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.
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.
The recruiting office near me has a huge portable climbing wall.
Man that is creepy. Some “I have candy in my van” vibes.
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
What in the actual fuck
Literally an idiot trap
I’m surprised they didn’t have America’s Army running there. That used to be a great game.
Wow what the fuck
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Hey, cool, were friends now, but seriously how you gonna get health insurance or pay for college? Sure would be a shame if…”
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.
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.
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.
While in my country, some recruitee bribe the recruiter to be able to join…
We had a recruiter 20 years ago. The kids are smarter these days tho it seems.
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.
Army recruiters in your school that somehow use social media to contact you?
Institutionalised creepiness.
Wait until you see “career day” at school.
Lol. The recruiter targets the poor. They can pull all sorts of things including calling the parents to pressure high schoolers into joining. If you can’t stay at home past 18, you don’t have much of an option.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You typically need a bachelor’s degree to go to officer school.
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.
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.
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.
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. 💥🔫⚔️🛢️💯
