It's always popular and easy to loosen the reigns, but hard to get control again.
Grooming standards, dress, height and weight standards, customs and courtesies, it's lacking from what I see. But I'm just an outsider/old-timer that still has logistical privileges because I got hurt a few times. But talking to old battle buddies, two of them O-6s, it's a systemic problem and in the NG you have near 1/2 the folks that can't even pass the physical fitness test.
Our military has been in a free fall for a long time, what discipline, order, and personal-professional standards are concerned. Trying to reign this insanity back in isn't going to be easy.
Lots of fat kids in uniform. Lots of black guys with beards essentially. Lots of special people that all have their rights and feelings, but don't understand why an army wears a uniform, has formation runs, marches in step, or has drill and ceremony. “Uniform” has more than one meaning and folks don't get that.
How do you tell these kids today: “You're special to your God and parents, but here you're just a cog in the big green-machine’s wheels.”
If you follow history, you’ll see some similarities in the inter war years of the 20s and 30s. Our readiness really dropped. A lot of out-of-date equipment and officers who were better politicians than warriors. When the war began, we didn’t do well for just that reason. Luckily, we had enough time to build up our industrial production, design better equipment and retrieve our warrior class (Patton, Halsey, Nimtz etal.) from obscurity. Not sure in today’s world we’d have that buffer.