I spent five years in the Air Force. Posts like this are really helpful, a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve, or in fields (like tech) where people can often find less intrusive ways to pay for college. My favorite part of the article is dispelling the myth that in the military senior people bark orders, and don't ask for feedback, and subordinates dutifully carry out those orders. None of those is true. There is a time to "shut up and color" but that is by far the exception. For the young people on here, I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you serving in the military was a positive experience for me.
All of that is true about my Army experience lol. If I could go back and do it again, I'd definitely choose Air Force. I agree that the military can be a positive experience and it's a good idea for some people, but the caveat with my endorsement is that you gotta carefully choose the branch and the job.
I almost chose linguistics, but for some silly reason chose mechanic and paratrooper, and wouldn't you know it I ended up with injuries causing me to walk with a cane in my 20s.
> All of that is true about my Army experience lol. If I could go back and do it again, I'd definitely choose Air Force.
Yes, it varies wildly based on branch, different units or battalions/brigades etc, and which MOS (job) you are. Or if you are enlisted or officer. I had a leadership change in my company over a period of like 6 months where all senior enlisted and officers changed, and it was like night and day different. Very micro-managed. It was like being back in Basic Training at Ft. Benning, insane. This ruined it for me, I chose not to re-enlist. I do really miss a lot of camaraderie, and every point in the "Why do I do it?" section of the article resonates very strongly with me.
I'd also chose Air Force or Navy instead of Army if I did it over again. Better training. More impactful missions I think for my MOS (Satcom). Not sure it would be available though, Navy and Air Force don't have as much "room" for folks then (2011) and especially now.
As I understand it, space force is doing ramping up by keeping the same Air Force people in the same Air Force desks off the same Air Force building and changing their uniforms and insignia.
> you gotta carefully choose the branch and the job
yes absolutely. I'd even say "the job" is the most important part. There are Army jobs that are pretty good, and there are Air Force jobs that are pretty bad.
There's a saying in the Navy I was told from day 1 at the recruiter's office:
Choose your rate, choose your fate.
Your choice can be the difference between getting out after 4-6 years and easily making six figures, or struggling to find employment at $35k. Not to mention your lifestyle while in and other side effects of your service like PTSD.
For sure, speaking for the Navy (though I'm sure the same applies for the other services as well). Cryptologic/electronic/nuclear fields are all known to be cash cows after getting out. Granted, you need to score well on your ASVAB, especially for nuclear fields. But the ASVAB can be studied for and is probably the easiest of all the standardized tests someone that age may face in my experience.
Not asking for myself. I am a high school English teacher, and I am currently helping a young man with his application to the academy. He is committed to the Air Force either way, but I try to pass along any information that I come across (with the caveat, of course, that I don’t know what I’m talking about).
I joined Air Force active duty for a 4 year hitch when 9/11 happened, and was in the Air National Guard for a few years after my initial enlistment. I mention that because some things may have changed since I've been out more than a decade, but I don't think they have. Individual job descriptions do change though, so I will only give high-level advice rather than specific AFSC/MOS.
I went into Satellite, Wideband, and Telemetry Systems, commonly called SATCOM (although we did have wideband terminals like the TRC-170 and the GRC-239 TSSR). It could be lucrative with the right experience, but for most people it wasn't (although I was able to get a civilian job pretty easily with the skills/training but it wasn't highly paid).
The Air Force has deepened their cybersecurity expertise quite a bit, and even has some great opportunities for enlisted airmen. That can be a very lucrative field when you get out (and is also badass while you're in, from what I'm told). This is a very lucrative field if you're good at it, and still a good living even if you suck. Before doing this, be confident that the person considering this would be able to get a TS/SCI clearance. Read the requirements and make sure they aren't disqualified. If they've smoked pot before but no longer do, they have never smoked pot ;-). If can't get a clearance, opportunities in the service will be limited and some specialized training will not be accessible.
Some people will say "linguist" but it has not been my experience that that is all that usable outside the military unless you want to work for State (US State Department). If you are really, really good you can find lucrative opportunities though.
Anything nuclear is also pretty good if you can get it. Aircraft mechanic can be good, but the number of employers isn't huge and you'll work your ass off while still in the service.
