I think the answer lies in the term "queep" and to maybe a lesser extent, the "empowerment" of every non-rater, to include everyone from ratey three stripers to "NCO's", all of which are experiencing regular micro aggressions while trying to argue outside their lane, and then finding the sympathetic ear of a bunch of no load non-rated officers who throw up a shitstorm. At least that has been my impression. Put another way, misplaced professional priorities, and an erosion of military customs and courtesies, bearing, and all that other shit in favor of an egalitarian society.
This pretty much sums it up. I have been out right at a year (medical, not voluntary) but the Squadron I was in provides a unique look into the AF as a whole because of its structure. First, leadership opportunities were plentiful because of the size of the Squadron and its O/E mix. A Flight Commander had the opportunity to lead 60 Officers and Enlisted at home and deployed, the various shop leadership generally had 10 or more, there was ample opportunity to fly (2-3 times per week at home station, employing ordnance on most sorties), and almost all of our work was joint. The squadron was also the most deployed sq, within the most deployed wing in the AF. We had a TSgt complete his 23rd combat deployment last Fall. He closed out with around ~3950 combat hours. We did what we trained for, and we did it often. There was opportunity for leadership early, and growth inside and out of the sq.
We were lucky to have good leadership that pushed back against useless requirements and had them reduced, but the extra queep that they couldn't do anything about began to apply lot of unnecessary pressure. For example, the necessity of having a Masters before Majors board now meant that people were put in the position of competing to see who got them done first. A 1Lt on his first deployment should be studying tactics and learning everything he can from anyone who will talk with him, not working on Masters courses when he finishes debrief. Our sq leadership did what they could to push back and create a culture to fix that, but that can only go so far when the finance Lt has time off during the week to complete school work. Add to that that the incorrect pushing of the notion that every Airman is a warrior (and I'm not talking about building a warrior ethos) and it's easy to have competing interests that aren't mission focused.
We had every reason to love what we did and had excellent leadership through the ops side of the house to ensure things stayed that way, but it was still difficult to balance the requirements that had to be done for career progression, and the culture of Big Blue still tried to creep in. I think the best way to state the problem is this; lot of the good guys start to see fighting the good fight as a losing battle. We had a lot of insulating factors to provide a buffer that our bros didn't have. We had a strong bond inside the sq for a lot of different reasons, get rid of that bond and it becomes a corporation with no real unity and people will bail from that in heartbeat.