Narratives of Risk-Taking Americans Fade – Except for the Military

Military Narrative Strengthens as Risk-Taking Language Moderates

Language celebrating American military excellence intensified through November, with Perscient's semantic signature tracking praise for U.S. soldiers reaching 64 percent above its long-term average. The strengthening narrative found support in tangible developments: the U.S. Army met its fiscal year 2025 recruiting goals four months early, signing more than 61,000 future soldiers and representing a 10 percent increase over 2024 targets. Other branches similarly met or beat their recruiting plans, with the Coast Guard achieving its best recruiting results since 1991.

The positive military narrative aligned with the U.S. maintaining its first-place ranking among 145 countries in the 2025 Global Firepower review, a position it has held since 2005. The Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering unveiled six Critical Technology Areas designed to define the future of American military superiority, while the Army announced plans to buy at least 1 million drones within 2-3 years, treating them as expendable ammunition based on lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war.

This strengthening military confidence occurred alongside a cooling in language celebrating American risk-taking more broadly. The semantic signature tracking such language declined in November, as did the density of language arguing that real Americans bet on themselves – which dropped by a healthy 14%. For the time being, anyway, the media environment seems to be responding to the very front-burner images of military strikes and national guard deployments. The short-term result seems to be that narratives of military strength have garnered increasing attention while narratives of entrepreneurial risk-taking in America have faded from view. And there really is no counter-narrative at the moment. The density of language arguing that the American military has lost its edge declined 15 points to 87 percent below its long-term average, indicating virtually no media discussion of American military decline in November.

Helicopter Parenting Concerns Decline but they’re Still Hovering Over Their Kids to College

The density of language criticizing overprotective parenting registered 28 percent below its long-term average in November, a drop of roughly 10 points from October levels. The news apparently did not reach the parents who began following their kids to college campuses this fall, prompting renewed commentary about hovering moms and dads trailing their children all the way to college. Research continues to suggest that overprotective and controlling parenting may have negative implications on children's mental health, with studies finding direct relationships between helicopter parenting and symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Social media discussions reflected the tension between parenting approaches, with one user describing sending a 12-year-old alone to buy donuts and noting "this helicopter society is not good for the kids". Another parent acknowledged "the pressure we as parents have to parent according to society's norms vs our own standards", noting the judgment faced for leaving kids alone or letting them roam neighborhoods. Adam Grant observed that helicopter parenting had "reached a new low" with parents following kids to campus, arguing that when we fail to respect their autonomy, kids fail to learn responsibility.

There has been a broader surge in other narratives of individual risk-avoidance, too. For example, our semantic signature tracking language claiming that Americans are less willing to move for jobs surged by 35 points, the largest single-month increase among all signatures tracked. The substantial rise suggests increasing media attention to declining geographic mobility. In the U.S., people of all ages are moving less than they did 30 years ago, with The Atlantic calling the sharp nationwide decline in geographic mobility "the single most important social change of the past half century." Likewise, language celebrating America as a nation built by people who left everything behind to build a new life from nothing fell 19 points to 32% below its long-term average.

Frontier Heritage Language Weakens as Defense Narratives Diverge

Even more esoteric narratives of Americans as risk-takers seem to have taken a back seat. For example, Perscient’s semantic signature measuring language celebrating America's frontier heritage experienced the steepest decline of any tracked, falling 51 points from October's level. This is quite a downward move from earlier in the year, when President Trump's second inaugural address called on Americans to embrace their pioneer heritage, stating "Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.”

Commentary on America's frontier identity (and the aforementioned labor mobility) might  reflect deeper cultural anxieties. One recent analysis argued that "for most of its history, America defined itself by motion", with each generation believing there was always another horizon, another chance to begin again. The piece suggested that "now, with no wilderness left to conquer and no shared myth to unite it, the nation turns inward, struggling to rediscover purpose, balance, and belief in its own experiment in liberty." Social media posts echoed these concerns, with users observing that "millions have begun to feel like strangers in their own land" and questioning whether "our age demands of us that we wave farewell to Heritage America".

Archived Pulse

October 2025

• Military Confidence Reaches Historic Peak
• Civic Activism Surges as Americans Mobilize to Defend Rights
• Parenting Anxieties Intensify as Helicopter Parenting Concerns Decline

Pulse is your AI analyst built on Perscient technology, summarizing the major changes and evolving narratives across our Storyboard signatures, and synthesizing that analysis with illustrative news articles and high-impact social media posts.