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.
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Good to know. Explains a lot.
no, this is patrick
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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 ® 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…
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?
The one in my town is right next to GameStop.
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.
It may not be intentional
Nothing is unintentional.
Wasn’t there some tweet of a US general that said to not get rid of high college costs because they would get less soldiers signing up?
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.
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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.
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Army recruiters in your school that somehow use social media to contact you?
Institutionalised creepiness.
Wait until you see “career day” at school.
I’ll go against the grain here.
I joined not long after high school because I wasn’t gonna be able to pay for college, not that I was a good student anyway.
Spent most of my 4 year Air Force enlistment in the UK doing what I wanted - sysad, basically. Never deployed.
Got out and worked for increasingly higher pay and now I make $250k+ without a college degree.
I joined not long after high school because I wasn’t gonna be able to pay for college, not that I was a good student anyway.
Should you not be pissed off that this was one of the very few options you had in order to have a chance at success later in life because of your economic situation rather than touting this as a good idea?
More options are better, usually, so sure, I would have liked the option not to join.
But like I said, I’m a terrible student and still haven’t gone back to use my education benefit even though it would cost me nothing but time.
I’m simply providing a counter to the sentiment “I don’t wanna die for some oil company”.
To be honest, I think it every time I see people complaining about their prospects. Rather than bitch about it online, I did something to upgrade my socioeconomic status.
Is it a counter? Because your argument seems to be that risking dying for some oil company was worth it for you because you ended up successful since you didn’t die.
That seems more like a caveat than a counter.
This is hard to convey to people who didn’t serve but my job, even if I had deployed, was low risk.
I worked in datacenters where I needed a jacket to stay warm year round.
I wore the same pair of boots, issued to me in basic, my entire 4 years because I sat on my ass the majority of the time. They never needed replacing.
Did you know how low the risk was going to be when you signed up? Do you think most people sign up knowing that there will be little likelihood that they will die in a war?
I did and I would expect most do because the jobs are public.
I considered pararescue and the difference between that and what I did was clear before joining.
Yes, most people that sign up for infantry want to do it
^^ Found the lemmy air force recruiter
Well I am assigned to this community…
Similar story. Air Force 6 years, barely a degree worth noting, and tech jobs since. And damn good times and friendships were had. Wouldn’t trade it for the world. But… I would take it back if I had killed people. Never wanted to do that. Thankfully there is more to the mission than killing innocents on behalf of oil magnates.
Yeah this government system sucks either go into massive debt, or risk dying or depression to protect the interests of a company extracting an obsolete fuel
It is fairly dystopian in itself that army is used as a social mobility tool. A ton of resources go into luring young men into doing what is ultimately useless, dangerous and harmful. Resources that could be spent to help so much more people.
It’s better than not having social mobility at all.
The point is not to eliminate this one leaving nothing, but rather to actually build other routes - something that goes through productive labor beneficial for society.
Science. Engineering. Art. Medicine. And a lot more.
I’m afraid the world will soon find out what happens when the US doesn’t play world cop. I think the US and its allies will be worse off for it.
Given the choice between Russia, China, or the US, my choice is clear.
Regarding it being a social mobility tool, I’d like to think of myself as a realist, if nothing else. The facts remain:
- This is just how it is right now
- It works
Everything can work as social mobility tool if govt decides it to be. They can make a plan to boost any other sector of the economy and create a lot of super high-pay jobs which would achieve just the same while being actually productive for society, i.e. returning something tangible on taxpayer’s dollars.
And yes, the world should know US shouldn’t be a world cop. Neither should China or Russia for that matter. The world cop should be the UN, the Security Council, and the UN Peacekeeper force.
No single country is a good fit for the role, and all would severely abuse their power, leading to a ton of suffering.
I’m so envious. That’s what I wanted to do when joining the Navy. The paper said “advanced electronics computer field” and I ended up as an Electronics Technician. What a waste. The cost of ignorance is high. I didn’t have a mentor or father to guide me in such things. Now I’m in my late 30s studying AWS and tryin’ to make a change :-\
Hey, you are doing it, bud. Forgive your younger self. It needs love too.
