I tried to join at 17, as it was the fastest way to get far away from my parents that they'd approve of.

They ended up blacklisting me for a medication I was on before I was even a teenager. My stepbrother faced similar issues, but with ADHD medication, he was able to get it cleared, while I wasn't. I'm glad I didn't get in tbh, I was close to losing a decade of my life in bumfuck nowhere for a $40k signing bonus.

I also have to laugh at the ads. I keep seeing this airforce ad that shows all sorts of cool looking stuff, but the only people I know in the military that had "interesting" jobs were also the most vile. My brother got in and they gave him basic RF and EE training, and for a while I thought he was going to learn a useful skill... He listens to radio static for 12 hours. He's got himself into the academy though, with ambitions of being a pilot, but we'll see how it works out.

Another friend of mine joined the army for economic reasons, he's mostly satisfied, but early on complained to me that he couldn't do the job he was trained to do until some civilian contract ran out. His job? Running LRUs through some diagnoses machine and writing reports.

The one thing I will say is the benefits are amazing. I'm convinced the only type of non-traditional students universities give a damn about are former military coming back with their GI Bill.

Fewer Americans think the country is worth saving:

https://amp.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article259392144.h...

I wonder if there is some critical mass of integrated differences wherein tribalism re-nucleates and the sub-groups abandon the larger umbrella.

This, combined with fertility rates and population level mental health all point to an empire in decline. I would give it 1-200 years before collapse, all empires have.

1-200 year for collapse is not really very specific. I'd give any country on earth 1-200 years for them to collapse.

America is arguably the oldest political system today. Being ~250 years old makes it an extreme outlier. The median life of a political system/regime is much lower, so saying up to 200 years from now is a pretty safe confidence interval for any country.

If we mean by that, 'Which country has ensured that all adult citizens regardless of sex, race, or ethnicity, may choose reprentatives to exercise the powers of government longest?', then the answer is New Zealand. Universal adult suffrage was first established there in 1893.

Not for the Māori, maybe some day…

https://www.wilpf.org/racial-discrimination-in-new-zealand-m...

> some critical mass of integrated differences wherein tribalism re-nucleates and the sub-groups abandon the larger umbrella.

To me this sounds exactly like the current tension between federal and states rights in America.

If they allowed medical marijuana use during off hours this would probably turn around rapidly for just about all of it's branches. I remember back in the 2000's soldiers were injecting other people's urine into themselves to not get dishonorably discharged...

Facts

What would motivate one to join, besides pure material gain? Who still thinks the US military protects their interests? The left considers it a tool of imperialism, and the right sees it as openly hostile to them. They're both correct.

> the right sees it as openly hostile to them

This seems surprising given how much I associate all the "support our troops" rhetoric with the right. And actual military funding, although that's more a function of campaign contributions from defense contractors and otherwise unprofitable states.

> This seems surprising given how much I associate all the "support our troops" rhetoric with the right.

Yes, the right does support the military more than the left. But they're starting to realize this support is one-sided. The number of people on the right that still believe bombing the middle east is vital to America's security is shrinking [1], while at the same time the military is demonizing its support base with training calling whites inherently evil [2].

[1] Trump to West Point grads: 'We are ending the era of endless wars' - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-wars-idUSKBN23K... - While he did try to start a war by assassinating Soleimani, his boasting is proof that ending foreign wars is gaining popularity on the right.

[2] https://nypost.com/2021/05/17/ex-space-force-commander-dod-v...

> while at the same time the military is demonizing its support base with training calling whites inherently evil

That is an article where a guy is certainly trying to sell a book that's alleging a generic far right conspiracy theory about "neo-marxism".

I doubt there's any evidence.

In a congressional hearing, Sen. Cotton cited several whistleblower reports he received regarding CRT in the military, such as:

“One Marine told us that military history training session was replaced with mandatory training on police brutality, white privilege, and systemic racism. [..] Another servicemember told us that their unit was required to read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo which claims, and this is a quote, ‘white people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist world view,'” Cotton added. - https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/1...

The defense secretary being questioned did not deny these assertions. But the truly motivated will find ways to call this "not evidence" as well. Only 100% incontrovertible proof counts as evidence for assertions they don't like. The bar is, of course, much lower for things they'd like to believe.

None of that is "whites inherently evil", so we can file this under "debunked" until new evidence arrives.

Yes, unless that exact string appears, there is no basis for complaint, and no demonization is taking place.

"the military is demonizing its support base with training calling whites inherently evil" and "a middle manager had to read some books and one of them had a line that hurt his feelings" are substantially different.

White Fragility, which was required reading per that whistleblower, contains statements such as

Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities… Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness [..] a positive white identity is an impossible goal. [..] strive to be less white.

