There were always leaks, to some very small extent. Whether the leaker was a whistleblower or just a leaker was often a matter of opinion, but there is little doubt that leaks have become far more common and far less justified on whistleblower basis, such as the Pentagon Papers revealing that the government had wasted thousands of lives on a lie. Instead, it’s spiraled down to the leaker’s belief that something isn’t right, or isn’t good, and he therefore isn’t bound by a sense of confidentiality. Or to put it differently, every person whose hands touch a national secret gets to decide for themselves whether they feel like keeping it.

This was manifest in 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira’s decision to put top secret documents online for, well, kicks.

The military can’t meet its recruitment goals. Too many young people are too fat, do drugs, or have a criminal record. This has been a problem for years. It’s now approaching a crisis.

To address the recruitment shortfall, the military has reduced previous standards for entry, allowing men to be 6 percent fatter (and women, 8 percent). It is also trying hard to lure recruits by appealing to their self-interest, with a video of individual soldiers speaking to the camera, encouraging candidates to find “the power to discover, to redefine yourself, to improve yourself, to challenge yourself” and “to realize there’s more in you than you ever knew that you could do.” Recruits can also win up to $50,000 bonus money for enlisting.

But being chubby doesn’t mean you feel no sense of patriotism, no sense of duty to your country, no obligation to honor your promise of protecting the national secrets that manage, for better or worse, to pass through your hands.

But this strategy carries a big risk: young adults tend to be less loyal to organizations with lowered standards that target their personal motives. Study after study has shown as much.

This begs the question. Are they more loyal, sufficiently loyal, to organizations that maintain higher standards? It’s not easy to get a gig in the White House, but it was replete with leakers. Are “young adults,” a curious phrase, inadequately loyal to begin with, and then less loyal when standards are lowered because they can’t find “young adults” who can meet standards of any rigor?

No one knows exactly why Teixeira, 21, the Massachusetts Air National Guard airman, allegedly leaked classified information about the CIA, exposing our intelligence on Russia, South Korea, Israel, and Ukraine. He is now cooling his heels in prison, charged with violating the Espionage Act for spilling state secrets on the gaming platform Discord.

Since no act, good or horrific, isn’t spun to the benefit of one tribe or another. people with no greater insight into why Teixeira put docs on discord to the amusement of his gaming cohort impute motive to this conduct.

The Tucker Carlson right and the Glenn Greenwald left have come to a similar conclusion: that Teixeira is a kind of folk hero. Greenwald recently stated that, much like Edward Snowden, Teixeira aimed to “undermine the agenda of these [intelligence] agencies and prove to the American people what the truth is.” And it’s hard to imagine any Republican ten years ago making the argument that Marjorie Taylor Greene did—that the “Biden regime” considers Teixeira an enemy of the state because he is “white, male, [C]hristian, and antiwar.” Regardless of their specific reasons, this bipartisan agreement that Teixeira should be applauded is emblematic of a broader lack of confidence in the American government and our military.

Whether spinning this to one’s advantage is emblematic of anything other than the new normal of spinning anything and everything to one’s advantage is unclear. Does this have anything to do with the military, or even American government, as the sides would flip in a heartbeat if it was their team in office and the other doing everything possible to undermine confidence in our institutions until they gain control.

In recent years, support for the military has plummeted more than in any other American institution—with 45 percent of Americans voicing trust in the armed forces in 2021 versus 70 percent in 2018. This decline is almost entirely due to younger Americans: among those 18 to 44, confidence in all the branches of the military is in the low- to mid-40 percent range; for those 45 and up, it’s in the 80 percent range, according to a 2022 YouGov survey.

This decline in support for the military coincides with declining patriotism among young Americans: 40 percent of Gen Zers (those born from 1997 to 2012) believe the Founding Fathers are more accurately characterized as villains, not heroes, according to psychologist Jean Twenge’s forthcoming book, Generations.

Invocation of Jean Twenge here goes well beyond any correlation of declining patriotism and support for the military. As Twenge has been arguing for more than a decade, the common theme is narcissism, which was an epidemic for “stunted adolescents” back in 2010 and has become so pervasive that it’s beyond notice today. How can a young person put his country above himself when he, his feelings, his beliefs, are all that matters and beyond question?

That this would affect the military as it impacts every facet of a young person’s life is unsurprising, but the lack of patriotism is merely one symptom of the disease.

You might think that the young Americans serving in the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines are immune to these opinions, that their decision to enlist implies a deeper bond with America and the military sworn to protect it.

You’d be wrong.

That some snot-nosed kid had his hands on top secret documents is one head-scratching problem. Were they not really top secret, or does any shmoe get clearance and access these days? But that this particular shmoe happens to be in the military didn’t make him any less of a narcissist.

The argument is that the military, having shifted its focus away from service to our country to what’s in it for the kid has changed the nature of servicepeople. That the military is recruiting “young people” by appealing to their self-interest rather than their patriotism is unsurprising. How else would it entice people to sign up if their only motivation is to do what’s good for them? But this isn’t unique to the military or government, but to young people whose world revolves only around them.