I appreciate you. I need to remember that I did the best I could at that moment and time. Hindsight and “what could’ve been “ can be such a bummer and debilitating.
I went in thinking “if I hate it, I stick it out 4 years then get out and go to school”. But it just happened to work out well.
Same, gave me some experience and set me on my career path.
Did my 4 years on bases with no flight lines (Like being in the navy and never stepping foot on a ship, lol) and only deployed to humanitarian missions even though the first gulf war was going on.
Still keep in touch with people i worked/lived with all those years ago.
Different world now and am glad my children didnt have to make that decision.
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.
“For 45 fucking minutes, 'n stuff”
FTFY
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It probably was compulsive, but after that amount of time having to listen to him, “fuck you and fuck the army” is, I think, a reasonable attitude.
So yeah, probably not the best recruiter.
Fuck you, and fuck the army, n’ stuff.
Dude you post A LOT on Lemmy, and with personal information too. I haven’t even clicked on your profile, but just from memore I should guess that you’re a married Jewish male, in his mid to late 40s, with a queer daughter. (I think you also mentioned living in an east coast state… but this is just solely memory, not actually trying to stalk or doxx you).
If you haven’t already done so, you might want to delete some of the posts that might have personal info.
I should guess that you’re a married Jewish male, in his mid to late 40s, with a queer daughter
Can’t be too many of those, right?
I think you also mentioned living in an east coast state
I did not, however I can think of one or two East Coast states that have more than one or two married Jewish males in their mid to late 40s with a queer daughter.
I mean that’s why I felt comfortable posting it, and not feeling like I am contributing to doxxing. But if all that is all solely from memory, I can’t imagine how close someone could come to dropping a pin on you if they went through all your comments.
Just a PSA, to each their own. Some woman on Tiktok just put 500 minutes into detailing a part of her life, so clearly different people have different comfort levels on the internet.
Oh and statistically there are less than 50,000 married jewish men in their 40s with a queer daughter. Probably closer to less than 15,000. But those are a lot of confounding variables, and I really didn’t feel like launching Minitab for this haha.
I only noticed this because your comments generally are well received and resonate with me, so your username stuck in my mind.
I remember when the Xbox 360 came out, I was in high school.
The army brought a Ford Excursion that looked fresh off the Pimp my Ride show, with a huge flat screen that flipped down out of the back, 4 huge subs, and the current football game playing.
You could only play the Xbox if you signed up.
School recruiters are basically practicing pedophiles. They disgust me. They:
- hunt for vulnerable children, who might be more prone to complying due to trauma or disability or even just recent social happenings or baseline teenage angst
- try to talk to them one on one so adults won’t interfere
- entice them with treats or games or other such things
- try to convince the kids to agree to do something they don’t yet understand
The SOP of a school recruiter and that of a practicing pedophile are so similar that I wonder how many of the latter are created after someone has been the prior simply due to how the job demands you to operate and consider the kids as just resources… or how often the prior becomes a career path for the latter simply to justifiably increase their access to children.
Back in the late 2000s, I got pulled in to the office in high school because I told the recruiter visiting the school that he was a massive piece of shit and needed to stay away from me and my friends if he knew what was good for him. I said this after he sat down near me and, idk, tried to bond? By calling my female friend that left “a real hottie” and tried poorly to insinuate I could probably seal the deal if I was a hot army boy. Baseline revolting statement from an adult to a child for one, I’m gay for two, she was lesbian for three… so I said what I said and apparently my words were sufficiently hurtful that he ran to the admin to cry about it and I got told off because that kind of language and sentiment is unacceptable towards someone “just doing their job” at the school. They found no issue at the time with his ingratiation technique, though I never saw him again.
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
Literally an idiot trap
I’m surprised they didn’t have America’s Army running there. That used to be a great game.
What in the actual fuck
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.
Yup. Although it’s not generally 1 per school. More like 1 per 10 schools. No different than job recruiters for any other field.
well there’s one difference at least
“How do you feel about killing innocent children in foreign countries?”
“Eh… I’m fine with that.”