I'm sure if this was any other race, you would likewise dismiss concerns as merely "hurt feelings". In fact, I encourage you to do so. Publicly and non-anonymously. Assuming you live in America, its pervasive white supremacy will support you, and you will suffer no adverse consequences.

But, like I said, you described a mountain, but your sources indicate a spec of sand.

Rhetoric is one thing, actual treatment is another.

This comment is a great example of the internet bubble. There are massive swaths of Americans that don’t even use the internet for political news and have a strong affinity for the military.

But you’d never know that reading HN.

Not everyone has to be affected for recruitment to suffer. And information from the internet seeps into the "real world" - FOX News is already reporting on "wokeness" in the military.

It was one thing when we had the specter of the "red menace". It was real and the consequences pretty grave. And there was a lot of goodwill from WWII for the military…

But then we lost the plot somewhere along the way and got into forever wars and optional wars and wars that were seemingly based on interests other than those of Joe and Jill six pack.

The USG and the military see their recruits less as people resources that are used as a last resort and more as a tool to project some interest.

We have a new menace, China. They really do want to control the world (through soft economic power they say - but: they are trying to pick off small countries in the Pacific to build "relationships" with and later bases. They have money, organization, power, determined leadership that will have at least some successes.

I mean, yeah, that's a slow moving adversary who is slowly building hard and soft power.

Unfortunately, people in government and in industry since the 90's, except for Ross Perot, ONLY saw $$ in their eyes. Of course, the seed was planted in '72 when Kissinger and Nixon tried wooing them as a counter-balance to Moscow as they experienced something of a falling-out.

But now, completely integrated into our economy as well as everyone else's it will be extremely hard to de-couple economies and they will kind of remain a necessary thorn and perhaps adversary.

Look, the Russia thing is pretty serious for the time being and all stops were pulled and still they are doing business with 2/3 of the rest of the world who could not care any less. Now, let's consider China and its larger clout and what effectives any measures against them would have.

And then we have the military who spent the Goodwill they had accumulated during WWII and the Cold war and squandered it with "nation building" and plain economic interest of industry. Fewer people will want to take up arms against an enemy given the last 30 years of continuous "elective" war.

Patriotic feelings or values? (Admitting that both the left- and right-wing sides of America's culture wars have been doing their best to stamp those out for quite a while now. Ditto the "Greed is the One and Only God" capitalists.)

> Patriotic feelings or values?

But that's exactly my point. Few people believe the military advances those values.

Edit: To clarify, when I wrote "their interests", I meant including collective interests, i.e. those of the group or nation, whose defense is usually lumped under "patriotism".

"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious"

Standard position during an economic bubble.

Once the crash happens plenty will sign up rather than face the dole.

I mean... good? I see it as a sign of intelligence and good morals that americans dont want to join the military. Ever since the AUMF in the wake of 9/11 the US military has gone into overdrive as an imperialistic war machine with little oversight by the american public. Not that the US military wasn't always this, but it is magnitudes worse now.

Do you really want to join the military and help drone strike some innocent wedding in a far off country you can barely point to on a map?

Might want to update the talking points given the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine.

> little oversight by the American public

I think people underestimate how popular ill-defined military action towards "terrorists" has been, and how roundly people would be criticized as unpatriotic for questioning it.

"We must drone strike weddings over there so we don't have to drone strike weddings over here."

If it was caused by good morals than that’s one thing.

But there’s no shortage of engineers willing to work on weapons systems, or people willing to work for CIA.

I think it’s self centeredness.

> More than half of the young Americans who answered the survey — about 57% — think they would have emotional or psychological problems after serving in the military. Nearly half think they would have physical problems.

> “They think they’re going to be physically or emotionally broken after serving,” said one senior U.S. military official familiar with the recruiting issues, who believes a lack of familiarity with military service contributes to that perception.

They’re not wrong.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30908249

Being enlisted in the armed forces is a hard go, what with little pay and stability. Being an officer is better but that requires time/OCS or college. Once through college, there's way more lucrative ways of going than military. Yeah, there's a tradition in some families and they continue to serve. But the military is seen as more a right-wing activity, and of late, there's a chance you'll have to actually do what you're trained to do...

I remember when Desert Shield was spinning up and pretty much all med-tech people who had taken the King's Shilling were being called up. They complained about possible career impact but they were reminded about contracts, etc. The world's a little unstable at the moment and that has to be off-putting. And the stories out of the Afghan and Middle-Eastern campaigns were probably off-putting as well.

Being an officer in the military is also a hard go unless you like being a politician with a gun. Gone are the days when mere ability and talent as a leader would get you to O-6 and beyond; now you're lucky to make O-4 if you aren't playing politics more than being a warrior/sailor/etc. This is why so many good officers get out after one tour: they see who is left above them on the ladder and what those people did to get there and they would rather apply their talents in civilian life.

