Politics.”
I think this depends on many things: a state’s and Guard’s leadership, an organization’s culture, the quality of the officers overseeing the response, troops’ attitudes and awareness, their posture, and ultimately the situation on ground.

rpg-volley.bsky.social•16 days ago

3/ On the composition and its culture, the Guard is generally reflective of the demographic, socioeconomic, and political distribution of the population at large, which would favor a more moderate approach to civil disturbances. The Guard is of the community.

rpg-volley.bsky.social•16 days ago

4/ The Guard isn’t their job and, within their Guard job, civil disturbance isn’t even their part-time job. These are plumbers and college students who have been pulled out of their jobs for this and maybe don’t even get to do the part time job they usually train on.

rpg-volley.bsky.social•16 days ago

5/ That said, I’d say that law enforcement, law enforcement aspirants, and law enforcement adjacent people are overrepresented in the Guard compared to society at large, which may undercut that more moderate approach.

rpg-volley.bsky.social•16 days ago

6/ I have no source for this, but during summer 2020, I felt that the Guard (perhaps just in my state) saw part of their jobs to interpose themselves between protestors and police to allow everyone to cool off. Leadership matters a great deal, from the top down.