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.
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.
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.
Also a huge reason the GOP is so against student debt forgiveness. Can’t give poor people an option beyond joining the military if they want to go to college.
I remember one of the (R) Congress critters saying as much a few years ago, but I can't find the source. I think it was one of their complete imbeciles.
If they truly cared about "all life" they would be pushing food programs for kids in schools, and persue free education.
But educated children don't end up in the military... Quick cut those programs!
Republicans pull out a Bible and read whatever chapter slightly resembles the doctrine they want to push, and conveniently forget all the rest. And their voting base laps it up because they've never actually read a Bible themselves either.
They target a lot of wealthier neighborhoods as well. Lot of failsons that can't get into a good college because of their shit grades, but a couple years in the army as an NCO means they can get into a decent school afterwards.
Yeah, there are special divisions for fortunate sons, who get fancier barracks and light duties away from harms way. We know because George W. Bush served his military career in one in the Coast Guard.
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.
The poverty draft is very real. Usually it's for enlisted who have no other prospects. But I was in that same boat in college. 2 years in ROTC before something made me realize I was not going to enjoy military life and dropped it.
I went to school in a dirt poor place. Like half of my graduating class joined the military. Recruiters were in the halls like every week. Yeah, it's absolutely intentional.
They get relatively cheap, more educated workers for at least a short time. And they're often able to keep them at a cheaper salary than hiring someone with the same education. A (proactive) promotion that doubles your salary from $35 to $70k a year generates a lot of goodwill, even if that education and position would usually start at $90k.
Also people who "go to college" that work pays for don't live on campus, so the company is only on the hook for tuition, and not room and board. And it's often not full time. It's worth $10k/year for all that.
It's creepy that they're allowed to text children without their express consent. Assuming that this is a real text exchange and that OOP didn't wilfully give the recruiter their number earlier.
When I was a senior in high school back in the 2000's I got multiple cold calls from Army recruiters. I have no doubt that they've moved on to texting, and that this is legitimate.
Yep. Cold calls, emails, texts, whatever they could get their hands on all through my senior year in high school and at least my first two years of college. Not to mention their tables in the high school cafeteria, at robotics competitions, my engineering university's job fairs. Don't remember how I got them off my back, I might have just aged out of their main target cohort, but my mom likes to talk about how she told them she was pregnant (because she was lol) and they never contacted her again. Do with that information what you will.
Yup. I graduated high school at 17 and they were after me those last two years, at least. I was told I could have any job I wanted in the Navy due to my test scores. It was flattering and tempting.
We were all told we could have any job because our test scores were high. Come to find out that was a lie and while they might look at what you want to do, they'll put you where they need you.
I guess they probably do now because like 90% of high school grads have or did something that makes them ineligible to join and if they want more recruits they need to get students to not do things that make them ineligible and that might mean reaching out more than six months before they’re old enough to join.
Also recruiters can’t or don’t want to recruit teens on ADHD or mood meds. If you can’t be an effective fighter without medicine they don’t want to find that out in the middle of a fight.
When I was in high school our home phone number was published in the phone book and military recruiters called it a few times when I was getting close to finishing high school.
I’m not giving my kid a cell phone if I think them having it would endanger them. If unsolicited phone calls endanger them they shouldn’t have a cell phone. They should know what information shouldn’t be given out to strangers over the phone, on a call or via message. They should know how to block numbers and recognize calls that are best left to voicemail, &c.
The comment you responded to said it was "creepy", not that it wasn't allowed. That it's allowed doesn't make it any less messed up, and looking to argue semantics in this discussion and divert it onto trivialities just paints you as sympathetic to the practice or actively looking to aid it.
Calling out your bs diversionary response. This one too. And at this point I will stop engaging you and recommend everyone else do so as well, as you have illustrated wonderfully that you're not interested in actually discussing anything meaningful.
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.
It's interesting that the US has not signed the international agreement against child (<18 yo) soldiers - solely so that the US armed forces can sign 17 yo recruits.
I just thought the Comic-Con would have been a terrible recruiting ground. The military want people that follow orders. They actively discourage intelligence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Right, cause fucking weebs are known for their superior intelligence and independence in the face of authority.
I knew two people with mechanical engineering degrees who couldn't even make it through nuclear engineering school to work on submarine and carrier reactors, the military isn't made up of 100% dumbass infantrymen.
Throw 'em into boot, they either get ground down to follow orders or beat/shamed out. They're terribly good at psychological manipulation.
As far as intelligence, they know how to play the room now. They'll put you wherever you're best. They have a hell of a lot of tech now and aren't as keen on putting contractors in harms way. If you're better off as a grunt, you're a grunt. If you're skilled labor, they'll find a way to make you useful.
Not to say you should or shouldn't join. Skilled labor makes a hell of a lot more money other places.
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.
I wasn't going to join anyway, but the military recruiter who came to my school in the 90s ensured I wouldn't enlist.
He ended literally ended every phrase or clause with "'n stuff." And I do mean literally. Every phrase or clause.
It went like this:
"If you wanna join the army 'n stuff, you gotta get fit 'n stuff because basic training ain't easy 'n stuff but if you start getting fit now, you'll do fine 'n stuff."
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.
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.
Everything about your story is just wow. It’s the exact sort of story you hear in gay bars in the city the rural folk flee to
And yeah I can’t disagree with your points. Recruiters are actively seeking kids out to get them traumatized or killed. Good on you for telling one off
I remember mowing the lawn at home in the early 2000s when an Army recruiter pulled up and tried to get me to sign up. We lived in a cul-de-sac, so he was clearly there for me. I was 17 at the time.
The older I get, the more creeped out I am that they showed up unsolicited and talked to me without one of my parents present.
I remember a recruiter coming up to me, trying to shame me.
"Don't you love your country?!" He shouted. This was after 9/11 too, and being brown, I didn't say what I wanted to say because i was 17 and was absolutely sure this guy would beat me up.
After 9/11 I had people telling me to look less Muslim so I wouldn't be targeted by crazy people. At the time, being brown and having a beard made you Muslim, which in turn made you a terrorist.
Sadly all the branches have one at the schools. I made the mistake of taking the ASVAB test in high school to get out of class, scored well and was hounded by all of these guys. The marine recruiter showed up at my house carrying a CRT TV/VHS combo to try and convince me to join lol
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.
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.
Or it's about money for the university degree they know the kid wants but can't afford. There's all sorts of angles and I would guess they have a standard pitch based on score, location, estimated socioeconomic background.
I mean. At least that's what I would do if I were in charge of recruitment.
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'm old enough that we didn't really have those technical things when I would have been enlisting (early 90s). But even then I remember our guidance counselor telling us, "You'll get 5 calls. One from each branch, all asking you to enlist. You can just say no."
We all took the ASVAB, as I recall - it replaced a class period. For some reason, I remember the room I took it in, so I'm pretty certain it replaced a language class (German, in my case - it was a small, windowless room, though I did have a study hall in the same room one year). When I met one on one with the guidance counselor, he looked at the ASVAB and said, "Well, you're qualified for every job in the military, but you're probably not interested." Then we talked about other careers and college.
Now that I think about it, that dude did me a world of good on several occasions. I wish I could find him and thank him.
The score matters as far as what jobs you qualify for, and it also tests different aptitudes. For example, two people could have the same overall score (say a 70), but one person could show mechanical aptitude and be pushed toward a Machinist position, while the other could do poorly on mechanical but do well in electrical stuff and become an electrician.
They also don't want to waste their smarter people as basic grunts or cooks, so a higher ASVAB score can mean you're less likely to get the job you want if, say, you score 90+, but always wanted to be a chef. If you have a specific job you want to go in for, you basically have to get it in writing that you're joining for that job, otherwise you're at the mercy of the "needs of the {branch name}" - you will be what they need most that you're very good at.
That's not true. If you want to go combat arms with a high score they just have you sign a letter of intent for Green Berets or Rangers. If you fail off that you go to a normal infantry unit. "Grunts" actually have to be pretty smart. It's a Hollywood thing that all the grunts are just cannon fodder. Our Army runs, in combat, on millions of decisions made by Corporals and Sergeants with teams of 4-6 people under them.
They do present you with all the other jobs you could do though.
I did say if you have a specific thing to get it in writing. If you sign a letter of intent, that is getting it in writing. Plenty of guys in my boot camp got told they could go do X job in the Navy but ended up getting a different designation during boot. This was back in the mid 2000's so it may be more standard to have the LoI but at the time plenty of us did and plenty of us didn't.
And for my job, I only got to join "the nuke program" - we got to give a wishlist for which rating but it didn't mean much. I got the rating I wanted, but several guys wanted Electronics Technician and ended up as their last choice - Machinist's Mates.
And I've met some decently smart infantry, but I've also met plenty of infantry that were (affectionately) window lickers. More seriously though, the ones we joked around with about being window lickers aren't actually stupid, they were just average guys, just not as quick as some of the other vets in the group (the Marine vet embraced the crayon eating jokes). I'm sure they were fine at their job though, and they followed orders well which is probably the most important thing in a soldier or sailor.
Different services, different ways I guess. I was early 2000's too but in the army. And you knew most of what you were doing before you went. For example Infantry was known, but not rifleman or mortarman. And they could only deny you if you didn't qualify. Over qualified wasn't a thing. (My dumbass was over qualified for the infantry)
My highschool had the same thing, they made it sound mandatory but a handful of us found out they couldn't force you to take it. So yea while 99% of my classmates took it the 5 of us got to sit in a empty classroom and wait it out
When I was in school we had to take it but the recruiters also passed back the results. So even if you didn't want to join it was supposed to be useful information about what you're good at doing.
Ironically they may have tried harder because you scored low. The phrase "Asvab Waiver" exists for a reason. And there's very few people who couldn't drive a truck or something useful.
Yeah, we had to take it in school as well. Since I had no interest in dying in Iraq, I just filled in bubbles at random. Still got phone calls and mailings aplenty begging me to join the military. They even mailed me a video game that the Army made, though I never played it so I don't know how bad it was.
