That is beyond evident.
Let's put it this way, I'd rather hire a very high time regional captain over a freshly released military pilot if I was hiring street captains. The idea that military training would automatically make a low time military pilot superior to a 10,000 pilot who has been doing the job for years is absurd.
Of course it's absurd. Despite your conclusion about military-trained pilots' "tribalism," I doubt that anyone is advocating the words that you're putting in their mouth. You're exaggerating wildly to make your point. Nobody is suggesting what you've insinuated above.
All most of us are saying is that military flight training is more rigorous, more standardized, and more likely to be based solely on merit than civilian flight training. It produces a much more consistent, known quality of pilot. That's all they're saying.
Does that make a 10,000 hour regional pilot a "worse" choice than a fresh-out-of-the-military pilot? Of course not; he would be, all else being equal, likely a much better choice. What we have said is that, for lower-hour/experience pilots, early military flight time is more valuable than early civilian flight time. That's pretty much it. For pilots with many thousands of hours flying all over the country/world, it really doesn't matter where you learned to fly.
You've mentioned military pilots' use of the "power card," insinuating that that's the norm. You really think it is? How about you re-read some of these threads again. Let me ask you--who starts them? Every single, friggin' time? Civilian pilots, that's who. Have you ever seen a military-trained guy start a thread whining about their company hiring too many civilian-trained pilots? I'd bet not. It's always civilian-trained guys, whining about military-trained guys, who start these pissing contests. Always. It's guys with inferiority complexes, like Wave, whining about how many military guys SWA has hired recently, despite the company being much more than half civilian-trained. And then, the military-trained guys respond. What does that tell you? Who's really promoting tribalism here? I'd say that it's the guy starting the argument.
Keep watching, Livin', and I'd bet you see what I'm saying. You're not going to see military-guys starting these bitchfests, just responding when some ego-challenged civilian guy makes absurd claims like the "fact" that his first thousand hours in a Cessna is exactly as good experience as a military guy's first thousand hours flying complex jets all over the world.
Hey, for the most part, we're just happy to be here. It's a good job, and I could give a rat's a$$ where my flying partner got his or her training. As long as they know what they're doing (this is not too hard of a job), and more importantly, that they have a good attitude.
And, of course, that they're junior to me.
Seriously, Livin', look at who always starts these things, and then get back to me on your thoughts about tribalism.
Bubba