America is floundering in an epidemic of anxiety, depression and drug use.
One in six Americans takes some kind of psychiatric drug, mostly antidepressants, a medical study concluded, and some of them (Prozac and Paxil) are linked to acts of violence. A third of high school students cannot shake feelings of sadness or hopelessness, another report found, and nearly 2 0% of teens have contemplated suicide.
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For many years, the U.S. military has been among the most trusted of American institutions, certainly the most trusted part of the U.S. government. It has maintained that status despite its failure to achieve success in the post-9/11 wars. Americans seem to have accepted the argument that this failure has more to do with the political constraints placed on the military than on the military’s doctrine, planning, and execution. They have continued to accept the military’s self-image as a profession rather than a self-interested bureaucracy, and have supported its professional ethos understood as duty, honor, and sacrifice.
But attitudes toward the military seem to be changing. According to a recent survey conducted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, the number of Americans who express a great deal of confidence and trust in the military has dropped from 70 percent to 45 percent in just the past three years, including an 11 percent drop since February.
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On Monday, the Department of Defense, in an effort to further crack down on political dissent, is revising its previous definitions of “extremist behavior” in order to deter uniformed members from certain political affiliations, CNN reports.
The Countering Extremism Working Group, a panel that was created for the purpose of ostensibly investigating “extremism” within military ranks, issued a report outlining its findings, claiming that there are indeed some “extremists” in the military. The report alleges that there were roughly 100 instances of uniformed members who either had “extremist” beliefs or joined “extremist” groups in 2021, which the report claims is an increase from previous years.
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