Don't Join the Military
Added 2023-03-31 15:07:17 +0000 UTCSeriously, don't.
Comments
Sorry that it's so disjointed; I was going for replying to points as they arose, and not for a legitimate essay with any kind of order. It's chaotic, kind of like the actual feeling.
Jenlifer Fronester
2023-04-14 15:07:16 +0000 UTCI'm sorry; I have a literal essay of a comment here, but it just kind of came pouring out as I watched. I’m going to go ahead and give thoughts on this because I’m an anarchist and a former Marine who enlisted in the months following 9/11. For context: *I did not enlist because of 9/11. I let myself be pressured into it both by the PFC on recruiter’s assistance (I had gone to junior high with him and he looked me up) and by the recruiter. My reasoning was a combination of inability to say no due to abuse and desperation to get out of where I was because I would never have gone to college otherwise because of lack of funds and ADHD absolutely tanking my grades. It was something to do, I told myself, although no, the patriotism argument wasn’t lost on me. I was apolitically conservative when I enlisted, and about a year and a half later I had learned enough to be very angry about what was going on politically in a very incoherent way. *I am a woman, a clarinetist, and I scored perfectly on the ASVAB. At the time that I enlisted, they were absolutely desperate to get clarinetists in because they were short, so I was a very hot commodity. As such, I never had the risk of being shunted off to infantry, and I was absolutely going to get the MOS that I signed up for. My position in the military was remarkably privileged, and I don’t want to underplay that. *Despite my being a bandsman, I was never told that I had no risk of deploying and I never harbored any illusions about that. Bands perform tasks other than just their PR and ceremonial bits on deployment, and I knew that, particularly right after 9/11, there was a very good chance that I would end up getting shipped off somewhere with a gun. It wasn’t super real to me, but I was never lied to and told that I wouldn’t end up in a combat zone. So my experience was unique, but I do feel like I can speak with some level of experience on how they work—at least, how they worked for me. I’m not doing this to give heavy criticism of the video, because I absolutely think that nobody should enlist, period, for a lot of reasons. I just know that military people will nitpick things to absolute death in order to avoid dealing with core criticisms, and so I want to give some of that nitpicking from a friendly perspective. Firstly, the reason that recruiters make so much more than E1s (private, airman basic, seaman recruit) is because recruiters are absolutely never E1s. My recruiter was a staff sergeant (E6); a lot are sergeants (E5). If those recruits do make it to that rank then they will, presumably, make as much as the person recruiting them. Most of them won’t because most people don’t stick it after the first enlistment, but it’s not disingenuous in that particular way. There are people fresh out of boot camp—privates, PFCs, and lance corporals (E1 thru E3) who go on recruiter’s assistance, where basically their job is to be young and freshly indoctrinated and willing to talk to the other young, vulnerable people they know to recruit them. It gives an excuse to be home for a while before going off to combat training. Nobody ever told us that we could leave whenever we wanted, and the idea of their doing so is patently absurd. We understood clearly from the moment that we signed our contracts that we were basically property of the government. I was promised a signing bonus. I didn’t get one. It’s been 21 years since all of that, so I don’t remember a lot, other than my parents being very indignant and my continued resignation to whatever was happening to me because that’s how life worked. Inactive duty required nothing of me, thankfully. I don’t know anybody who has been called up in the IRR. Okay, so the GI Bill. I was in the very first group of people to quality for the post-9/11 GI Bill. I was in active duty for five years (I ended up being held an extra year to fix stuff medically; I was supposed to be four), and it didn’t require anything extra of me—I didn’t have to be in a long time. I never would have gotten a bachelor’s without it, and I truly enjoyed every second of undergrad. It’s the first time I ever thrived in my entire life. My only complaints about it are that it doesn’t cover cost of living and, ultimately, literally everybody is entitled to all of that; I did nothing special to earn it as compared to anyone else. My life would be much worse had I not gone to college, but I was fortunate enough not to encounter any situations that required me to make decisions that went directly counter to my morals in order to get that degree. It was worth it logistically to me, but I will never be comfortable morally with having supported the military at all, much less at that time. In regards to recruiting children, aside from the obvious propaganda that absolutely soaks our entire society and school system, I was seventeen when I was recruited, although I was eighteen when I was signed. I absolutely believe that recruiters are taught to target people who clearly have difficulty saying no and push them—that is what happened to me. I’d dealt with a lot of psychological abuse and sexual assault