Was it Americas Army? I played that when it released. Not bad. I’m not a fan of shooters, but it was at least interesting to see a game that had an honest attempt at making it as “real” as possible.
The sniper mission was the only thing I didn’t complete. It had one mission where you had to sit and wait for up to 48 hours real time before you could take a shot at your target. Neat concept, but totally impractical for a game.
Americas Army stunk bad on release, but was pretty solid by the time that it got to 3.0.
Recruits are trained on the engine used in ARMA by Bohemia Interactive. I played some of the scenarios on Operation: Flashpoint (which featured cold-war operations in the late 1980s).
Eventually, when I got hit, I assumed I was dead, and occasionally be surprised that I'm not, in fact, falling over, and am still alive and still have functional parts.
But yes, the most effective way to play seemed to be to hide in a bush and wait for minutes (hours if necessary) for the enemy to cross your firing line.
I guarantee you recruits are trained in the nearest forest. There's edge cases where using a video game can be useful for testing new tactics with veterans. But recruits are looking for the basics. Like what does a platoon wedge look like in a forest versus the grass.
War games are really useful for officers trying to plan things. That way they don't need to pay for thousands of people to deploy to special training areas to figure stuff out. But even then it's open to misuse, like when Rumsfield decided light infantry was a dead concept.
You probably got more phone calls because you scored low. Most recruiters aren't't exactly looking for the cream of the crop. They prey on desperate individuals who have no other choice.
My dad had to sign up for service in the military in Britain in the late 1940s when he turned 18. He never told me exactly how he got out of it (I suspect he pretended to be gay), but he did tell me about the "intelligence test" he had to take which sounded very similar to the cognitive diagnostic test Trump brags about. He said it was stuff like-
Which of these doesn't belong: Square, circle, triangle, elephant.
He finished it in about five minutes, asked if he could leave, and was told he had to wait until everyone finished or an hour had gone by. Apparently, by the end of the hour, there were people around him really struggling to finish.
War is lame. It's just a bunch of people killing each other while the real people in power sit in comfy chairs watching it all unfold. Can we just all get along?
Oh wait, you have oil? Oh, um, he hit me first. 💥🔫⚔️🛢️💯
It's pretty fucked, honestly. They regularly posted up in the lunchroom at my school, recruiting students with promises of scholarships.
We didn't get text messages like this, but I'm not surprised to see it. I do wonder how they get the numbers though. Is it just data broker bullshit or is the school system selling out their own students' information?
My college definitely gave out student contact info to the ROTC/National Guard recruiters. I got more than one unsolicited text exactly like the one in the OP throughout college.
I'd argue that its not as bad. socials are public, phone numbers are not. don't mean to defend them, they shouldn't be messaging minors in any capacity without explicit consent
Socials being "public" doesn't mean every single thing about the person is publicized (though, I admit, it could be depending on the person). If this is Instagram, afaik there's no "I go to X HS" bio-line option, so unless the user explicitly lists it themselves, that suggests recruiters are analyzing their posts to connect them to a school, and/or linking them to other users they already know. That is explicitly worse, imo.
For one, you literally started this argument. Second, schools giving them a list doesn't make it better either.
I will agree it's all bad, though. The sheer impudence to do anything like this is just awful. "Hey child! I know you never asked for this discussion, but do you wanna fight and die for a military system that will use shady af data acquisition just to pose this shitty question to you? We can give you an education that should be affordable to anyone but absolutely isn't. You're probably poor right?"
Do the kids of the ownership classes also have to serve with the rest of the grunts? Or are they sectioned off to champaign units the way George W. Bush did his Coast Guard tour? Or given exception like for Trump's bone spurs?
If aristocrats are on the front line with the of the enlisted, there might be better regard for vets.
I wonder if those countries also face the same degrees of top-down abuse and sexual assault for which the US Army is reputed.
War is Hell, but the US armed forces have more special hells than Big Trouble in Little China
Note that US military history picks me from trusting them in this fashion, but if mandatory military service were:
-severely limited term
-purely domestic (prepare for defense from active attacks, relief, and rescue)
-not used in any vaguely law enforcement capacity.
Then I could see that as possibly reasonable.
Of course I'd be skeptical that a nation would display that sort of restraint, but just saying I could imagine a hypothetical that included that
For starters, should things actually go south, they'll send you to war. I don't want nor plan to partake in this festival of turning people into slabs of bloody meat. I'm an aggressively pacifist civilian, and fuck everybody who tries to turn me into a soldier.
Second, no work should be mandatory. Turning it into a "duty" is essentially stealing my autonomy and forcing me to do things against my will. This is institutionalized slavery.
I've got forced military service, but my country ain't at war, so I've just gotta work 6 months in shitty jobs, that are necessary for society for free. Oh, and your free time in the barracks consists of drinking beer, playing cards and smoking
When I was in high school, during the last 3 months of the school year ... I forget if they were the Army or the Marines, but they had a table with a display and two guys in the hallway right outside the cafeteria.
That waa back when the coolest phone you could have was a Motorola Razr and computers still had mice with rubber balls instead of lasers... MySpace era. So they just set up in the most highly foot trafficked area of the school.
I very much remember wanting to get the limited edition phone that they actually made, an actual working phone that was pretty darn close to the one the characters used in the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies, haha.
/Then I would be cool/ rofl.
EDIT: Remember when people would actually clip songs or sounds and had to manually make them your ring or msg tone?
Nowadays everyone just pays for them.
You can still do a custom tone and what not, without paying, at least on android, but nobody seems to do that anymore.
You are technically correct but id say optical mice were not exactly common generally in non collegiate school settings, or general consumer or general office use surpassing the popularity of the older mice till the late 00s, though of course there will be exceptions basically depending on how wealthy an area is.
the first Razr came out in 2004. Facebook, the thing that killed MySpace, required a coledge.edu email until 2006. Apple was still selling the Puck mouse in 2000, and Logitech introduced the first laser-powered mouse the MX 1000 in 2004. The death of myspace the track ball mouse and the heyday of the Razr phone all defiantly overlapped in the mid 2000s.
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.
The oddity is having a military recruiter for a specific school.
All we had was a stand for the military at a fair with all studies options (context: belgium)
I know that my country has a military and doesn't recruit from schools. You actually have to put in a lot of effort to get selected. (Although this might be because we are the most populous country in the world.)
how did SSG CarbonizedMiddleEasternToddler even get this kid's number? Like, are schools colluding with recruiters to just ship underperforming kids off to die?
My college sold me out. (Or got hacked or something).
They misspelled my middle name and suddenly, I got bank offers and all sorts of weird shit with that misspelling. I'm actually thankful they misspelled it because it helped me pinpoint my shitty college as the culprit.
I won't be surprised high schools do it too. A little "oops I didn't know" deniability and "fuck those kids" adult mentality.
I went to a state school in the early 90s. Taking a specific sequence of physics classes was the cue for Navy nuke tech recruiters. And they were aggressive. Turns out someone in the registrar's office would search for students with that class sequence and sell the info to Navy recruiters. The person got fired, and there was a bunch of pearl-clutching. And yet military recruiters are still such a fixture of college campuses.
Yeah I read recently that selling student data is a pretty common practice for colleges. It's good income for them, and students aren't able to track it easily so they don't make a fuss.
Highschools ask for the students cellphone numbers? I'm out of touch, I graduated before everybody had a cellphone. What do they need the students numbers for?
The school published a book of students and parents at my school, with addresses and phone numbers for both. Privacy has been shit upon for years longer than you'd imagine.
I went to college in my 30s and got texts and calls from recruiters for months. I never knowingly gave my contact info to them, so I'm assuming they got it from the school.
When i was in high school 2003, my physics class devoted an entire period to a military recruiter... Sufficed to say, only the redneck kids were interested.
Irrelevant, the original point was that they don't want people who think, they want cannon fodder. As if people who can't think would be capable of running a shop or leading technically minded people in workflows and processes that will affect missions weeks away. That's just at the E-4/5 level, not even close to officers. If you can't think in the military you'll forever be bottom of the barrel, because planning and forethought is required for virtually all leadership roles beyond E-3.
90% of the military is in a field that has a direct civilian equivalent and is considered skilled work needing at least average intelligence and in most cases above. Most of the people shitting on the military in this thread couldn't even hack half of the jobs the military needs people for.
I know that to be true, but if someone is claiming all enlisted personnel are window lickers the best way to prove them wrong immediately is to focus on the technical skill of the average servicemen.
Yeah infantry tactics aren't for the stupid, not in modern wars at least. Advanced weapon systems and battlefield strategy require someone of reasonable intellect.
We had literally thousands of people going to school for electronics and various maintenance fields at any given time, it's not even close to 0.1%. More like 20-30%.
I had a very anti-war sociology professor that had been protesting since vietnam. Despite his qualms with military industrial complex, he would always say that the the military is the last vestige of upward mobility in the united states as it's one of the few places where you can enter a playing field that is somewhat leveled for new entries, have merit impact your growth, and get access things like subsidized education. Sure there's still racism, sexism, etc. but in terms of economic mobility it provides a decent ladder.
I once read an article that basically called the military a billion dollar vocational school program and it really shifted my perspective. Like I kinda don't give a shit about most people or why they join - maybe it's that chance at upward mobility, maybe it's the desire to serve a cause, maybe it's a desire to feel a part of something bigger, all of which are legit human needs and desires. As an idea, I'm kind of neutral leaning towards negative in the military. It's when I start looking at it in the broader context thag I get angry, and it's not necessarily at the rank and file, and sometimes not even the mid to high leadership. It's the presidents and the politicians and business people who lead the whole thing and play games with people's lives. I even have sympathy for the angry knuckle dragging meatheads because they just got duped, again, by the ruling class.
Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt believed the military was a noble path. At Nuremberg, when asked why he continued to serve after learning the atrocities of the German Reich, he asserted Prussians don't mutiny!
Essentially, he was glad to be a loyal machine that completes a task, rather than someone who stands for principle.
