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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They don’t “protect” you from anything but other armies
Yes, but other armies do exist. And that will always be the case. There’s no way to convince everyone to not have an army, especially because someone would have to be first and no one would want to do that because then they are defenseless.
We don’t have to remove all army overnight, and we have a body to discuss demilitarization efforts - the United Nations. Moreover, military alliances should be reformed to include everyone who signed up for demilitarization in order to have enough collective power to defend from others and enforce compliance.
With enough political will - will that should come from the bottom up, from us - we can push governments to discuss that. But instead a lot of people just get into that “inevitability” trope and do nothing to stop the meat grinder - especially in countries like the US or Russia or Israel or other corrupt forces.
Thanks for posting this, we seem to be going through a kind of renaissance of militarism. Or pacifism or “world peace” seems like an outdated concept. Like we’ve just accepted that it will always be like this and that conflicts are just normal part of civilization. A kind of capitulation.
Basically the army has become a kind of welfare program that dumps money into the hands of the military industrial complex and employs people that otherwise would be out of a job.
We need to get back to the plot of demilitarization and only having a UN peacekeeping force that can be deployed without every imperialist having a veto. And eliminating all nuclear weapons.
But we are very far away from that, especially with the rise of fascism and nationalism everywhere (which is the end result of capitalism) and climate change turning the world into a powder keg. It’s almost assured that we will have nuclear war in the next century if nothing changes.
Which is exactly why we should fight back and never ever capitulate. This matter is existential, and it drives me insane seeing people just accepting their doom.
Read about General Smedey Butler. Vet of multiple wars, the most highly decorated man in Marines history, two medals of honour, he had the opportunity to be the US’s first dictator, but was ultimately an anti-war, anti-facist, anti-capitalist pacifist. He perfectly encapsulates how the army andvtge wars they have are just an extension of capitalist interests and act to further the capitalists desires.
An unfortunate reality - one that I have to admit as a communist myself - is that imperialism doesn’t have to come from capitalist powers, even though capitalism has a distinct way of causing it and pretty much constantly leads to imperialist outcomes.
Aside from dismantling capitalism, we have to dismantle authoritarianism and we have to distribute power as evenly as possible. One man’s unhealthy ambitions or political games can cause a lot of harm if this man is given full power.
I apologize in advance of the things I am about to say to you but this has to be one of the most naive and sophomoric statements I have ever read, so I’m going to address you as a teenager because I hope nobody gets to adulthood believing such bullshit.
To start with I hate to be the bearer of bad news but a substantial percent of humans are violent by nature, which means there is no amount of logical debate that will convince someone to not take your things or your life. This transcends to the national level which is why every peaceful nation in history has an army, for self-defense.
Army doesn’t make any productive labor? My brother in Christ you are on the internet. Which means you are using a software that implements TCP/IP protocols specifically designed to build the . . . Drumroll . . . ARPANET! For the US military? Did you type that comment with your phone? Did you use GPS today? Hell the entire space race was funded for military reasons!
I have to envy you though. Thinking that you can simply argue your way out of any confrontation without the threat of violence, must be nice. Ask Palestinians or Ukranians what they think of that.
Oh, sorry, but I am an adult. And, while I’m gonna skip your condescension, to which I see no place on Lemmy, I can’t help but point this is where you get complicit with all of that monstrosity. My point is - for as long as we try to talk of armies as inevitable, even if bad, no change will be made. And we should push for their abolition - they won’t be removed fully overnight, that would be the most naive thing to expect - but the problem remains that they are parasites and we should not just accept that. The more people understand a little about what army is and what it does (pitches people against eachother and spills blood and destruction, that is all) and stop excusing it, the more chances we have at actually pushing the policy towards demilitarization again, curbing the current war craze.
The violent percentage of humans are held well by the police, and on the national level the policy should be dictated by the masses, i.e. we should have and uphold democracy, which is a base struggle we already have.
I’m well aware Army made ARPANET, but the Internet as we know it was a public civilian endeavor, so it is not fair to attribute it to army to begin with. GPS - sure, but after that we, again, have seen the rise of navigation systems built with civilian focus, and currently the civilian purpose is more than reason enough to sustain it. You might argue that army was still the first, to which I’ll say - yeah, they were the first to funnel money that could go to public research which would make it civilian from day 1, while making proper use of money currently wasted developing more technological ways of killing each other.
The space race was a vanity project first and foremost, aimed at showcasing national prestige. It started without military purpose (just a beeping satellite) and it always kept that way, with just some exceptions like certain Space Shuttle programs (that would happen anyway). Currently, almost everything in space is civilian-purpose.
As per Ukraine and Palestine…you might have skipped the part when Russian and Israeli Ministries of Defence (ironic, huh? they’re all talking defence to sugarcoat their true purpose) caused it all. Armies are only good at fighting back other armies, and my proposition is not to have either to begin with, or at least drastically reduce them to decrease the potential for suffering - i.e. leveling of Ukraine and Palestine.
Full agreement. My heart is with OP, but it’s a sad fact of life on this planet that peace without violence or threat of massive violence just is not usually possible.
The truth is there are fucked up people out there, and worse there are the real parasites that seem to love licking the boots of horrible people (staring at Trump and his ass lickers).
