WASHINGTON (Dispatches) –
Public confidence in the military remains on a steady decline, according to a survey published by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.
According to the survey, only 45% of those Americans polled have “a great deal” of trust in the military, amounting to an 11% drop since February and a 25% drop since 2018, the first year of the nonprofit organization’s poll.
This time around, respondents were also asked to divulge the reason for their level of confidence. “Service members” was the top response from those who said they had “a great deal” or “some” confidence in the military, reflecting 43% of the responses.
Those with less confidence in the military listed a litany of reasons for their response, including political leadership, mismanagement of funds, and scandals - including sexual assault.
However, the military is not alone, as “great” confidence has declined across the board for several U.S. institutions. According to the survey, law enforcement observed a 17% decline from respondents, and both the presidency and the SCOTUS plummeted 9%.
“The fact that ‘political leadership’ was the plurality response among those with low confidence may be an indication of the corrosive effects of political polarization in the body politic generally bleeding over into attitudes towards the military”, Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University, told Task and Purpose.
Meanwhile, an AP new report has revealed that U.S. military academies remain inundated by institutional racism despite minor gains since proclaiming anti-discrimination policies a decade ago to bring in more racially diverse students.
According to the report, American military academies provide “a key pipeline into the leadership of the armed services” and -- for the better part of the last decade -- they have welcomed more racially diverse students each year.
However, beyond blanket anti-discrimination policies, these federally funded institutions offer little details “about how they screen for extremist or hateful behavior, or address the racial slights that some graduates of color say they faced daily.”
AP published another report in which current and former enlistees and officers in nearly every branch of the armed services described a deep-rooted culture of racism and discrimination that stubbornly festers, despite repeated efforts to eradicate it.
Less attention has been paid to the premiere institutions that produce a significant portion of the services’ officer corps -- the academies of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Merchant Marine.
Some graduates of color from top US military schools who endured what they describe as a hostile environment “are left questioning the military maxim that all service members wearing the same uniform are equal,” according to the report.