But then when honor doesn't compel us to operate the Death Star's superlaser for the Galactic Emperor, money will, and if not that, extortion.
Well a draft is for times of war. But mandatory military service in a democracy... Does that lead to anti war policies. If every family had skin in the game knowing their kid could go to war, does that help elect anti war politicians?
The freaky thing is we spend an insane about on the US military so we can bully the rest of the world. But then we don't spend that on our troops. Shit materiel, shit armor, shit supply. Instead we're investing in laser planes and active camo on tanks, and the POS raptor program.
To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, we treat our troops like toys a rich kid got for Christmas which became obvious during the War on Terror, but new info traces it back to Vietnam.
If the armed forces gave our troopers real gear, didn't treat them as expendable, but people expected to come home and actually have lives (rather than missing pieces, dealing with a TBI from an IUD or lifelong PTSD) and the DVA treated those shot up like the heroes they're allegedly supposed to be, then maybe there's an argument for joining up.
But as it is, military service in the US is comparable to self-harm. The only ones who should be joining are those who are on the verge of unlifing and have exhausted all other options.
Seriously, counter-recruitment writes itself, as per the social media failures about Army Experience. Even if none of the things above happens, you're at risk of becoming the pet project of some bully officer who wants to break you, and if you're not too unattractive, you're at high risk for sexual assault and a following cover-up, while you get quiet medical discharge.
You know, I wonder if the French Foreign Legion treats its troopers better than the United States. (I genuinely don't know.)
You'll probably be shipped off to Africa at some point. America isn't interested in oil anymore, it's all about them minerals so we can build them high tech weapons.
Probably. China is investing heavily in several African countries. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a proxy conflict or “police action” there. However, we’re going to have to extricate ourselves from our China Dependency more first before we engage in conflict. Them squeezing our supply lines wouldn’t go well. That’s what happens when profits overrule national security.
To an extent you’re right, and that matches what I’m saying. Those same profits that preventing aggression are the same ones tying our hands behind our backs. When your profit offshores your ability to keep many systems running thanks to things like computer chips, clothing, some food, medications, car parts…it’s a big fucking deal because the country making those things for you has you by the proverbial balls.
Hell, just the other day, I found out the 120mm cannon on the Abrams is a German design that we bought the rights to manufactured ourselves. We get more than just materials and parts from other countries. And it hamstrings us from involving ourselves in certain conflicts, which seems counterproductive. Especially when China is just as aggressive as we are on the world stage, while peace with them has also been one of our largest assets.
I'm one of those weird people that thinks war history is interesting as hell, but also hates these resource wars and our involvement in them as a country. Fighting back the Germans in order to save the world is one thing. Flying jets over countries that don't even build jet aircraft, hailing gunfire and bombs down upon people that may not even have internal plumbing in some places, is shameful and greedy. Attempting to convince children to join in that gruesome national passtime should get you labeled as a groomer and ostracized from society. I don't care how many jobs in the military don't involve killing poor brown people. It all supports the act, regardless.
And don't get me started on the horrific amount of SA and murder cover-ups that happen in our military.
The meaning of "recruiter for your school" might have more to do with the Army coordinating who is actively recruiting where, than someone who is permanently installed at said school. So more "I'm the recruiter the Army designated for" than "I'm your school's recruiter". Big difference. I've never heard of the latter.
I recall a few weeks back in the 1990's where different armed forces recruiters were allowed to set up a booth in my HS cafeteria. In hindsight, it seems like the faculty should have launched a whole job fair while they were handing out favors. Which just raises more questions. Anyway, this recent social media angle fits with the same M.O. - they're super aggressive and will work every angle to get closer to potential recruits.
The bigger problem is that, like all military posts, they rotate people frequently. IMO, there's little incentive to strictly observe social norms since they're never sticking around for more than a couple years. Yes, you can report people, but that has got to feel like playing whack-a-mole.
Back in 2001 the recruiter at my high school very nearly convinced my girlfriend at the time to join up. She was not cut out for that life, and did eventually back out.
Our recruiters held pull-up competitions to see who could do the most during lunch. Sad if you think about it....the winners get to be pressured to join the military since they show good athletic ability.
I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from but concussions are probably one of the plethora of shitty things that you actually aren't exposed to during training. Concussions and TBI are common because of close contact with explosives in combat zones mostly, not in training.
Of course I'm not defending the military and their practices, I was in the Marine Corps myself, this bit is just not true though.
it's not a literal concussion. It turns out the percussive blasts that shit like mortars are artillery produce are akin to concussive injuries to the brain. (with enough and repeated exposure, much like concussions) Which isn't really surprising when you think about it.
I will say the irony of someone who was in the military discounting this is pretty funny though.
I wouldn't call it ironic. You claimed that US military training causes permanent irreversible brain damage and referenced concussions as the cause. This is just has no hard evidence to back it up. And your comment here states something that was not your original claim and has not actually been studied and peer reviewed on anything except for a few studies on mice, where those studies indicate that it's hard to equivocate these outcomes to humans for a number of reasons. I'm not claiming that exposure to sub-concussive blasts isn't dangerous or injuring peoples brains, it probably is but I don't know for sure whether it does or not since it's not actually proven. Just stating, once again, that training is not responsible for actual concussions except in rare circumstances like accidental injury, almost all of these injuries occur in actual combat. Further, a majority of US service members are never even exposed to sub-concussive blasts, so there is only a small subset which your claim would even apply to in the first place.
I'm not trying to tear down your comments or defend the US military's practices, I just don't think making these types of claims without legitimate proof is useful or appropriate. If I've missed something that proves everything I've said wrong I'm perfectly happy to be corrected.
i referenced concussions because they are similar, and it was also a joke, hence the fact it was put into parenthesis. That wasn't meant to be taken straight up.
To my knowledge, there have been studies done in the military on the effects of continual and repeated sub-concussive blasts (if that's the correct term) that show some form of damage. It's also been said that after the results of these studies coming out with potentially bad impacts, that they were pretty quickly shut down. Not to mention i've seen a number of people who have been in the military as well as people who know those who have been in the military provide anecdotal evidence of it.
It's certainly not solid evidence, but for something like a federal military, that's pretty concerning.
In concussion armor. The stuff we haven't been issuing to our troopers since the War On Terror, and they've been coming back by the hundreds of thousands with TBIs, for which the DVA doesn't do squat.
I'm pretty sure there is. Families since the aughts have been buying or making cardboard inserts for standard issue to help ensure Johnny comes marching home, once it had been determined the armor issued wasn't doing it when dealing with IEDs.
But whether good armor doesn't exist doesn't matter. What matters is standard issue is resulting in troops coming home permanently missing faculties for which the DVA isn't adequately managing. So we counter-recruiters are telling them there are worse things that can happen than you coming back in a box, like you coming back in parts and your family confined to poverty and wiping your ass for the rest of your natural life.
There were armor upgrades explicitly downvoted by congress. Then we were losing humvees to IEDs like flies to glow traps. Mechanics were attaching scrap until rhino kits came out. Not a good look.
The war on false pretenses also soured the whole ordeal. I hear our grade-schoolers coming back from American History are being taught Iraqi Freedom was revenge for the 9/11 attacks. (It wasn't.)
Oh no. Those things were horrible. The 1/2 inch steel plate was better. And yeah I remember driving around in those things. The steel plate is why I still have legs. Eventually though the anti coalition forces just started using something called an Explosively Formed Projectile (EFP). At which point we might as well have driven dune buggies for all the good armor would do. And by eventually, I mean late 2004.
Then there were the mission restrictions for heavily armored Humvees and early MRAPs. Basically they had to stay on asphalt and couldn't handle much in the way of curb hopping or going under bridges. We actually spent most of our second deployment in an old 1025 Humvee (the 1990's armor that wasn't seen as good enough) and had a much higher mission rate because we could go places other units could not.
I understand that from the outside the answer always looks like more armor, but it really isn't. And we made a lot of vehicles that could come through a normal blast just fine, but with a dead crew from over pressure. It wasn't until the M-ATV that we solved that problem. And that thing got made available as fast as possible. It now lives on in the JLTV.
Tl;Dr - Factory uparmored vehicles were a boondoggle sold to reassure civilians. They were less mission capable and did not prevent casualties.
Edit to add - That 9/11 Iraq myth pisses me off so much. I don't know why we went, but it wasn't for 9/11.
i went to a high school that had a JROTC program so having a recruiter was extremely expected for me, but forthem to send unsolicited recruitment texts lol? yall go to some sussy ass schools
Lot of people in here who are very uncomfortable with the fact that the world is a messy place made up of almost entirely morally grey issues with exclusively morally grey situations. Good, now do something about it.
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.
(UK here) We had some people from the “Territorial Army” (basically reserves as far as I know?) and almost immediately lost the entire attention of class. No one would pay them any attention or sign up
You know, there's an aspect to the bond, the camaraderie, the discipline, the fitness that I really appreciate about soldiering. Growing up with films like Band of Brothers practically on repeat, having read pretty close to every book that came out from those guys — well, I have admiration. But at the same time as I grew up and became more leftist I of course had many issues with the volatility of our leadership.
If I could've joined Norway, Canada, or German armed forces under the NATO banner, I may very well have done that. After seeing everything transpiring in Ukraine, I often wonder if I'd have the courage to do what those brave people are doing every day. In the right context, under purely defensive conditions, I'd like to think I would've thrived, but who knows...
But second to volatile leadership is quite honestly the type of people the military tends to attract. The desperate, the jar-head conservative types. If life is on the line, I'd rather not be in a foxhole with them if I'm honest.
But there's a lot of talk that finally the culture may be shifting within the US Military — to attract smarter, better educated people. I know a lot of conservatives are retiring early and not joining up because they feel the "culture is changing," which is a good sign to me.
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.
Can't you get paid to become an officer with a good non-combat role in the US? Sure being cannon fodder sucks but becoming an engineer or a doctor at their expense can be a decent upstart.
Not everyone can be an officer. They're basically upper management in the military; there's way more enlisted than officers, and the officers are held to such high standards, it's hard to qualify to become one.
