Do you think American soldiers are put on too high of a pedestal

[Anomalocaris]

It plainly, clearly, and demonstrably did.  Allow, for a moment, that prussian militarism was also an issue of jingoism etc.....iow that people are remarkably similar no matter what stories we tell.  The US has a society wide sense of submisive duty, que the "give trump a chance" folks...and the military is -all about- diligence and professionalism.  It may not seem that way from the outside, granted.......but you can't escape or argue with it from the inside.

Give trump a chance didn't mostly come from sense of duty.  It mostly came from unbridgeable sense of ideological division as well an inveterate laziness where one would settle out of laziness for trump, rather than control the sense of ideological hostility and concede government by ideological enemy might indeed be better for the whole.

Also, the term militarism has no special meaning inside the military.  To remain a military, a military had better be militaristic.    The term militarism only has special meaning when applied to the society outside the uniform military. Outside the military American social norm is anti-intellectual, dilettantish, and rife with sense of unearned entitlement.