>>15474
It's not the cultural veneration of militias that affected the U.S. military, but the reality.
See, for the first century and a half after the U.S.'s independence, it had a massive frontier filled with danger. Indians, wildlife, weather, all of it was unpredictable and often fatal. This necessitated a lot of community organization, since if you had a problem with bears or bandits or Indians raiding your up-and-coming town, they wouldn't wait for you to ride a day to the nearest garrison for reinforcements and then ride another day back. You and your townsmates were probably on your own. As a result, everyone was armed, everyone was as trained as they could be, and everyone was somehow related to the town militia.
Furthermore, when the U.S. army did get called in to do something in the frontier, they were probably going to be days or weeks from steady lines of supply and communication. Army units sent out West had to be resourceful and independent, whether a single squad or an entire battalion (fielding a division or more in the hinterlands was literally impossible). A cavalry commander with a platoon under his command could not wait for clarification or material help from higher officers if he ran into a sticky situation in the field, he had to handle it himself. As a corollary, his officers above him had to trust him to get the job done well enough and accept the results of his decisions since there was no way to micromanage him in the field.
Thus, the U.S. army spent literal generations operating under two assumptions:
Firstly, that there were a lot of people who had done a bunch of training on their own with their own weapons and equipment and so were already relatively proficient at a bunch of army stuff when they joined.
Secondly, that no matter what, the lower officers need to be able to act independently and take initiative in case they get sent out west where they'll have no support but what they can carry, and the higher officers need to be able to let them do it.
You see a lot of the first point cropping up in older wars - every second Joe in WW2 was a crack shot with their rifle, and all of America's wealth hadn't sanded off their rough edges like the Germans and Japanese hoped. By now the effect is much reduced but you still do get the odd hunter-turned-world-class-sniper.
The second point is definitely still a big deal, though. Whether in the mountains of Afghanistan or the ocean of Midway, American lower, middle, and non-commissioned officers are given a staggering amount of leeway. This ability of the upper ranks to let their juniors do what needs to be done and trust that it will work out is the basis of an effective chain of command. The army is more efficient when captains can be, and are, trusted to take opportunities which they see right in front of them even if the general, miles away, doesn't know it exists. When more rigid command structures encounter this doctrine, you get pic related. This is the opposite of how dysfunctional armies such as Russia do things, where generations of blame trickling down and credit trickling up have encouraged officers at all levels to follow their commander's orders to the letter no matter the consequences for the army, which results in an army that is unreactive, unwieldy, and easily exploited.