Source: I spent 20 years as an enlisted guy in the US Air Force. Considered going officer, but there was way too much politics and regulation involved. Screw that. Just let me do my job and go home at the end of the day.
I worked as an IT guy in the Air Force. I was always far removed from battles, and I joined right before the 2003 Iraq War kicked off. Serving in the military isn't bad, as long as you pick the right career field. Army and Marines abuse the hell out of their people. They treat them like govt property and they always get the worst of everything. The Navy and Air Force actually take care of their guys, though.
The Navy and Air Force actually take care of their guys
As an ex-USN carrier type, there’s a common phrase used in the fleet: choose your rate (MOS), choose your fate.
My carrier, the Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), was (and probably still is) among the shittiest commands a sailor could be assigned to, and during the five years I spent aboard it as an E-5, I saw just about the very worst it had to offer. Deck Department got brutalized, and so did the nukes in the Reactor Department and the snipes in Engineering. The AZ’s (Aviation Administration) had it fairly good, all things considered.
The ship was bad enough that I EAOS’d from the fleet off of it, and never looked back.
The fleet can very easily be just as horrifying as the Army and the USMC, just in different ways. Luck is not always the lady.
Time's are tough all over, I joined the Air Force and one time the made me stay in a 2 star hotel, and when I deployed there was only one ice cream shop.
Jesus fuck man, a 2-star?! Even we got better digs than that! Which CMSgt did you piss off, your CCM? Yeah, that’d do it, lol Oddly, your dining facilities on Keesler had better chow than Andrews! Good ole AF! Real bummer about the ice cream shop, though. Our carrier had an actual Starbucks on board.
In the UK, the colloquially named Chair Force had some NCO's go through who stuck out their term in a field that had lots of factors that transferred across to civilian employment. Top of the tree was air traffic controllers - certain branches of the RAF's ATC capability was based at Swanwick anyway so if they ever went to the National Air Traffic Service, a lot of the time they could pick up their stuff from their desk on their last Friday, and move it across the room to another desk for when they came back in new clothes on Monday morning.
Vets are another field that is great to get into if you want your fees paid for, but most of those are officer grades, same deal as pilots. The clerks are generally well trained too - those who used to "fly a desk" as they put it, went on to be good accountants and heath and safety ninjas.
Certainly for the UK, the military gave the option to poorer backgrounds to get expensive qualifications while not generally going near theatres or on deployments.
Spent 14 years in the Navy, and they don’t care much for their people either, just in a different way from the Army and the Marines. Imagine the Air Force but like 1/3rd as much money to spend on its people because they spent the rest on ships.
I once saw a junior officer get chewed out by a superior for using the word "ain't". I knew then that I could never measure up to those kinds of standards, and would go crazy if I tried.
That's what ROTC pretty much does. You need to have relevant education in something the military wants, then they pay for your education, and do some prep work for you to do well in officer candidate school.
That’s what my brother did. He done ROTC and then joined the marines. He spent a decade as an aviation technician and never left the states. This was at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He was buff as hell when he left the military. He moved back in with my dad and step mom when he left and sat on the money he had piled up in the bank for years playing World of Warcraft and getting fat.
I envied him so much during that time (the part where he played WoW and got fat for years), but I wouldn’t have joined the military for any reason. That kind of thing just isn’t for me. I absolutely love reading about Napoleon and his soldiers trekking around Europe and fighting. I love reading about WWII and all of the combat stories I can gobble up, but there’s no way in hell I’d give any of my body for the ambitions of men who view their fellow man as figures on a board game.
Like, hoorah to the people who don’t mind. I just want to live in a world where we don’t need shit like that anymore.
There are ethical reasons not to though. You would still support a hyper aggressive military that constantly attacks other countries and kills innocents all over the world.
Well in my head it isn't crazy, you can join the royal military school of Belgium with a high school diploma and get a degree while being paid, fed and hosted. It isn't great fun and they're pretty strict, and you have to serve them for five years (or sometimes more) afterwards, but it's a pretty good deal if you don't want to spend a lot of money on prolonged studies like becoming a surgeon.
Still not a name. "My name is John Smith and I'm a staff sergeant" is fine. "My name is Staff Sergeant Smith" is just silly and makes a person look full of themselves.
That's quite literally how members of the military the world over refer to themselves and each other, rank and name, both written and spoken. Bottom to top members of the military, Pvt Schmuckatelly to the Commander and Chief is called by rank and name, which is often President [name] or King [name].
Ahh yea I get what you're saying like not part of his actual name. In military contexts including recruiting they require people to go by their title and name. But it does feel forced when the other person isn't military.
When I was in high school the Marines set up a pull up bar to see who could do the most and I won (cause I was like 135 lbs and a climber) and SSG Harris hounded me every week for the next year and a half. Even finding me in the cafeteria and sitting with us at lunch. These guys suck.
I wish I was asked to join the army, but no. They just send me a letter and then expect me to join. If I don't, they will drag me there by force. The whole ordeal would be easier if they just did it like this and I could send a meme saying that I don't want to join.
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.
no, this is patrick
Good to know. Explains a lot.
If you're still believing they're religiously motivated you're exactly where they want you.
The idiots who vote are religiously motivated. The ones with power want cheap labor.
Also a huge reason the GOP is so against student debt forgiveness. Can’t give poor people an option beyond joining the military if they want to go to college.
I remember one of the (R) Congress critters saying as much a few years ago, but I can't find the source. I think it was one of their complete imbeciles.
Interesting..
So is the alternative to kill people in the womb based on the possibility they might end up joining the army at some point in their lives?
The alternative is to not convince fools that fetuses are people just so that they'll create more soldiers.
Fetuses aren't people? When does that happen exactly then?
You're just making a fool of yourself.
Oh ok. I noticed you didn't answer. It's not a trick question unless you're a fool.
After you have committed to having the baby.
Yes, fertilization is indeed codifying this commitment to start a family. See, common ground!
If they truly cared about "all life" they would be pushing food programs for kids in schools, and persue free education.
But educated children don't end up in the military... Quick cut those programs!
Republicans pull out a Bible and read whatever chapter slightly resembles the doctrine they want to push, and conveniently forget all the rest. And their voting base laps it up because they've never actually read a Bible themselves either.
You're right. We're better off killing them in the womb to prevent any suffering they may have.
They target a lot of wealthier neighborhoods as well. Lot of failsons that can't get into a good college because of their shit grades, but a couple years in the army as an NCO means they can get into a decent school afterwards.
Yeah, there are special divisions for fortunate sons, who get fancier barracks and light duties away from harms way. We know because George W. Bush served his military career in one in the Coast Guard.
Why do they always send the poor?
Why don’t presidents fight in wars?
You depend on our protection, yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth
The one in my town is right next to GameStop.
Isn't there a law against people who take advantage of kids being near schools?
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.
The poverty draft is very real. Usually it's for enlisted who have no other prospects. But I was in that same boat in college. 2 years in ROTC before something made me realize I was not going to enjoy military life and dropped it.
I went to school in a dirt poor place. Like half of my graduating class joined the military. Recruiters were in the halls like every week. Yeah, it's absolutely 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?
Totally not intentional, I'm sure.
Yes. It was. Now days most jobs offer to cover college. I want to know how they benefit because I don't get it.
They get relatively cheap, more educated workers for at least a short time. And they're often able to keep them at a cheaper salary than hiring someone with the same education. A (proactive) promotion that doubles your salary from $35 to $70k a year generates a lot of goodwill, even if that education and position would usually start at $90k.
Also people who "go to college" that work pays for don't live on campus, so the company is only on the hook for tuition, and not room and board. And it's often not full time. It's worth $10k/year for all that.
It's creepy that they're allowed to text children without their express consent. Assuming that this is a real text exchange and that OOP didn't wilfully give the recruiter their number earlier.
When I was a senior in high school back in the 2000's I got multiple cold calls from Army recruiters. I have no doubt that they've moved on to texting, and that this is legitimate.
Yep. Cold calls, emails, texts, whatever they could get their hands on all through my senior year in high school and at least my first two years of college. Not to mention their tables in the high school cafeteria, at robotics competitions, my engineering university's job fairs. Don't remember how I got them off my back, I might have just aged out of their main target cohort, but my mom likes to talk about how she told them she was pregnant (because she was lol) and they never contacted her again. Do with that information what you will.
So they’re old enough to decide to join the military but not old enough to handle receiving an unsolicited message on social media?
Recruiters start working you long before you're old enough to join.
We usually call that grooming.
Recruiters groom children to kill.
Yup. I graduated high school at 17 and they were after me those last two years, at least. I was told I could have any job I wanted in the Navy due to my test scores. It was flattering and tempting.
Why didn't you pick like Fleet Admiral and then decommissioned all the ships before promptly quitting?
We were all told we could have any job because our test scores were high. Come to find out that was a lie and while they might look at what you want to do, they'll put you where they need you.
I guess they probably do now because like 90% of high school grads have or did something that makes them ineligible to join and if they want more recruits they need to get students to not do things that make them ineligible and that might mean reaching out more than six months before they’re old enough to join.
90% would be ineligible? how come?
The largest reasons are lack of physical fitness or criminal convictions
https://youtu.be/uO8qJukZJg4?si=Hg02Ln0rD-M2ILqD&t=537
Also recruiters can’t or don’t want to recruit teens on ADHD or mood meds. If you can’t be an effective fighter without medicine they don’t want to find that out in the middle of a fight.
They did when I was in school and that was like 25 years ago
You can join the military before you can drink. This country doesn't make sense.
At least you can’t get drafted before you’re old enough to vote anymore.
It makes perfect sense when you remember that the worth of human life and ethics aren't factored in when people decide how the country works.
It's not about "handling" anything. Not sure how you inferred that from my post.
Are you okay with army recruiters having your child's cell phone number without their express consent?
When I was in high school our home phone number was published in the phone book and military recruiters called it a few times when I was getting close to finishing high school.
