I still fondly remember my friend Bob Niederider from high school in the '80s. One day an Army recruiter came to talk to our history class, and at the end he asked if anybody had any questions. Bob raised his hand and said “yeah I have a question: does napalm still stick to kids?” I didn’t really appreciate this at the time - and the recruiter certainly didn’t, either.
Army is a bunch of parasites on the face of the Earth. Parasites that set the rules, as any ruler turning against them will be overthrown.
Army doesn’t make any productive labor; instead, it siphons trillions of dollars making the machines intentionally designed to kill people - and puts them to use.
Society loses literally nothing without armies. They don’t “protect” you from anything but other armies, and without armies and wars and threats we could move way further as a humanity.
Don’t let anyone brainwash you into accepting this monstrosity. Army is bullying their own countries, bullying and extorting each and every one of us. They are the real enemy. And they will do everything in their power to distract you from that.
Nice.
When I was in high school and I replied to the appearance of an army recruiter in my social studies class I objected to his presence there with the phrase, “surely you don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be here recruiting impressionable youth to bomb brown people in the name of fascism?” My teacher made me stand in the hallway and gave me a “0” on the days quiz. There was no fucking quiz.
Seeing the army recruitment at comic Con always skeeves me out. I see them talking to 16-17 year old socially awkward kids who don’t know any better. Really predatory.
I just thought the Comic-Con would have been a terrible recruiting ground. The military want people that follow orders. They actively discourage intelligence.
They don’t though. Certain jobs don’t need you to be a genius, but the military really wants all the smart people they can get.
And yeah, when you’re in, it’s about 50:50. You’ll meet some of the smartest, generous, friendly people you’ll ever know. And you’ll meet some aggressive, angry, stupid knuckledraggers too.
The US military wants all the smart people that they can get because they don’t have any working for them.
I can almost guarantee you wouldn’t even score high enough on the Asvab to qualify for the most difficult jobs in the military.
Some of us are dumb enough to know that whatever IQ you have, joining the military industrial complex killing machine for our capitalists overlords is morally bankrupt and dumb.
The military isn’t all bad. Our role in WW2 was pretty righteous. What we do with Ukraine is helping to fight evil.
As much as we’ve screwed up Iraq, it’s hard to say if they’d have been better off staying under Saddam.
Helping South Korea and defending NATO is pretty good.
I see some National Guard in here. Helping Ruby Bridges get to school was good work. The National Guard often swoops in to help in natural disasters.
Half our Navy is made up of giant, floating hospitals.
Serial killers aren’t all bad either. They keep the homeless population in check and Ted Bundy was a leader in his community. /s
The military is like the “orphan crushing machine.” No one asks why it exists. We’re just supposed to accept that it’s necessary. And in some ways it is. But shouldn’t we strive for a world without a need for military.
Some might say, “well, that’s what America is doing. It’s the strongest military to maintain peace.” But this logic is flawed. When your military becomes so big, it’s never going to dissolve itself when necessary for peace. It becomes a power unto itself.
Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex but we didn’t listen.
And many of us grew up in such dire straits that despite our awareness of and disagreement with the military industrial complex, the system of desperate circumstances left us with few choices, and certainly none better. The military provides training and educational opportunities that will pull a person right out of hopeless poverty and give them half a chance in life. Everyone has their price.
For my part, I rationalized it by deciding that I would prefer people like me to join up rather than right-wing nutjobs, and if I did, then that was one slot that a nutjob wouldn’t fill.
I’m amazed at how humans are able to rationalize the evil that we do. The reason you were in such dire straits is a byproduct of militarism and capitalism. You were aware enough to recognize this, and still chose to be an accomplice. There is no ethical military. None . From the janitors to the Generals, if you contribute to the machine you are part of it.
Military brat here, half the soldiers I meet are massive nerds and the other half are goobers (meatheads, guys with no prospects, guys who always wanted to be in the army). Take that as you will.
Also a military brat, I find your 50/50 split suspicious.
My own observation is 80/20 giant nerds to goobers. Varies between service branches though - higher for air force, about this for navy, a little lower for army.
It was required in my school to take the ASVAB. If we missed we’d face repercussions. I purposely answered questions wrong-- not all of them because it would look too obvious, but I apparently still scored high enough that they still considered me. I got my results in class, we had someone from the military come speak with us and try to get us to sign up, and even text messages.
Shit was so fucking annoying.
I asked a friend of mine from where I used to live if she had to take it and she asked me what the fuck I was talking about.
I mean, shit, I guess when you live in a state that is known for having awful levels of education they figure they can shove you in the military instead.
…Or football.
What score do you think is the cutoff to not be called?
My guess is they call you regardless of score and use the score to decide how to make the sell. They need all levels of people to stand in front of bullets and maintain a base/outpost.