From experience, nuclear is not good. The career field has some of the lowest morale in the whole DoD, both officer and enlisted. Postmil options are only available if you have advanced degrees and are highly geographically limited (national laboratories, some contractor sites)
Speaking as an Army Cyber guy who is also a reservist (about to get out, so FWIW); the Army Cyber programs are not good. The (US) Army Culture is bad, very bad. Sure, if you're intelligent and enterprising you can have a path to getting some awesome training; however, the reality is most of the Army is really, really, really dumb. Senior Leaders at the G-Staff level (O6 & >) will have very little understanding of the value to the mission, will constantly think Cyber <> Tech. are interchangeable disciplines and will be FAR FAR more focused on how high you can score on the fitness test than your actual ability to do the work (mission).
The missions I've gotten to be a part of were awesome; however, I could have experienced just as much "cyber knife fighting" in the civilian world had I taken that track (perhaps more, because less rules) and I would have had a lot less bullshit.
Now, I'm a physician, and I'd say this - my residency was more bearable than the last 19 years in the army guard. I'm happy to be getting out soon, and while I will miss the friends I've made, I won't miss the organization as a whole.
I'll say the unpopular but hard truth. Relative to other nations, US DoD Cyber Forces by and of large part are woefully inadequate and unprepared for the real cyber fight. Sure, bright exceptions exist at the 3 letter agencies, and the occasional few people in the uniformed services - but these folks are rare, and they rarely stick around long. There is a lot of Cyber "showmanship" and BS, and most people are dis-incentivized from telling the truth about how bad at is - because they all want the prestige to help them attract high paying civilian jobs. I get it. But, I'll say the US taxpayer should be very concerned about how so much money was spent for frankly so very little.
The average US Army Cyber soldier can't even explain how an exploit works, technically. Moreover, they have a complete lack of cloud training or concepts or really any depth at all. Yet, they have all convinced themselves that if "cyber 9/11" happened - they'd somehow be useful to civilian companies, city governments and utilities beyond getting the people who know what they're doing some coffee. And this is a shame, because 15 years ago the potential existed for this to be much better; but a lack of new leaders who understand tech, greed and the DIB machine have made the situation unbearable.
I feel sorry for the United States. We could have done so much better, but real systemic change in the Army seems absolutely impossible. I still hear racist, homophobic and sexist jokes on the regular - despite the big push for "zero tolerance". The DOD hasn't, and likely won't ever change. It is simply too big and too slow and too entrenched.
Plenty of options. Any sort of intel field, lots of technical or mechanic fields -- some of them like fixing F-18 radars, are serious door openers; even diesel mechanics can do well as a civilian -- and plenty of less shooty roles, like dental or x-ray technicians, electricians, satellite techs, etc.
I know dudes who went into the AF and USMC and ended up as programmers, to include 1+ years of coding training.
Meanwhile the infantry guys end up as cops or security guards, lot of the logistic guys end up as truckers, etc.
Everyone wants to get into the Air Force, so if you are applying to say subsidize your medical education, you’ll find that there aren’t many openings; so most people tend to opt for the Navy. The Army is the last choice for most people.
This goes back to assignment of conscripts in WW II. Since the end of the Cold War, spoilsports have noticed that one reason the old German army did so well was that they got a higher proportion of high-quality recruits than their UK or US counterparts. The US and UK needed navies to fight the war, and they also gave their air forces a higher priority for recruits relative to their armies.
I’m not sure that’s relevant to even Gen X’ers. I think the real answer is which branch of the military is more notorious for abuse with their members. Historically, it tends to be the Army.
Your biggest issue was choosing to be a light wheel mechanic in an airborne unit. If you think survival rates for combat dropping troopers are bad, I'd hate to show you the actual percentage of HMMWVs that drive away from a drop zone.
YMMV, but I was Army too. And everyone I dealt with was an adult.
At the absolute end of the Cold War we were on the ground crew for a demonstration jump for some Soviet generals. The wind was too high for a safe jump but, Soviets, so they jumped anyways.