“Great! Welcome to Nestle!”
Whoa there. That’s the college job fair. The High School one is, “poverty tears collection specialist”.
This made me cackle
No different form any other organization that prey upon our children
Prey? It’s a path into the middle class for many people. Even during the forever wars there was 2/3rds of the force that never deployed.
Be it as it may, it’s kinda sad that it is how you say. “Go out and fight against other humans to get yourself out of poverty”.
Yeah it’s not great but prey seems a bit… Much.
Idk I don’t want my kid anywhere near that shit
Sure. But for most of the military it really is just a normal job after basic. It can have some wild overtime hours but the benefits for someone who never leaves their desk are the exact same as for the guys in combat.
The administrators and the middle managers in the oil companies think they’re not contributing to climate change too, but they are wrong. Think about the comparison.
Huh, we had 7 for our school district (one for each branch, and I think the army and navy had two), but my high school alone did have just under 3000 kids.
We had all 7 of these guys (and one woman) going from class to class every day for a month giving four 90-minute presentations per day to pander and force-feed each individual classroom of ~30-50 students a glorified recruitment ad. They even set up one of the portable classrooms as a recruitment office for that month.
I’m curious, did the recruiters hand out forms to kids under 18 that required parent/guardian signatures?
I’m asking because ours did, and I could swear that these forms were a sort of pre-enlistment contract that needed parent/guardian signature in order to waive the 18+ requirement for agreeing to enlist. So although we wouldn’t actually be enlisted until we turned 18, we could agree to enlist beforehand with a parent’s signature. But, as strong as that memory is, I still can’t help but doubt myself because of how insane and illegal that all sounds.
Enlistment papers are thick. Unless they were handing out packets it was probably just a permission slip. Also, while I could see one of them being shitty enough to try and trap kids into the military this way, there’s no way the other 7 wouldn’t protest and get in their way. And not even on moral grounds. They’re all competing for recruits.
They’re all competing for recruits.
Wow, I didn’t even consider that. It makes them seem so much less human to me, and so much more like a pack of hyenas.
Do American schools have a lot of job recruiters who have access to the kids private data?
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.”
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)
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.
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.
I’m from Kentucky and never had that, so idk.
Texas?
Close. Alabama
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. 💥🔫⚔️🛢️💯
🎵General’s gathered in their masses🎵
It’s not even much scenic and heroic, actually, despite armies trying their best to market it as all glossy and amazing.
Nah - just a meat grinder, dying in the dirt after your limbs got shredded by someone’s grenade, or after getting a bullet into your chest. Painful. Lonely. Scary. Death. No one’s gonna hail you; your corpse will be a shredded bloody meat covered in urine. A corpse that may never even get found. That’s war.
And if you’ll stay alive, you’ll envy the dead. Death ahead, death behind. One order - and you can be convicted to certain end. In front - the enemy. On the back - soldiers of your own country ready to shoot you down. You lie in the trenches, hoping no grenade, no bomb will find its way there, your feet are cold, you feel feverish. No one cares. Everyone here is one foot in the grave. That’s war.
Barely anyone who survives doesn’t have severe PTSD. And the worst part - humans do it to themselves. For bullshit glory. Desperate for money. For their twisted model of honor. But really - because those in power don’t see problem in letting other people die for their own interests.
If you’re lucky to have never witnessed war, take a look at unedited, uncensored footage. Watch it, watch people die like animals for the most stupid reasons imaginable. Watch soldiers screaming in pain. Watch civilians dying in debris. That. Is. War.
We never deserved to have this on us, and it is people just like me and you who make this violence happen, who spill the blood, scared of meeting their own end right where they’re at. This is stupid. This should end. And we can make a change.
Yes, all that is true. But, did you know they pay you? /s
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?”
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
Over in Russia, the art of dodging the draft is a finely developed one. It has been so even before the, ahem, special military operation.
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.
I’m of the opinion that when a democracy forces you into the military there will be no democracy left to defend
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
In Australia we had conscription in WW2 where the Citizen Military Force could only operate in Australia… but they changed it to include PNG so I guess your skepticism is justified. Then for Vietnam and Korea (why were we involved???) we had conscription for overseas.