Can you make a full pension lingering at O-4, or would you be forced out for non-advancement?

Not surprising. I would imagine that if the number of officers needed is shrinking it's a pretty bad environment for survival. There's a need for good people everywhere, and people will naturally gravitate to more gain, less pain.

I don't think it's a path-of-least resistance attitude but more "I would rather not give my all and not be passed over because I'm not into ass-kissing and other BS." I realize the civilian world is full of this as well but at least here we have the option of starting up our own thing and running with that.

Good. End all foreign wars, bases, etc. They are bleeding us of our wealth and destroying our international relations. Its a bloated empire at this point.

Pay them more.

I think this is a major factor. The enlisted pay scales are publicly available knowledge and for the lower enlisted ranks especially they really don’t look very appealing.

Although military pay goes up every year, it has not kept up with inflation. The proposed pay raise for next year is 4.6% despite inflation being 8.6%. There are already a lot of military families that qualify for public assistance and one can expect this problem to only get worse.

Nobody wants to fight Russia in the Ukraine for WWIII, but that's what the plan is

It's Ukraine not the Ukraine. Nobody calls Finland "the Finland".

There is language culture and there are politicized words (like the names on a political map). The politicization of the name will take some time to alter language culture; I doubt antagonizing is going to help.

If The Netherlands were to have dropped the definite article thirty years ago, I think English language cultures would still get caught up with "the".

Does it bother you that we say "Munich" and "Cologne" and that the French say "Londres" (I don't think these names have been politicized in English)?

> If The Netherlands were to have dropped the definite article thirty years ago, I think English language cultures would still get caught up with "the".

But that's not what happened here and that's clear by the commenter returning to make a mockery of how to pronounce Kyiv. This isn't an accidental drop of the definite article: it's an intentional attempt to "dehumanize" (if there is a better word for what I'm attempting to convey here please chime in) by language. If you know the history of where "the Ukraine" comes from, you'd understand the use of the definite article here as a cudgel.

The better comparison for what the commenter is doing is the equivalence of dead naming transgender people but for states.

No one is antagonizing more than the commenter here.

> If The Netherlands were to have dropped the definite article thirty years ago...

>> But that's not what happened here

It is, isn't it? In 1991 it became Ukraine. I don't recall even being aware of the issue around the definite article until after the Russian invasion, sorry. But throughout my childhood when it was part of the USSR, it was "The Ukraine". These ingrained speech patterns are very hard to change on a dime, hence my comments about the slowness to change a language culture.

People get irritated with antagonistic correction, and you'll probably only succeed in cementing resistance to change that way, especially when no slight was originally intended. If you could read minds then maybe you're entitled to declare the poster's intent was to "dehumanize".

The first time I heard an English-speaker use a new pronunciation for Ukraine's capital, it was from a SW engineering manager that just returned from a visit there and had the whiff of some idiot returning from vacation in Mexico who henceforth insisted on saying "Mehico".

I'm using my own ignorance as an example of why you can't simply impute malice or an urge to "dehumanize". I'm also suggesting that your tactic is simply counterproductive.

I'll let you have the last word.

Do they call America “The United States?”

And now it's Keeev too. I know, I know. Still not doing the needful, bot.

Maybe if they stopped requiring spike protein generating mRNA injections…

A corona infection is basically the same, but with more than just the spike protein, longer reproduction cycle and wider spread inside the body.

The spike protein alone is much smaller and can go places the virus cannot, this has already been found to cause blood clots as the spike protein gets stuck and builds up in capillaries.

Soldiers and sailors always got a lot of vaccines, and from what I've heard, many were more risky than the COVID vaccination. Perhaps the only new thing is the politically motivated fear-mongering causing would-be recruits to have doubts.

There are several alternate vaccines that don’t use mRNA. The military needs its people to answer then call when it occurs hence lots of vax. And they’ll probably face weirder situations than normal people if the stuffs really from a lab.

You're being down voted but this is indeed part of the issue. Many in the military are against getting the COVID vaccine and are pissed they were forced to do it.

Can you source "many"?

Strange if you think about all the other mandatory vaccines they got.

Unpopular opinion but I don't think its strange and I say this as someone that received vaccinations in the military. The existing vaccines are well tested, have known side effects and interactions. The nCoV vaccines were tested in real time on people and continue to produce proteins 60+ days after injections. [1] The public are not allowed to discuss the topic and any company offering alternatives are shunned.

I personally see this entire debacle as some people watched V for Vendetta too many times and saw dollar signs. This routine was basically identical to the fictional 3-waters + viadoxin. [2]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOxu09_JHpQ [video]

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrfm7y5nL30 [video]

"The public are not allowed to discuss the topic" and yet here we are...