Two arty cannons and a Sheridan tank burned in because they got swaying enough to collapse their shoots. Plus three chalks ended up in the trees also due to the high winds.
They (luckily I wasn’t on the hook and ladder crew) spent the rest of the day recovering the parachutes from the trees while we just tried to not draw attention to ourselves so we didn’t have to help with the recovery operation.
Only time I ever saw heavy drops go wrong and I was on ground crew many a time — there were a couple times we did have to scatter because one was landing right where we were standing but those things are easy to see even on a night jump.
It's the military term for Humvee - the huge vehicle that was popular for a while when gas was cheap. Or rather "hum vee" is how it is pronounced and the civilians spelled it phonetically.
> If I could go back and do it again, I'd definitely choose Air Force
Aye, I hear that. Mixed experience, overall. I did signals intelligence stuff in the USMC and if I'd have to do it again I'd go back and be blue-water Navy.
Were these injuries in training or in War ? I thought that paratrooper training was made really safe nowadays with extensive basic training done by Sergeant Airbornes in the BAC course. (assuming US)
Airborne training is "safe" in the sense that they thoroughly teach you all the steps and do lots of ground training before getting in a plane. But by no means does that mean your body won't get wrecked by doing jumps.
The parachutes are designed for combat: their goal isn't a soft landing, it's to get you out of the sky as fast as possible.
I was stationed in Alaska. Wintertime jumps were a toss-up in terms of landing in a big pile of snow — or solid ice.
A few things in play here. Each job has certain quotas they have to fill. Too many of one job will make advancement nearly impossible which prevents people from moving up into leadership positions and will eventually cause a shortage when those that can’t promote decide to leave. Recruiters have quotas too, like 2.5 recruits this month or at least one female this month, etc.
Your ASVAB score and likelihood of qualifying for a clearance are also considered. You can join the military without being a citizen (and can get expedited citizenship), but your job prospects will be limited to non clearance jobs, for example.
When you go to the Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS), you are put through a bunch of medical tests and once you are cleared for entry, you go on to negotiate the job you want. This is where you have to stick up for yourself. The recruiters there, who you don’t know, will try to push you one way. For instance, I wanted IT which I was told was full. Instead, I was offered “deck seamanship” which I was told let me get a feel of different jobs which I could the “strike” (apply) for. It sounded good, but I really wanted IT. I stood my ground and said I wasn’t in a rush and I could wait until IT opened up. They aren’t letting you out that door if they can help it, and I magically got IT with a signing bonus no less.
Come to find out deck seamanship meant I would be chipping paint and repainting the ship and other really hard grunt work. By the time I would have struck for another job, my peers would have been promoted years ahead of me. It helps to talk to a vet or have them go with you when talking to the recruiters. The recruiters don’t always lie, but they do sometimes only reveal the information they think is important.
Is "IT" in the military the same as citizen professional/corporate? As in, mostly "administrator" level work or is it more expansive? I'm just curious in the sense that it either may be all encompassing like programming too, or perhaps things I never heard of. Just curious, thanks! I appreciate the reply.
I'm guessing you can do the ASVAB before "signing on?"
Somewhat. If you say choose to be an electrician, and it’s later found you are colorblind, you will be placed somewhere. When I joined the Navy, I was given the rate of AV, which doesn’t really exist at the lower ranks. After joining (read contract already signed) I found out that I would be an AE.
"My favorite part of the article is dispelling the myth that in the military senior people bark orders, and don't ask for feedback, and subordinates dutifully carry out those orders. None of those is true. There is a time to "shut up and color" but that is by far the exception."
Based on my limited knowledge, I think it's highly dependent on the leaders in the unit. I have a friend who always dreamed of being an naval aviator, went to the academy, and served for several years as a pilot. They are leaving due to the political BS of the organization and poor leadership by those in command. My relatives' experience back up similar experiences - up to and including the extreme example that an XO overrode a maintenance officer in order to bark orders that work needed to be done in a way that was contrary to documented procedures and resulted in loss of life (in training no less). Basically 9/10 leaders range from decent to excellent. That other 1 is the one that can make your life hell or get you killed with little to nothing you can do about it.
> They are leaving due to the political BS of the organization and poor leadership by those in command.