I think you just described most military services actually (from democratic nations at least)
HA! Sure, like countries that are protected by the US military? Like countries insulated on all sides by close allies? C’mon.
Also, America is the superpower. Nobody comes close to their wealth and power and military technology, and superpowers don’t become or stay superpowers by being totally chill and getting cats out of trees. I would fucking love that alt-universe though. Sadly, it’s power by force or show-of-force. USA kinda straddles the line of both. But so does France, India, and Finland, to name a few.
Have you seen the Nordics? They manage both pretty well.
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Compulsory customer service for a couple years might make retail customers less miserable to deal with overall.
I have not served but I did feel that mandatory civil service (outside of the military) that included getting you trained in a 4 year degree would do a lot of good.
I haven’t really thought about that in a while though, to see how that would backfire.
Go fuck yourself, civil service is socialism. Communist scum.
Funny, because the generation who last went to war to fight communism was drafted into it.
Shit, I forgot the /s
Ouch. Poe’s law strikes again.
Yeah, I needed to see one. Some people here seem sincerely… tankie? Is that the term?
No, slavery is slavery, even if its for a noble cause.
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Slavery requires a lack of compensation,
No, that is a definition that was constructed as apologism for various different forms of forced labor
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So you see no distinction between…
“chain around your neck, abducted from your place of birth, sailed across the world stuffed into a deck 2 foot high, sold to the highest bidder, brought to a farm, whipped until you’re bloody, served gruel, tortured at will, killed if you escape, never being compensated for your labour, worked until you die or killed off when no longer economically useful”
… and …
“joining the forces for 9 months, fully paid, or become a conscientious objector and file books in a library for 9 months; in either case your full legal rights remain”
?
I didn’t say I see no difference? Killing someone by slowly torturing them over years and just shooting them is different. They’re both still murder though. Forced labor is slavery, some slavery is worse than others- but all slavery is bad.
There’s a wide spectrum of bonded servitude between plantation slavery circa 16th century and the Levée en masse. Regardless, when jobs are obligatory, and the option to change jobs is difficult or impossible, it opens the victims up to abuse, which develops universally.
So while I can see you’re trying to make a case for the latter, as if it isn’t cause for harm, invariably it will drift towards the former, and history has demonstrated it time and again. The United States, especially cannot be trusted; if we wanted a truly professional military force, we would utilize poverty and lack of civilian opportunity to drive our recruitment. To the contrary we’d full transparency that our soldiers are treated well from recruitment to death.
The United States should have let sexual assaults get out of hand. They should have been generous to their wounded the shell shocked and the families of the fallen. There shouldn’t be a running litany of officers who bully the ranks beneath them, sometimes to the extent of extortion and violence.
Not that it will stop the US from restoring the draft once it neuters democracy and becomes a one-party autocracy. But when that happens it will be only months before Fall Weiß.
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.
It’s not an exclusive thing. Most European countries with forced service allow alternate forms of service as well. My coworkers worked with an emergency medical service instead.
It’s really moe like forced community service, but one of the ways you can serve your community is learning to defend it in a time of war.
I am a huge fan of community service but you’d have to be specific about forced or i regard it the same thing.
I love my real life job but i hate that i need it to earn a wage, because i need a wage to survive and i would deliver better work if i could do it just because it enjoy it (and choose my own workhours)
I admit i am a bit of an edge case, if i broke the law i would gladly serve a sentence if they can convince me with logical argument that i made the wrong choice and can be improved.
If they cant convince me of that i means i am punishment while believing my innocence, it would be the most definitive proof of evil an immorality baked into the social contract and fuel me to use the few rights i would still have in jail to radicalize myself further within anti-centralized-state ideology
I mean, the US doesn’t. It just drone strikes them. Picking a fight presumes it’s a fair fight.
All’s fair in love and war?
Sometimes, sometimes not. That’s why books are written and classes are created and endless debates are had on the subject.
Bomb them. No more debates.
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.
We had a recruiter 20 years ago. The kids are smarter these days tho it seems.