I’m not giving my kid a cell phone if I think them having it would endanger them. If unsolicited phone calls endanger them they shouldn’t have a cell phone. They should know what information shouldn’t be given out to strangers over the phone, on a call or via message. They should know how to block numbers and recognize calls that are best left to voicemail, &c.
Sounds like you support actual grooming.
Not really any better. Soliciting (presumably) high school students via their phone or via social media is fucked up.
The comment you responded to said it was "creepy", not that it wasn't allowed. That it's allowed doesn't make it any less messed up, and looking to argue semantics in this discussion and divert it onto trivialities just paints you as sympathetic to the practice or actively looking to aid it.
Calling out your bs diversionary response. This one too. And at this point I will stop engaging you and recommend everyone else do so as well, as you have illustrated wonderfully that you're not interested in actually discussing anything meaningful.
I'm going to college right now and I've been getting messages from recruiters lately. They literally text me from their work numbers now.
Not that it matters too much but it looks like Instagram or Facebook direct message
Back in the early 2000's I had a recruiter call my house asking for me, creepy AF.
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.
It's interesting that the US has not signed the international agreement against child (<18 yo) soldiers - solely so that the US armed forces can sign 17 yo recruits.
I just thought the Comic-Con would have been a terrible recruiting ground. The military want people that follow orders. They actively discourage intelligence.
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.
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.
Well, fuck me I just found out I'm stupid
Socrates would say that's a good first step.
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.
I guess that is WIS vs INT
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.
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.
LoL mkay
Right, cause fucking weebs are known for their superior intelligence and independence in the face of authority.
I knew two people with mechanical engineering degrees who couldn't even make it through nuclear engineering school to work on submarine and carrier reactors, the military isn't made up of 100% dumbass infantrymen.
Throw 'em into boot, they either get ground down to follow orders or beat/shamed out. They're terribly good at psychological manipulation.
As far as intelligence, they know how to play the room now. They'll put you wherever you're best. They have a hell of a lot of tech now and aren't as keen on putting contractors in harms way. If you're better off as a grunt, you're a grunt. If you're skilled labor, they'll find a way to make you useful.
Not to say you should or shouldn't join. Skilled labor makes a hell of a lot more money other places.
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.
What was the response?
It was basically the scene in Full Metal Jacket where the Marine commander grills Joker about the peace sign and "Born to Kill" on his helmet.
Army recruiters in your school that somehow use social media to contact you?
Institutionalised creepiness.
Wait until you see "career day" at school.
I wasn't going to join anyway, but the military recruiter who came to my school in the 90s ensured I wouldn't enlist.
He ended literally ended every phrase or clause with "'n stuff." And I do mean literally. Every phrase or clause.
It went like this:
"If you wanna join the army 'n stuff, you gotta get fit 'n stuff because basic training ain't easy 'n stuff but if you start getting fit now, you'll do fine 'n stuff."
For 45 fucking minutes.
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 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:
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.
Everything about your story is just wow. It’s the exact sort of story you hear in gay bars in the city the rural folk flee to
And yeah I can’t disagree with your points. Recruiters are actively seeking kids out to get them traumatized or killed. Good on you for telling one off
Wow what the fuck
Man that is creepy. Some "I have candy in my van" vibes.
Literally an idiot trap
What in the actual fuck
I'm surprised they didn't have America's Army running there. That used to be a great game.
The recruiting office near me has a huge portable climbing wall.
I remember mowing the lawn at home in the early 2000s when an Army recruiter pulled up and tried to get me to sign up. We lived in a cul-de-sac, so he was clearly there for me. I was 17 at the time.
The older I get, the more creeped out I am that they showed up unsolicited and talked to me without one of my parents present.
I remember a recruiter coming up to me, trying to shame me.
"Don't you love your country?!" He shouted. This was after 9/11 too, and being brown, I didn't say what I wanted to say because i was 17 and was absolutely sure this guy would beat me up.
After 9/11 I had people telling me to look less Muslim so I wouldn't be targeted by crazy people. At the time, being brown and having a beard made you Muslim, which in turn made you a terrorist.
Sadly all the branches have one at the schools. I made the mistake of taking the ASVAB test in high school to get out of class, scored well and was hounded by all of these guys. The marine recruiter showed up at my house carrying a CRT TV/VHS combo to try and convince me to join lol
Marine got a workout that day
This was in FL too, this guy walked the walk I guess.
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.
Or it's about money for the university degree they know the kid wants but can't afford. There's all sorts of angles and I would guess they have a standard pitch based on score, location, estimated socioeconomic background.
I mean. At least that's what I would do if I were in charge of recruitment.
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'm old enough that we didn't really have those technical things when I would have been enlisting (early 90s). But even then I remember our guidance counselor telling us, "You'll get 5 calls. One from each branch, all asking you to enlist. You can just say no."
We all took the ASVAB, as I recall - it replaced a class period. For some reason, I remember the room I took it in, so I'm pretty certain it replaced a language class (German, in my case - it was a small, windowless room, though I did have a study hall in the same room one year). When I met one on one with the guidance counselor, he looked at the ASVAB and said, "Well, you're qualified for every job in the military, but you're probably not interested." Then we talked about other careers and college.
Now that I think about it, that dude did me a world of good on several occasions. I wish I could find him and thank him.
Hilariously the Infantry isn't where the really low scores usually end up. You actually need to be a certain kind of smart to do that.
The score matters as far as what jobs you qualify for, and it also tests different aptitudes. For example, two people could have the same overall score (say a 70), but one person could show mechanical aptitude and be pushed toward a Machinist position, while the other could do poorly on mechanical but do well in electrical stuff and become an electrician.
They also don't want to waste their smarter people as basic grunts or cooks, so a higher ASVAB score can mean you're less likely to get the job you want if, say, you score 90+, but always wanted to be a chef. If you have a specific job you want to go in for, you basically have to get it in writing that you're joining for that job, otherwise you're at the mercy of the "needs of the {branch name}" - you will be what they need most that you're very good at.
That's not true. If you want to go combat arms with a high score they just have you sign a letter of intent for Green Berets or Rangers. If you fail off that you go to a normal infantry unit. "Grunts" actually have to be pretty smart. It's a Hollywood thing that all the grunts are just cannon fodder. Our Army runs, in combat, on millions of decisions made by Corporals and Sergeants with teams of 4-6 people under them.
They do present you with all the other jobs you could do though.
I did say if you have a specific thing to get it in writing. If you sign a letter of intent, that is getting it in writing. Plenty of guys in my boot camp got told they could go do X job in the Navy but ended up getting a different designation during boot. This was back in the mid 2000's so it may be more standard to have the LoI but at the time plenty of us did and plenty of us didn't. And for my job, I only got to join "the nuke program" - we got to give a wishlist for which rating but it didn't mean much. I got the rating I wanted, but several guys wanted Electronics Technician and ended up as their last choice - Machinist's Mates. And I've met some decently smart infantry, but I've also met plenty of infantry that were (affectionately) window lickers. More seriously though, the ones we joked around with about being window lickers aren't actually stupid, they were just average guys, just not as quick as some of the other vets in the group (the Marine vet embraced the crayon eating jokes). I'm sure they were fine at their job though, and they followed orders well which is probably the most important thing in a soldier or sailor.
Different services, different ways I guess. I was early 2000's too but in the army. And you knew most of what you were doing before you went. For example Infantry was known, but not rifleman or mortarman. And they could only deny you if you didn't qualify. Over qualified wasn't a thing. (My dumbass was over qualified for the infantry)
My highschool had the same thing, they made it sound mandatory but a handful of us found out they couldn't force you to take it. So yea while 99% of my classmates took it the 5 of us got to sit in a empty classroom and wait it out
This sounds worse than sitting through a time share presentation.
But better than a friend trying to get me to join their downline.
Joke is on you; they left all the kids that made perfect scores alone. They knew they couldn't convince them to join.
How else are they going to help you leave the state? Teaching you math?
When I was in school we had to take it but the recruiters also passed back the results. So even if you didn't want to join it was supposed to be useful information about what you're good at doing.
Ironically they may have tried harder because you scored low. The phrase "Asvab Waiver" exists for a reason. And there's very few people who couldn't drive a truck or something useful.
Yeah, we had to take it in school as well. Since I had no interest in dying in Iraq, I just filled in bubbles at random. Still got phone calls and mailings aplenty begging me to join the military. They even mailed me a video game that the Army made, though I never played it so I don't know how bad it was.
Was it Americas Army? I played that when it released. Not bad. I’m not a fan of shooters, but it was at least interesting to see a game that had an honest attempt at making it as “real” as possible.
The sniper mission was the only thing I didn’t complete. It had one mission where you had to sit and wait for up to 48 hours real time before you could take a shot at your target. Neat concept, but totally impractical for a game.
Americas Army stunk bad on release, but was pretty solid by the time that it got to 3.0.
Recruits are trained on the engine used in ARMA by Bohemia Interactive. I played some of the scenarios on Operation: Flashpoint (which featured cold-war operations in the late 1980s).
Eventually, when I got hit, I assumed I was dead, and occasionally be surprised that I'm not, in fact, falling over, and am still alive and still have functional parts.
But yes, the most effective way to play seemed to be to hide in a bush and wait for minutes (hours if necessary) for the enemy to cross your firing line.
I guarantee you recruits are trained in the nearest forest. There's edge cases where using a video game can be useful for testing new tactics with veterans. But recruits are looking for the basics. Like what does a platoon wedge look like in a forest versus the grass.
War games are really useful for officers trying to plan things. That way they don't need to pay for thousands of people to deploy to special training areas to figure stuff out. But even then it's open to misuse, like when Rumsfield decided light infantry was a dead concept.
That tracks. I knew the Arma engine was used for training in the US Army and USMC but I didn't know where it fit in.
So you just made something up?
An equivocative question. Are you law enforcement?
America's Army was actually really good because of how realistic it was with respect to tactics
You probably got more phone calls because you scored low. Most recruiters aren't't exactly looking for the cream of the crop. They prey on desperate individuals who have no other choice.
if you still have that game it might be a good fit for the internet archive
If it was an fps it was probably decent, they have access to the top Secret specs of war machines.