This is a good theory. I scored high on the ASVAB and recruiters would call me telling me I’d have an awesome technical career in the military where I’d get to play with James Bond style gadgets. I just so happened to be a bit of a nerd, but I still told them to fuck off.
It would make sense that they tailor the recruitment process to kids based on how they score on the ASVAB, and the score doesn’t really matter. I wouldnt be surprised if they just use the lower scoring kids as some sort of cannon fodder.
That’s actually what I’m thinking, too. “Oh, you scored between this bracket? Your code name is ‘Meat Shield #1947288’. No, it doesn’t mean anything. Stop asking. Now get out there champ. Make 'em proud.”
I went to highschool and university in the US - I was lucky that I got a scholarship and that covered pretty much all my tuition costs.
But I had a friend, one year older than me, who joined and served in the US army for something like 2 years just so he could get his university costs covered and to save some money for living expenses.
It may not be intentional, but the high cost of higher education is an excellent recruiting tool for the US military.
It may not be intentional
Nothing is unintentional.
Wasn’t there some tweet of a US general that said to not get rid of high college costs because they would get less soldiers signing up?
I remember when the Xbox 360 came out, I was in high school.
The army brought a Ford Excursion that looked fresh off the Pimp my Ride show, with a huge flat screen that flipped down out of the back, 4 huge subs, and the current football game playing.
You could only play the Xbox if you signed up.
School recruiters are basically practicing pedophiles. They disgust me. They:
- hunt for vulnerable children, who might be more prone to complying due to trauma or disability or even just recent social happenings or baseline teenage angst
- try to talk to them one on one so adults won’t interfere
- entice them with treats or games or other such things
- try to convince the kids to agree to do something they don’t yet understand
The SOP of a school recruiter and that of a practicing pedophile are so similar that I wonder how many of the latter are created after someone has been the prior simply due to how the job demands you to operate and consider the kids as just resources… or how often the prior becomes a career path for the latter simply to justifiably increase their access to children.
Back in the late 2000s, I got pulled in to the office in high school because I told the recruiter visiting the school that he was a massive piece of shit and needed to stay away from me and my friends if he knew what was good for him. I said this after he sat down near me and, idk, tried to bond? By calling my female friend that left “a real hottie” and tried poorly to insinuate I could probably seal the deal if I was a hot army boy. Baseline revolting statement from an adult to a child for one, I’m gay for two, she was lesbian for three… so I said what I said and apparently my words were sufficiently hurtful that he ran to the admin to cry about it and I got told off because that kind of language and sentiment is unacceptable towards someone “just doing their job” at the school. They found no issue at the time with his ingratiation technique, though I never saw him again.
Their recruiting offices were set up directly across the street from my daughter’s high school right next to the Burger King where all the seniors went to lunch.
Shady as fuck
They also exclusively target lower to middle class areas because rich people have options, and the capitalist oligarchy love that poverty to cannon fodder pipeline.
Which is conveniently the real reason they are trying to ban abortion. Because poor kids without options are easy to recruit as cannon fodder
I think you give pro choice and religious nuts too much credit.
I would imagine that behind closed doors, men in positions of power have had conversations about the potential recruits the military is losing with easy access to abortion, but I agree with you.
For the most part there is no grand conspiracy, just passionate nuts who believe they’re going to live forever who found a shortcut to what they imagine is God’s approval. Like that nut who climbs buildings to raise awareness or whatever it is he’s doing. They believe when they die, they’ll wake up on a cloud and hear “Jesus Loves the Little Children” playing in the background. Their lord will walk up to them and embrace them, tell them what a good job they did shouting about saving babies as he pets their hair.
I grew up in that world. So glad I don’t still live in it.
Wait till OP hears about mandatory service in other countries.
Lol that’s what I was going to say.
Imma be real with you, every country that has a military recruits from schools. Lots of countries don’t even ask, they just make you go in anyway. America isn’t an oddity at this.
Hahaha no they don’t. There’s only a select few countries with mandatory service too.
I’ll go against the grain here.
I joined not long after high school because I wasn’t gonna be able to pay for college, not that I was a good student anyway.
Spent most of my 4 year Air Force enlistment in the UK doing what I wanted - sysad, basically. Never deployed.
Got out and worked for increasingly higher pay and now I make $250k+ without a college degree.
I joined not long after high school because I wasn’t gonna be able to pay for college, not that I was a good student anyway.
Should you not be pissed off that this was one of the very few options you had in order to have a chance at success later in life because of your economic situation rather than touting this as a good idea?
More options are better, usually, so sure, I would have liked the option not to join.
But like I said, I’m a terrible student and still haven’t gone back to use my education benefit even though it would cost me nothing but time.
I’m simply providing a counter to the sentiment “I don’t wanna die for some oil company”.
To be honest, I think it every time I see people complaining about their prospects. Rather than bitch about it online, I did something to upgrade my socioeconomic status.
Army recruiters in your school that somehow use social media to contact you?
Institutionalised creepiness.