Honestly one just has to look at nature - everything from the bacteria to the plants to the birds and mammals are in a constant fight to the death over their next meal or territory - us primates have not been able to escape it, and I don’t think we will (staring at water scarcity, food scarcity, upcoming energy crisis, upcoming climate change crisis, etc etc). Sprinkle a little bit of population explosion into the mix, along with wealth disparity - It’s just gonna get fucking worse going forward I fear
Not a critique of you personally, but people who look at the issue from that perspective tend to ignore that their own military can be the spark that ignites a massive conflict. Your own country’s military command can be those “fucked up people”.
Army is the solution to the problem that army itself creates, and arming up is not maintaining peace - it’s exacerbating the problem.
As per inequality - yes, we should fix that, and not just to prevent wars, but because everyone deserves to have a decent life - and we as humanity absolutely can make that happen. UN repeatedly stated we have more than enough resources to provide high quality of life to every person on the planet.
Sure, military industrial complex is probably the phrase you are looking for. I have no solution other than we tried our best in the US with having a civilian leader of the military, just it was impossible to foresee how much money would corrupt the entire political spectrum. All I can tell you is it’s established every society (no matter how big or small) is going to have to have some sort of defense - otherwise they will get pillaged sooner or later.
Problem is people with armies usually want to start conquests eventually… No one has figured out how to stop this through history other than having a bigger and better army
…a bigger and better army which eventually goes into an all-out war.
We had good tries with military alliances that drastically reduce the amount of soldiers required to defend the country as other countries’ soldiers are ready to join in.
The problem is, they were formed against certain forces and got stuck with that mentality. We need a democratic worldwide alliance, probably led by the United Nations officials.
I get it for countries where their self-preservation is on the line (Taiwan) or where it’s simply been national policy since the dawn of time (Switzerland), but it’s definitely different when it’s for a dictatorial, unpopular, or corrupt government.
In the US, you’re still required to register with the government agency in charge of conscription when you turn 18 if you were born male. Just in case it might be needed in the future.
That law is so unpopular they stopped charging people for failing to register 40 years ago, and instead made proving you did prerequisite for various things (again, if born male). If you fail to register, you are simply banned from a bunch of jobs and educational options.
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.
Edit: Downvote me all you want, some of NATO’s senior commanders came from being senior military commanders of German Nazism and very close to Adolf Hitler. Source.
That’s really interesting. I’d never considered where Germany would find experienced commanders to support their role in NATO and be the front line with the Soviets. It’s obvious in retrospect I suppose.
It’s very similar to people like Werner Von Braun that went to the US, were key to the space race, but also key to advancing the technology that went into military missiles etc.
Sorry, the edit wasn’t specifically for you. It wasn’t just NATO with Hans Spiedel and Adolf Heusinger. Nazis also served intelligence agencies in America. The CIA facilitated, and Hoover and the FBI allowed it.
Does this have any application to today, though?
“As we say in Germany, if there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis.”
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.
Conservatives are all about making small in-groups and large out-groups. If you’re in the out-group, go fuck yourself. If you’re in the small in-group, their life goal is to elevate their in-group above all the out-groups.
In a foxhole, conservatives and liberals are pretty much the same. Only the people in the foxhole matter at that moment.
It’s when they come home and conservatives can’t give a damn about more than a dozen people and can only see six months into their future that is the real problem.
Fair point, and to that I admittedly use this as an explanation for why Ukrainians can fight side-by-side with the likes of more right-wing extremist groups in their military (e.g., Azov). It would be little different if the United States was attacked and I and some dude from the Proud Boys / Oathkeepers / The Base / 3%ers was with me and we were fighting to protect our family.
In that respect, sure. I just couldn’t pursue it during domestic peacetime as a career given that and the volatility I mentioned.
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.
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
The ruling class needs workers to work in order to exploit them.
This doesn’t mean all work is intrinsically serving the ruling class. But in a society set up to funnel as much money as possible to its rulers, then it does.
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.
Ah, the internet doesn’t count at all, because it’s not about voicing an opinion to the largest possible amount of minds that you’re looking to change, but about shaking a sign and looking angry, and that only if there’s at least a dozen people doing the same?
Yes, aha, mm, people having opinions never changed anything, people having opinions online never changed anything, never made people group together behind the same opinions, to protest for something, in such numbers they changed something? Yeah, I can’t ever remember that happening.
#/S
Oh wait no, that’s actually the thing the internet is infamous for.
Want me to start listing all the things internet protests have affected? Because I’m pretty sure comments on Lemmy have a char limit.
Why do you think gathering in front of the local townhouse to yell obscenities at local politicians is somehow “more real” protesting, despite the internet being objectively superior for sharing those protests around the world, actually influencing people.
Have you ever bought a product just because you saw an advert for it? Most people would say “no, I don’t buy things based on ads I see”, but advertising is one of the largest industries in the world.
'Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half. ’
You might say the same thing of online protests. However, I’d like to note that you and I are now talking, because of OP. So saying they had literally no effect is clearly false.
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.”
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.
No bribery as far as I know, but getting selected for the army is quite hard in India. But we haven’t been at war for over twenty years and you get a good pension and a lot of benefits.
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’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 :-\
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
“How do you feel about funding groups of killers to fight proxy wars only to have them turn against us years later in a very long-con kind of scam to steal the natural resources of 9 different countries?”
…
“Great! Your first mission is to protect that one warlord who set up a bed in an all-girls school to have sex with them.”
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.
The personnel clerks are contributing to climate change? Okay, yeah. I don’t think that’s as big of a shocker as you think it is. Just about everyone I met in the military who believed in climate change had put 2 and 2 together about the military’s emissions.
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.
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