Which then was leaked on the War Thunder forums.
Texas?
Close. Alabama
I'm from Kentucky and never had that, so idk.
Whats ASVAB
I don't know what it stands for, but it's basically a test for recruits to ensure they meet the basic levels of intelligence required to serve. ASVAB
Thank you!
My dad had to sign up for service in the military in Britain in the late 1940s when he turned 18. He never told me exactly how he got out of it (I suspect he pretended to be gay), but he did tell me about the "intelligence test" he had to take which sounded very similar to the cognitive diagnostic test Trump brags about. He said it was stuff like-
Which of these doesn't belong: Square, circle, triangle, elephant.
He finished it in about five minutes, asked if he could leave, and was told he had to wait until everyone finished or an hour had gone by. Apparently, by the end of the hour, there were people around him really struggling to finish.
War is lame. It's just a bunch of people killing each other while the real people in power sit in comfy chairs watching it all unfold. Can we just all get along?
Oh wait, you have oil? Oh, um, he hit me first. 💥🔫⚔️🛢️💯
Yup. Although it's not generally 1 per school. More like 1 per 10 schools. No different than job recruiters for any other field.
It's pretty fucked, honestly. They regularly posted up in the lunchroom at my school, recruiting students with promises of scholarships.
We didn't get text messages like this, but I'm not surprised to see it. I do wonder how they get the numbers though. Is it just data broker bullshit or is the school system selling out their own students' information?
My college definitely gave out student contact info to the ROTC/National Guard recruiters. I got more than one unsolicited text exactly like the one in the OP throughout college.
this is Instagram I think, so maybe just be name
So stalking highschoolers via social media. That's somehow worse. Yeesh.
I'd argue that its not as bad. socials are public, phone numbers are not. don't mean to defend them, they shouldn't be messaging minors in any capacity without explicit consent
Socials being "public" doesn't mean every single thing about the person is publicized (though, I admit, it could be depending on the person). If this is Instagram, afaik there's no "I go to X HS" bio-line option, so unless the user explicitly lists it themselves, that suggests recruiters are analyzing their posts to connect them to a school, and/or linking them to other users they already know. That is explicitly worse, imo.
I mean school could have given them a list
idk there's no point arguing what's worse, they're both bad and should not happen
For one, you literally started this argument. Second, schools giving them a list doesn't make it better either.
I will agree it's all bad, though. The sheer impudence to do anything like this is just awful. "Hey child! I know you never asked for this discussion, but do you wanna fight and die for a military system that will use shady af data acquisition just to pose this shitty question to you? We can give you an education that should be affordable to anyone but absolutely isn't. You're probably poor right?"
Hi I'm SSG Douchenozzle, ever had a nightmare that you can't wake up from? With PTSD we can make that your reality.
Wait till OP hears about mandatory service in other countries.
Do the kids of the ownership classes also have to serve with the rest of the grunts? Or are they sectioned off to champaign units the way George W. Bush did his Coast Guard tour? Or given exception like for Trump's bone spurs?
If aristocrats are on the front line with the of the enlisted, there might be better regard for vets.
I wonder if those countries also face the same degrees of top-down abuse and sexual assault for which the US Army is reputed.
War is Hell, but the US armed forces have more special hells than Big Trouble in Little China
Lol that's what I was going to say.
There's nothing wrong with mandatory military service if your military doesn't pick fights with everyone else's.
Yes there is, because forced labor is slavery.
Voluntarily discipline style camps sure.
Mandatory would backfires on me. I am happy to help but to command my body around requires my consent and respect for my pacifist boundaries.
Well, depends.
Note that US military history picks me from trusting them in this fashion, but if mandatory military service were: -severely limited term -purely domestic (prepare for defense from active attacks, relief, and rescue) -not used in any vaguely law enforcement capacity.
Then I could see that as possibly reasonable.
Of course I'd be skeptical that a nation would display that sort of restraint, but just saying I could imagine a hypothetical that included that
Have you seen the Nordics? They manage both pretty well.
There very much is.
For starters, should things actually go south, they'll send you to war. I don't want nor plan to partake in this festival of turning people into slabs of bloody meat. I'm an aggressively pacifist civilian, and fuck everybody who tries to turn me into a soldier.
Second, no work should be mandatory. Turning it into a "duty" is essentially stealing my autonomy and forcing me to do things against my will. This is institutionalized slavery.
I mean, the US doesn't. It just drone strikes them. Picking a fight presumes it's a fair fight.
We had a recruiter 20 years ago. The kids are smarter these days tho it seems.
Wait till you learn about places with conscription.
I've got forced military service, but my country ain't at war, so I've just gotta work 6 months in shitty jobs, that are necessary for society for free. Oh, and your free time in the barracks consists of drinking beer, playing cards and smoking
When I was in high school, during the last 3 months of the school year ... I forget if they were the Army or the Marines, but they had a table with a display and two guys in the hallway right outside the cafeteria.
That waa back when the coolest phone you could have was a Motorola Razr and computers still had mice with rubber balls instead of lasers... MySpace era. So they just set up in the most highly foot trafficked area of the school.
Same, except it was one guy and the coolest phone you could get was a Nokia brick. It was a super poor school so no one had one.
I very much remember wanting to get the limited edition phone that they actually made, an actual working phone that was pretty darn close to the one the characters used in the 2nd and 3rd Matrix movies, haha.
/Then I would be cool/ rofl.
EDIT: Remember when people would actually clip songs or sounds and had to manually make them your ring or msg tone?
Nowadays everyone just pays for them.
You can still do a custom tone and what not, without paying, at least on android, but nobody seems to do that anymore.
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...optical mice are way older than Razr phones and Myspace
You are technically correct but id say optical mice were not exactly common generally in non collegiate school settings, or general consumer or general office use surpassing the popularity of the older mice till the late 00s, though of course there will be exceptions basically depending on how wealthy an area is.
the first Razr came out in 2004. Facebook, the thing that killed MySpace, required a coledge.edu email until 2006. Apple was still selling the Puck mouse in 2000, and Logitech introduced the first laser-powered mouse the MX 1000 in 2004. The death of myspace the track ball mouse and the heyday of the Razr phone all defiantly overlapped in the mid 2000s.
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.
Never even heard of one in my country. Recruiters are rarely seen outside at all.
The oddity is having a military recruiter for a specific school. All we had was a stand for the military at a fair with all studies options (context: belgium)
I'm assuming he's assigned to multiple schools, not just this one specifically.
Yes. Recruiters have a region they recruit out of. All schools, colleges, walk-ins, job fairs, and cold calls in/ from that region,
How's that odd? When you work somewhere typically you work in a specific area.
This is more or less what we had at my high school/secondary school in New Jersey
Hahaha no they don't. There's only a select few countries with mandatory service too.
I know that my country has a military and doesn't recruit from schools. You actually have to put in a lot of effort to get selected. (Although this might be because we are the most populous country in the world.)
how did SSG CarbonizedMiddleEasternToddler even get this kid's number? Like, are schools colluding with recruiters to just ship underperforming kids off to die?
My college sold me out. (Or got hacked or something).
They misspelled my middle name and suddenly, I got bank offers and all sorts of weird shit with that misspelling. I'm actually thankful they misspelled it because it helped me pinpoint my shitty college as the culprit.
I won't be surprised high schools do it too. A little "oops I didn't know" deniability and "fuck those kids" adult mentality.
I went to a state school in the early 90s. Taking a specific sequence of physics classes was the cue for Navy nuke tech recruiters. And they were aggressive. Turns out someone in the registrar's office would search for students with that class sequence and sell the info to Navy recruiters. The person got fired, and there was a bunch of pearl-clutching. And yet military recruiters are still such a fixture of college campuses.
Yeah I read recently that selling student data is a pretty common practice for colleges. It's good income for them, and students aren't able to track it easily so they don't make a fuss.
My child's high school sent a letter home asking for permission to share his information and transcripts with military recruiters.
Highschools ask for the students cellphone numbers? I'm out of touch, I graduated before everybody had a cellphone. What do they need the students numbers for?
The school published a book of students and parents at my school, with addresses and phone numbers for both. Privacy has been shit upon for years longer than you'd imagine.
I believe this particular communication is through Instagram messages.
Yes.
I went to college in my 30s and got texts and calls from recruiters for months. I never knowingly gave my contact info to them, so I'm assuming they got it from the school.
Did you sign up for FAFSA?
Yeah. I guess that's how they got my info.
I don't know, I'm just speculating, because I only started getting contacted by recruiters around that same time, but it could be from colleges too.
Yep. They'll tell you if you ask. I got a text and asked the chick, and she said the schools straight up give them the list.
When i was in high school 2003, my physics class devoted an entire period to a military recruiter... Sufficed to say, only the redneck kids were interested.
That's mostly what they're looking for anyways. They don't want educated people who question the world around them, they want connon fodder.
Yeah they want dumbasses running their nuclear submarines and troubleshooting electronics.
Only like ten percent of the military is infantry.
Those people they just entice with crazy checks and promises of leaving academia
Irrelevant, the original point was that they don't want people who think, they want cannon fodder. As if people who can't think would be capable of running a shop or leading technically minded people in workflows and processes that will affect missions weeks away. That's just at the E-4/5 level, not even close to officers. If you can't think in the military you'll forever be bottom of the barrel, because planning and forethought is required for virtually all leadership roles beyond E-3.
90% of the military is in a field that has a direct civilian equivalent and is considered skilled work needing at least average intelligence and in most cases above. Most of the people shitting on the military in this thread couldn't even hack half of the jobs the military needs people for.
They don't want dumbasses there either. Turns out when your war is a silent game of hide and seek where the loser dies you have to be kind of smart.
I know that to be true, but if someone is claiming all enlisted personnel are window lickers the best way to prove them wrong immediately is to focus on the technical skill of the average servicemen.
Yeah infantry tactics aren't for the stupid, not in modern wars at least. Advanced weapon systems and battlefield strategy require someone of reasonable intellect.