by then and had zero sense of agency, and yes, I feel exploited by the way that I was recruited. I know a lot of people who were seventeen when they were recruited and when they left for boot camp, although they had to have parental consent for them to become child servicemembers. Disability. So, I, and a lot of people who end up disabled, don’t even end up disabled because of combat or any serious risks. The fact is, the kind of training that you do in the military is extremely stressful on your body, and it can create or exacerbate problems that wouldn’t have cropped up until much later or at all. For me, a disc in my spine ruptured. They did pay to repair it, but I do live with chronic lower back pain, and I had to go through an organization that helps get disability applications just right in order to get my disability payments. They DO NOT WANT TO PAY YOU. You have to have the exact pages of your medical record and the exact right documentation from a current doctor. I can’t speak for the experiences of veterans who have been injured in combat or who have catastrophic injuries. My experience, again, is of a profoundly privileged servicemember. Infantry has it much, much worse, and undergoes much more constant and extensive physical and psychological stress, even outside of combat, so they are going to be prone both to stress injuries and to combat injuries. I was sexually assaulted by another person in my unit. It took me years after to identify it as such, is the thing, because of the context in which it happened (I was passed out and had already consensually had sex with him). My PTSD is specifically from the misery and isolation that I suffered afterwards—not for being assaulted, or for saying that I had been (because I didn’t even think I had been; I just felt mild disquiet, and it’s still not terribly traumatic for me in and of itself), but because I was a *slut*. I was already quiet and disabled and autistic, so most people didn’t like me (and it was mutual). When word got out about what had happened, it not only made its way around the unit, but around the base; I met people who knew who I was without having met me. It’s not that I was ashamed of having had sex; it’s both that there was context around it that made me very vulnerable already and that I was already acutely aware that I was in a place that I didn’t belong. My unit, upon seeing me “acting out” in ways that are explicitly discussed in the constant “suicide awareness” briefings that I had to go to while they were on gigs, treated me like I was a dipshit who was burning my own life down for no reason instead of a young woman whose life was falling apart. I strongly suspect, to this day, that quite a few people in my unit would have been amused or relieved if I had given up. My current life, happy as it is, is also an act of spite. Yes, I still deserve to live and be happy despite having been a shitty Marine. So, the sexual assault was the least of the problems but yes, I was sexually assaulted. I mean, who wasn’t at some point. I am endlessly, bottomlessly thankful for the fact that I was never even at risk of being put in a position to do active harm. Again, I was incredibly privileged. I honestly can’t say what I would have done if I had been put in that position. It’s easy to say, from where I am now and with what I know how and with the growth that I have done now, that I would have defied any orders, but I don’t know, and that will never not bother me. Teenagers should not be put in positions where they are brainwashed into being willing to point guns at other people. “Blood makes the grass grow, kill, kill, kill,” was a *fun* chant in boot camp. I mean, it wasn’t serious. Except that, if you’re in the right MOS and/or the right situation, it absolutely is. But something that I don’t know how to explain is what the brainwashing does to you. I will never not feel guilty for having been a shitty Marine, even if I think that there should be no Marines. I will never not feel guilty for not having deployed, even if I think the wars were unjust and I would have been even more directly complicit in the horrific crimes that we committed overseas. I feel guilty both for having been in the position to feel guilty for it and for not having anything to directly feel guilty for. It’s a bizarre, abstract wound that is difficult to communicate both to civilians and to my fellow veterans, even people who I still know after having “served.” I would be lying if I said that there is never any good outcome from joining the military, but I still tell people not to because it is wrong, what it does to you is wrong, and I desperately wish that I could un-break the parts of me that are broken. I will note that, as I wrote this, I found myself curling in on myself and fighting back tears; it hurts a lot, in places I can't really touch and don't know what to do with.
Jenlifer Fronester
2023-04-14 15:06:30 +0000 UTCI'm an army brat, and despite everything I know about the military, despite 18 years of separation from that lifestyle, I still feel like a deserter for not enlisting. The programming runs deep.
justjukka
2023-03-31 16:25:49 +0000 UTCThis essay came 19 years too late for me. But I made it through; and I’m glad I have something I can share now when I tell others not to follow in my footsteps
Ariadne L
2023-03-31 15:57:49 +0000 UTC
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