The GOP is truly incapable of doing what they want without punching themselves in the dick.

"We're gonna give tax cuts to billionaires and millionaires! And take away the poor's healthcare to get it! And we're gonna send ICE to come kidnap your brown people! Balance this tarriff situation in our favor! The military is coming to kill you left wing protestors!"

"Uh, sir. The first thing caused the govt to shutdown, which means all our ghouls are off payroll... Also the untrained ICE thugs are pissing off police unions. Also the farmers have no more employees. Also they can't sell their crop because no one's buying due to those tariffs. Also we have a supermajority and absolutely no one to blame but ourselves for fucking up royally a layup of an economic situation. Also everyone hates us and our own generals don't respect us and have indicated the military will be there to protect the protestors."

Nice.

The divide already exists. It just tends to show up in splits between officers and enlisted men as well as between Army/Navy and Marines/Air Force.

There are plenty of Wesley Clarks and Joe Sestaks and Richard Ojedas and Jim Webbs and Mikie Sherrills and Elissa Slotkins in the Democratic Party. The problem is that these people generally kinda suck (except Sestak, he was honestly pretty cool). They tend to be foreign policy hawks, economic conservatives, and generally more friendly with big business than labor. They run on platforms that emphasize our need to expand an already bloated national security state, to consolidate more power in the Executive Branch, and to further integrate ourselves with our allies (like Israel and Argentina and The Philippines and South Korea) regardless of how fucked up their governments happen to be.

These are the Democrats who look at the Halcyon Liberal Era and think America was at its best when it was fighting multi-front global war against Evil Foreigners.

In lieu of pay, raping and piliging will be over looked.

It won't. Not long term anyways. Most military members voted for the GOP despite the open disrespect trump showed them in his first term.

Active duty and younger vets seem more capable of seeing the bullshit than old vets.

I see a lot of vets against fascism springing up all over protest posts, and they seem to generally be somewhere between mid-20s to 40s.

Older ones, however, seem more rare, or generally just super MAGA.

Just my own anecdotal observations of what algorithms put on my feed

Dodge charger, Subaru wrx and Dodge ram sales incoming.

Do not negotiate.

Every conflict is merely a prelude to negotiations. The problem is that Democrats genuinely value the institutions of federal government being threatened with defunding, while Republicans only really see these as pain points with which to extort the liberal establishment for more social conservative policy.

Dems are primed to cave over time, particularly when the heavily privatized corporate media is on the side of the Republicans.

Unless you're at an airport, where you're forced to watch a video at TSA checkpoints that shows Christy Noem blaming the shutdown on Democrats.

What, just because they're literally in control of all 3 branches of the US government and aren't willing to keep things as they are during Trump's Tariff Tantrums and horrible economy (people's healthcare premiums about to skyrocket due to expiring Biden provisions)!?

Don't for forget poor ICE... Poor, loathsome, evil ICE

MAGAt (n): Acronym for "Make America Get Assraped, thx".

Yes, but the military cannot just quit and find another job. They are not told to "go home and wait until a budget is passed." And they must bear the associated costs of operation that they would typically get reimbursed for.

It's not that people in other agencies aren't suffering, it's that most those in the military would be the first to have problems that both affect the individual and the government's power.

As another (but silly) counterpoint, the government shutdown affects every citizen, nay, the world itself. Since the USA is such an important world power, the act of shutting down has wide consequences if it goes on long enough. So won't you think of the billionaires?