Those guys that run the nuclear subs and electronics are 0.1% and the rest are grunt workers or data entry.
We had literally thousands of people going to school for electronics and various maintenance fields at any given time, it's not even close to 0.1%. More like 20-30%.
Out of 1.4 million I'll give ya the thousands in electronics but it ain't 20%
Thousands in training at any one time, there's tens of thousands actually in the fleet.
You think over 200000 people are high level tech people in the military? Lol
SSG means sexy space girl or super Saiyan god?
I had a very anti-war sociology professor that had been protesting since vietnam. Despite his qualms with military industrial complex, he would always say that the the military is the last vestige of upward mobility in the united states as it's one of the few places where you can enter a playing field that is somewhat leveled for new entries, have merit impact your growth, and get access things like subsidized education. Sure there's still racism, sexism, etc. but in terms of economic mobility it provides a decent ladder.
I once read an article that basically called the military a billion dollar vocational school program and it really shifted my perspective. Like I kinda don't give a shit about most people or why they join - maybe it's that chance at upward mobility, maybe it's the desire to serve a cause, maybe it's a desire to feel a part of something bigger, all of which are legit human needs and desires. As an idea, I'm kind of neutral leaning towards negative in the military. It's when I start looking at it in the broader context thag I get angry, and it's not necessarily at the rank and file, and sometimes not even the mid to high leadership. It's the presidents and the politicians and business people who lead the whole thing and play games with people's lives. I even have sympathy for the angry knuckle dragging meatheads because they just got duped, again, by the ruling class.
Its a noble path that has been corrupted by politicians.
Congratulations on repeating a literal fascist talking point.
As if facism isnt just government by whole kit corrupt politicians.
Take the evil out and you have people defending society.
Do you hate firefighters too?
Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt believed the military was a noble path. At Nuremberg, when asked why he continued to serve after learning the atrocities of the German Reich, he asserted Prussians don't mutiny!
Essentially, he was glad to be a loyal machine that completes a task, rather than someone who stands for principle.
But then when honor doesn't compel us to operate the Death Star's superlaser for the Galactic Emperor, money will, and if not that, extortion.
It's also a great way to demoralize an entire generation of young people and have a lot of low-key insubordination in the ranks. Most people are aware the VA treats many of their veterans like absolute garbage. It took Jon Stewart years to force the VA to acknowledge that soldiers who had to work on burn pits got lung cancer from their jobs. Imagine how many other health issues they're trying to dodge responsibility from. Mexico is also full of veterans who were promised citizenship but were rewarded with deportation after their contract ended instead.
Well a draft is for times of war. But mandatory military service in a democracy... Does that lead to anti war policies. If every family had skin in the game knowing their kid could go to war, does that help elect anti war politicians?
Mmmmm…. Boot
The freaky thing is we spend an insane about on the US military so we can bully the rest of the world. But then we don't spend that on our troops. Shit materiel, shit armor, shit supply. Instead we're investing in laser planes and active camo on tanks, and the POS raptor program.
To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, we treat our troops like toys a rich kid got for Christmas which became obvious during the War on Terror, but new info traces it back to Vietnam.
If the armed forces gave our troopers real gear, didn't treat them as expendable, but people expected to come home and actually have lives (rather than missing pieces, dealing with a TBI from an IUD or lifelong PTSD) and the DVA treated those shot up like the heroes they're allegedly supposed to be, then maybe there's an argument for joining up.
But as it is, military service in the US is comparable to self-harm. The only ones who should be joining are those who are on the verge of unlifing and have exhausted all other options.
Seriously, counter-recruitment writes itself, as per the social media failures about Army Experience. Even if none of the things above happens, you're at risk of becoming the pet project of some bully officer who wants to break you, and if you're not too unattractive, you're at high risk for sexual assault and a following cover-up, while you get quiet medical discharge.
You know, I wonder if the French Foreign Legion treats its troopers better than the United States. (I genuinely don't know.)
You'll probably be shipped off to Africa at some point. America isn't interested in oil anymore, it's all about them minerals so we can build them high tech weapons.
Probably. China is investing heavily in several African countries. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a proxy conflict or “police action” there. However, we’re going to have to extricate ourselves from our China Dependency more first before we engage in conflict. Them squeezing our supply lines wouldn’t go well. That’s what happens when profits overrule national security.
Profits are national security.
May sound hyperbolic but with the way our economy is set up...
To an extent you’re right, and that matches what I’m saying. Those same profits that preventing aggression are the same ones tying our hands behind our backs. When your profit offshores your ability to keep many systems running thanks to things like computer chips, clothing, some food, medications, car parts…it’s a big fucking deal because the country making those things for you has you by the proverbial balls.
But it’s profitable for the oligarchs.
Hell, just the other day, I found out the 120mm cannon on the Abrams is a German design that we bought the rights to manufactured ourselves. We get more than just materials and parts from other countries. And it hamstrings us from involving ourselves in certain conflicts, which seems counterproductive. Especially when China is just as aggressive as we are on the world stage, while peace with them has also been one of our largest assets.
I'm one of those weird people that thinks war history is interesting as hell, but also hates these resource wars and our involvement in them as a country. Fighting back the Germans in order to save the world is one thing. Flying jets over countries that don't even build jet aircraft, hailing gunfire and bombs down upon people that may not even have internal plumbing in some places, is shameful and greedy. Attempting to convince children to join in that gruesome national passtime should get you labeled as a groomer and ostracized from society. I don't care how many jobs in the military don't involve killing poor brown people. It all supports the act, regardless.
And don't get me started on the horrific amount of SA and murder cover-ups that happen in our military.
Vibranium is where it's at
Sorry, I'm looking for that Unobtainium.
Vibranium = Gold, Tin, Tantalum and Tungsten which are all essential in microchip manufacturing, but yes.
Bro everything in our life revolves around oil. Also American 'energy independence' is a myth. But yes, minerals are also important.
No, America is energy independent, its allies and trading partners are not, that is why the US cares about global oil availability.
Always has been.
The meaning of "recruiter for your school" might have more to do with the Army coordinating who is actively recruiting where, than someone who is permanently installed at said school. So more "I'm the recruiter the Army designated for" than "I'm your school's recruiter". Big difference. I've never heard of the latter.
I recall a few weeks back in the 1990's where different armed forces recruiters were allowed to set up a booth in my HS cafeteria. In hindsight, it seems like the faculty should have launched a whole job fair while they were handing out favors. Which just raises more questions. Anyway, this recent social media angle fits with the same M.O. - they're super aggressive and will work every angle to get closer to potential recruits.
The bigger problem is that, like all military posts, they rotate people frequently. IMO, there's little incentive to strictly observe social norms since they're never sticking around for more than a couple years. Yes, you can report people, but that has got to feel like playing whack-a-mole.
Back in 2001 the recruiter at my high school very nearly convinced my girlfriend at the time to join up. She was not cut out for that life, and did eventually back out.
My school's recruiter specifically targeted athletes. Like I'm trying to get a college scholarship, not join the ROTC
Our recruiters held pull-up competitions to see who could do the most during lunch. Sad if you think about it....the winners get to be pressured to join the military since they show good athletic ability.
Oh whoops, I suddenly seem unable to do a single pull up, guess I win.
"you need to improve your physical strength, i have just the thing that can help you"
this is what happens when your training gives your members permanent irreversible brain damage (haha i love concussions)
The us military is a fascinating thing.
I'm not sure where you're getting this idea from but concussions are probably one of the plethora of shitty things that you actually aren't exposed to during training. Concussions and TBI are common because of close contact with explosives in combat zones mostly, not in training.
Of course I'm not defending the military and their practices, I was in the Marine Corps myself, this bit is just not true though.
This whole comment section is full of people who never served talking like they know what it’s like.
it's not a literal concussion. It turns out the percussive blasts that shit like mortars are artillery produce are akin to concussive injuries to the brain. (with enough and repeated exposure, much like concussions) Which isn't really surprising when you think about it.
I will say the irony of someone who was in the military discounting this is pretty funny though.
I wouldn't call it ironic. You claimed that US military training causes permanent irreversible brain damage and referenced concussions as the cause. This is just has no hard evidence to back it up. And your comment here states something that was not your original claim and has not actually been studied and peer reviewed on anything except for a few studies on mice, where those studies indicate that it's hard to equivocate these outcomes to humans for a number of reasons. I'm not claiming that exposure to sub-concussive blasts isn't dangerous or injuring peoples brains, it probably is but I don't know for sure whether it does or not since it's not actually proven. Just stating, once again, that training is not responsible for actual concussions except in rare circumstances like accidental injury, almost all of these injuries occur in actual combat. Further, a majority of US service members are never even exposed to sub-concussive blasts, so there is only a small subset which your claim would even apply to in the first place.
I'm not trying to tear down your comments or defend the US military's practices, I just don't think making these types of claims without legitimate proof is useful or appropriate. If I've missed something that proves everything I've said wrong I'm perfectly happy to be corrected.
i referenced concussions because they are similar, and it was also a joke, hence the fact it was put into parenthesis. That wasn't meant to be taken straight up.
To my knowledge, there have been studies done in the military on the effects of continual and repeated sub-concussive blasts (if that's the correct term) that show some form of damage. It's also been said that after the results of these studies coming out with potentially bad impacts, that they were pretty quickly shut down. Not to mention i've seen a number of people who have been in the military as well as people who know those who have been in the military provide anecdotal evidence of it.
It's certainly not solid evidence, but for something like a federal military, that's pretty concerning.
And how do you propose they be trained? VR?
In concussion armor. The stuff we haven't been issuing to our troopers since the War On Terror, and they've been coming back by the hundreds of thousands with TBIs, for which the DVA doesn't do squat.
There's no such thing. You get a helmet and body armor.
I'm pretty sure there is. Families since the aughts have been buying or making cardboard inserts for standard issue to help ensure Johnny comes marching home, once it had been determined the armor issued wasn't doing it when dealing with IEDs.
