General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: 53 yr old flex cuff guy has been fired [View all]SuprstitionAintthWay
(386 posts)...the AF has long had a higher % of its officers far to the right on the political spectrum than either the Army or Navy. Marine Corps, I couldn't say.
I'm not certain why that is. I'm sure somebody has studied it. My own speculation includes that it might have been a mistake to locate its Academy in such a bastion of conservatism and intense religiosity as Colorado Springs. That the AF Academy's isolation from the so-called coastal media and academia elites denied it the moderating effects against radicalization that the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard academies probably have benefited from.
All this being relative, of course. There is no shortage of far rightwingers in the officer corps of any branch of the U.S. military.
I also wonder if Air Force founding father Gen. Curtis LeMay's legacy plays a role. LeMay advocated for and applied our fire bombing of Japan's cities, burning to death many, many civilians in the process. And in the Korean War he was responsible for the flattening of every city in North Korea. A result of which was the death of 20 to 25% of North Korea's population... which is an astronomical rate of death in war. (And which, side effect, made the surviving North Koreans extremely susceptible to its government using intense hatred of the U.S. as its primary unifying principle.)
In short, it's probably fair to suspect LeMay, while an effective warrior, might have been okay with racial genocide. Does that history - the Air Force was just branching off from the Army in WWII - also affect its culture, and make it a bit different?
Just speculating. I'm sure, as I said, someone's studied all this.