That video is a master class of truth twisting and lying by omission. Yes, the testing was accelerated by many factors, including massive guaranteed funding, intense competition, huge trial participant interest, the prior 10 years of research related to mRNA antigen delivery, including developing a more efficient regulatory framework for such drugs, but not lack of thoroughness.

The 1st video is about the spike antigen that's still present after 60 days not that spike proteins are produced after 60days

BTW why do people fear the spike protein of the vaccines but not the spike protein of the virus? The same protein but with the additional dangerous rest of the virus and more and more severe side effects.

Why do you think Roe v Wade was over turned. This is my favorite theory yet and just might be true. Will never know of course, but does make sense

Rather than don our tinfoil hats, let's instead apply Occam's razor.

The Supreme Court is packed with Catholics. Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and even one coming in with a dissenting vote (Sonia Sotomayor).

Abortion is a wedge issue that drives Republicans to polls. It's as simple as that. The GOP is unconcerned about the consequences of this policy. It's only there to get GOP voters to the polls.

Roe V. Wade being overturned also has nothing to do with the viewpoints of any particular party or individual Supreme Court justice changing. The GOP has been anti-abortion for about as long as I can remember. The difference here is that the GOP got three Supreme Court picks in one 4-year presidential term, swinging the court rapidly toward the right. This is the GOP exercising its newfound power to achieve its long-stated, consistent goal.

There are much more effective ways to boost military enlistment than banning abortion and waiting 18 years.

Banning abortion will put a lot of already/nearly adult people into rougher financial situations - the kind of rougher financial situations that might make the military a somewhat more attractive employer.

Despite the merits of abortions, the Supreme Court’s job is to determine the constitutionality of laws, not create new laws or twist existing laws to say what they wish they did.

The concept of “legislating from the bench” should terrify everyone in America as it is a sidestep of the checks and balances among the 3 branches of government.

It is the job of Congress to enshrine the right to an abortion into Federal law.

What the supreme's did in practice was look for abstruse excuses to justify changing. First, all the republicans claimed they would follow precedent unless there was a really good reason. The earlier draft which quoted philosophers from more than 400 years earlier as a cause was a laughable example. They now claim the limits of our rights were set in 1868. They ignore precedent, including in the published writing of the founders that describes how to cause an abortion (Ben Franklin). Will they now say slavery is legal except for the 13th amendment, women can be controlled by their husbands, Jim Crow type laws are apparently legal again? Is the Civil Rights Law of 1964 now disallowed, because we didn't have civil rights for blacks in 1868?

> What the supreme's did in practice was look for abstruse excuses to justify changing.

Roe v. Wade was the abstruse excuse to justify the desired outcome. It was effectively legislating from the bench.

> First, all the republicans claimed they would follow precedent unless there was a really good reason.

I think a prior court precedent being unconstitutional is a really good reason.

> They now claim the limits of our rights were set in 1868.

Where did get this idea? From the actual opinion of Dobbs:

> In arguing for a constitutional right to abortion that would override the people’s choices in the democratic process, the plaintiff Jackson Women’s Health Organization and its amici emphasize that the Constitution does not freeze the American people’s rights as of 1791 or 1868. I fully agree. To begin, I agree that constitutional rights ap- ply to situations that were unforeseen in 1791 or 1868— such as applying the First Amendment to the Internet or the Fourth Amendment to cars. Moreover, the Constitution authorizes the creation of new rights—state and federal, statutory and constitutional. But when it comes to creating new rights, the Constitution directs the people to the various processes of democratic self-government contemplated by the Constitution—state legislation, state constitutional amendments, federal legislation, and federal constitutional amendments.

What it says is that the Supreme Court is not authorized by the Constitution to grant new rights. This is 100% correct. Legislative processes are the means that should be employed to accomplish this.

You're giving that comment a lot more effort than it merits.

You think the military is secretly running the Supreme Court? At least that's probably below "the moon is a hologram" in the hierarchy of conspiracy theory insanity.

While i don't think its the case here. If you look where politicians rubber stamp our wealth, its all war and empire. They certainly have influence in everything.

I think it was overturned because there’s no actual Constitutional or legal basis for protecting abortion at the federal level. Roe, while absolutely well intentioned was a gross overstep of the court’s authority.

It is Congress’s job to legislate, not the Supreme Court’s. Be upset at Congress for never codifying these protections into law even during several years where the Democrats held Congress and the Presidency giving them ample means to do so.

I strongly disagree with your analysis. The rhetoric and much practice in the US has been that we have rights to do things unless taken away by new laws. You could smoke pot until the us govt made it illegal, for instance. Abortion was a common practice in the 1700s, notable for being mentioned with specific methods in Ben Franklin's book on common practices.

Yes and because there is no law banning abortion at the federal level, you are free to get one unless your state or local government has a law restricting it. This is the system working as intended.