But whether good armor doesn't exist doesn't matter. What matters is standard issue is resulting in troops coming home permanently missing faculties for which the DVA isn't adequately managing. So we counter-recruiters are telling them there are worse things that can happen than you coming back in a box, like you coming back in parts and your family confined to poverty and wiping your ass for the rest of your natural life.
Cardboard does absolutely nothing. And there was a small period of time in 2003 or 4 where there wasn't enough uparmored trucks. But that's it.
As far as the government not giving help to the TBI guys, yeah that tracks.
There were armor upgrades explicitly downvoted by congress. Then we were losing humvees to IEDs like flies to glow traps. Mechanics were attaching scrap until rhino kits came out. Not a good look.
The war on false pretenses also soured the whole ordeal. I hear our grade-schoolers coming back from American History are being taught Iraqi Freedom was revenge for the 9/11 attacks. (It wasn't.)
Oh no. Those things were horrible. The 1/2 inch steel plate was better. And yeah I remember driving around in those things. The steel plate is why I still have legs. Eventually though the anti coalition forces just started using something called an Explosively Formed Projectile (EFP). At which point we might as well have driven dune buggies for all the good armor would do. And by eventually, I mean late 2004.
Then there were the mission restrictions for heavily armored Humvees and early MRAPs. Basically they had to stay on asphalt and couldn't handle much in the way of curb hopping or going under bridges. We actually spent most of our second deployment in an old 1025 Humvee (the 1990's armor that wasn't seen as good enough) and had a much higher mission rate because we could go places other units could not.
I understand that from the outside the answer always looks like more armor, but it really isn't. And we made a lot of vehicles that could come through a normal blast just fine, but with a dead crew from over pressure. It wasn't until the M-ATV that we solved that problem. And that thing got made available as fast as possible. It now lives on in the JLTV.
Tl;Dr - Factory uparmored vehicles were a boondoggle sold to reassure civilians. They were less mission capable and did not prevent casualties.
Edit to add - That 9/11 Iraq myth pisses me off so much. I don't know why we went, but it wasn't for 9/11.
with regards to their physical health, that would be a good start probably...
A soldier that has brain damage and cannot make a good decision is not a good soldier, nor is that something we should be doing to them to begin with.
I thought you were talking about the school football players.
they also get that problem but last i checked they aren't trained by the military so.
While in my country, some recruitee bribe the recruiter to be able to join...
i went to a high school that had a JROTC program so having a recruiter was extremely expected for me, but forthem to send unsolicited recruitment texts lol? yall go to some sussy ass schools
Lot of people in here who are very uncomfortable with the fact that the world is a messy place made up of almost entirely morally grey issues with exclusively morally grey situations. Good, now do something about it.
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.
Here in Mexico, if they did that, an army of moms would kick their green asses in all of their offices.
"What do you mean "the"?"
(UK here) We had some people from the “Territorial Army” (basically reserves as far as I know?) and almost immediately lost the entire attention of class. No one would pay them any attention or sign up
You know, there's an aspect to the bond, the camaraderie, the discipline, the fitness that I really appreciate about soldiering. Growing up with films like Band of Brothers practically on repeat, having read pretty close to every book that came out from those guys — well, I have admiration. But at the same time as I grew up and became more leftist I of course had many issues with the volatility of our leadership.
If I could've joined Norway, Canada, or German armed forces under the NATO banner, I may very well have done that. After seeing everything transpiring in Ukraine, I often wonder if I'd have the courage to do what those brave people are doing every day. In the right context, under purely defensive conditions, I'd like to think I would've thrived, but who knows...
But second to volatile leadership is quite honestly the type of people the military tends to attract. The desperate, the jar-head conservative types. If life is on the line, I'd rather not be in a foxhole with them if I'm honest.
But there's a lot of talk that finally the culture may be shifting within the US Military — to attract smarter, better educated people. I know a lot of conservatives are retiring early and not joining up because they feel the "culture is changing," which is a good sign to me.
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.
"Hey, cool, were friends now, but seriously how you gonna get health insurance or pay for college? Sure would be a shame if..."
Can't you get paid to become an officer with a good non-combat role in the US? Sure being cannon fodder sucks but becoming an engineer or a doctor at their expense can be a decent upstart.
Not everyone can be an officer. They're basically upper management in the military; there's way more enlisted than officers, and the officers are held to such high standards, it's hard to qualify to become one.
Source: I spent 20 years as an enlisted guy in the US Air Force. Considered going officer, but there was way too much politics and regulation involved. Screw that. Just let me do my job and go home at the end of the day.
I worked as an IT guy in the Air Force. I was always far removed from battles, and I joined right before the 2003 Iraq War kicked off. Serving in the military isn't bad, as long as you pick the right career field. Army and Marines abuse the hell out of their people. They treat them like govt property and they always get the worst of everything. The Navy and Air Force actually take care of their guys, though.
As an ex-USN carrier type, there’s a common phrase used in the fleet: choose your rate (MOS), choose your fate.
My carrier, the Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), was (and probably still is) among the shittiest commands a sailor could be assigned to, and during the five years I spent aboard it as an E-5, I saw just about the very worst it had to offer. Deck Department got brutalized, and so did the nukes in the Reactor Department and the snipes in Engineering. The AZ’s (Aviation Administration) had it fairly good, all things considered.
The ship was bad enough that I EAOS’d from the fleet off of it, and never looked back.
The fleet can very easily be just as horrifying as the Army and the USMC, just in different ways. Luck is not always the lady.
Time's are tough all over, I joined the Air Force and one time the made me stay in a 2 star hotel, and when I deployed there was only one ice cream shop.
😂
Jesus fuck man, a 2-star?! Even we got better digs than that! Which CMSgt did you piss off, your CCM? Yeah, that’d do it, lol Oddly, your dining facilities on Keesler had better chow than Andrews! Good ole AF! Real bummer about the ice cream shop, though. Our carrier had an actual Starbucks on board.
In the UK, the colloquially named Chair Force had some NCO's go through who stuck out their term in a field that had lots of factors that transferred across to civilian employment. Top of the tree was air traffic controllers - certain branches of the RAF's ATC capability was based at Swanwick anyway so if they ever went to the National Air Traffic Service, a lot of the time they could pick up their stuff from their desk on their last Friday, and move it across the room to another desk for when they came back in new clothes on Monday morning.
Vets are another field that is great to get into if you want your fees paid for, but most of those are officer grades, same deal as pilots. The clerks are generally well trained too - those who used to "fly a desk" as they put it, went on to be good accountants and heath and safety ninjas.
Certainly for the UK, the military gave the option to poorer backgrounds to get expensive qualifications while not generally going near theatres or on deployments.
Spent 14 years in the Navy, and they don’t care much for their people either, just in a different way from the Army and the Marines. Imagine the Air Force but like 1/3rd as much money to spend on its people because they spent the rest on ships.
I once saw a junior officer get chewed out by a superior for using the word "ain't". I knew then that I could never measure up to those kinds of standards, and would go crazy if I tried.
You can't go to officer schools out of high school if you have good grades/pass an entrance exam? Mad.
You typically need a bachelor's degree to go to officer school.
That's what ROTC pretty much does. You need to have relevant education in something the military wants, then they pay for your education, and do some prep work for you to do well in officer candidate school.
That’s what my brother did. He done ROTC and then joined the marines. He spent a decade as an aviation technician and never left the states. This was at the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He was buff as hell when he left the military. He moved back in with my dad and step mom when he left and sat on the money he had piled up in the bank for years playing World of Warcraft and getting fat.
I envied him so much during that time (the part where he played WoW and got fat for years), but I wouldn’t have joined the military for any reason. That kind of thing just isn’t for me. I absolutely love reading about Napoleon and his soldiers trekking around Europe and fighting. I love reading about WWII and all of the combat stories I can gobble up, but there’s no way in hell I’d give any of my body for the ambitions of men who view their fellow man as figures on a board game.
Like, hoorah to the people who don’t mind. I just want to live in a world where we don’t need shit like that anymore.
There are ethical reasons not to though. You would still support a hyper aggressive military that constantly attacks other countries and kills innocents all over the world.
True. The taxes you pay do that already though, might as well get a degree and leave as soon as you can if it is a good option.
That's like applying to McDonald's as a burger flipper, hoping to become a ceo
Well in my head it isn't crazy, you can join the royal military school of Belgium with a high school diploma and get a degree while being paid, fed and hosted. It isn't great fun and they're pretty strict, and you have to serve them for five years (or sometimes more) afterwards, but it's a pretty good deal if you don't want to spend a lot of money on prolonged studies like becoming a surgeon.
I once stole an entire stack of pamphlets from a miltary recruiter it was hilarious.
I'm pretty sure "SSG" isn't a part of his name.
Staff sergeant
Still not a name. "My name is John Smith and I'm a staff sergeant" is fine. "My name is Staff Sergeant Smith" is just silly and makes a person look full of themselves.
That's quite literally how members of the military the world over refer to themselves and each other, rank and name, both written and spoken. Bottom to top members of the military, Pvt Schmuckatelly to the Commander and Chief is called by rank and name, which is often President [name] or King [name].
You sound silly and full of yourself.
I just dislike the military way of doing... everything. So not surprising this part annoys me too.
In their minds it sounds distinguished like "doctor so and so". He isn't even full of himself; they stomp out individuality.
Ahh yea I get what you're saying like not part of his actual name. In military contexts including recruiting they require people to go by their title and name. But it does feel forced when the other person isn't military.
When I was in high school the Marines set up a pull up bar to see who could do the most and I won (cause I was like 135 lbs and a climber) and SSG Harris hounded me every week for the next year and a half. Even finding me in the cafeteria and sitting with us at lunch. These guys suck.
I wish I was asked to join the army, but no. They just send me a letter and then expect me to join. If I don't, they will drag me there by force. The whole ordeal would be easier if they just did it like this and I could send a meme saying that I don't want to join.
Treat these guys like the scum they are. "Oh cool what does ssg stand for? Sucky sucky guy?"
and they wonder why they're considered a nation of fuckin rednecks