I have a brother-in-law (a chief) leaving 3 years prior to retirement for the same reason. Except it’s exactly the opposite. They’re not allowed to yell anymore, have a lot of limitations on punishment, and have to accept things like enlisted being late to work. They’re leaving because they think the military is on a downtrend and can’t control the high schoolers under their command.
There has to be more to this story. You don’t walk away at 17 because you are annoyed at having to do the paperwork required to get someone properly punished rather than doing whatever you think is best.
For reference, I’m a 21 year Chief with time at Squadrons, Ships Company, USMC commands, and a few other places.
If you can’t stand waking up everyday because of your job then at some point mental health steps in.
Since you’ve been there for 21 years, I’m sure you’ve seen the changes as well. Is the Navy the same as when you started? The crossing the line ceremony for instance. When I was in, they had to have permission to haze you. Nude mermaids are no longer on the certificates as well from what I understand. Many little things changing since he joined is what did it.
How does basic training even work now in this post yelling world? I was called “Porky the Pig” in basic. It forced me to exercise much more than threat of some fake arrest.
> How does basic training even work now in this post yelling world? I was called “Porky the Pig” in basic. It forced me to exercise much more than threat of some fake arrest.
As a non-military guy, this is what I've always found really nuts about military institutions. In normal life, people do an extraordinary array of difficult and uncomfortable things, and generally learn a whole lot for specific roles in their workplaces, without anybody raising their voice.
In normal life, an organization that bullied its employees in the way that's routine for militaries would be considered extremely dysfunctional, and you would expect to see extremely dysfunctional and toxic people flourishing in that atmosphere.
The point of bootcamp isn’t just for you to learn how to do this or that, it’s also about breaking you of your individualist civilian mentality and molding you into a soldier/sailor/marine/airman who can put the mission and their fellow service members above themselves. Being yelled at is negative reenforcement and quickly helps you understand your mistakes. Camaraderie also flourishes when you all hate your drill instructor. When you get out and join the real military, you often think back some drill instructors as the “stern but fair” types.
Navy bootcamp was surprisingly easy. You quickly figure out what they can and cannot do, how many push-ups you have to do before they’ll let you up, how long they can make you PT, etc. We still had people who couldn’t handle it and were sent home. It was probably for the best. The military isn’t always easy and it really helps to be resilient. If someone criticizes you for doing something stupid and accept that you did a stupid thing, or you can’t let it go, you may not get very far.
I know the logic, it's just, I don't think it makes that much sense any more. Fighting wars has become an increasingly technical occupation in the last couple of centuries. Therefore, a technically capable soldier who is cowardly, individualistic, and occasionally insubordinate would be, in some roles (say intelligence) superior to one who was none of those things, but didn't have the technical skills or aptitude.
Realistically, a ship is a big machine, so it would make more sense to prize people that fit the typical 'conscientious engineer' profile, warts and all, even if those people are going to be pretty awful at traditional soldiering. These kind of roles have absolutely proliferated over the years, and it makes zero sense to prize physical fitness and ability to follow orders in a lot of them.
Imagine if you were a hiring manager for a gigantic industrial complex with cutting edge technology, producing a delicate and high-stakes product, in a environment that often demands extreme creativity and imposes severe timetables. Except all your hirees have to be able to do twenty pushups and be OK with being shouted at by some guy in a big hat. That's the literal situation of human resources on an aircraft carrier, and it's insane.
This entire paragraph reinforces what's mentioned elsewhere: that modern people are completely divorced from what the military is actually required to do and how it does it.
Why does every person on an aircraft carrier need to be physically fit, follow orders, and be able to put others or the mission ahead of themselves? Because under fire, in a casualty (fire, flooding, etc.) those technically apt, out of shape people die and get other's killed. I need to know you can put on the SCBA, carry smoke curtains and hang them, etc. No, we don't have dedicated fire fighters or casualty handlers; in a SHTF situation everyone needs to pitch in. There isn't room for dead weight.
To go further, I haven't found that those "conscientious engineer" profile people are even worth the time. The people who we get into the jobs are often far more competent than you would give them credit for, while still being fit and capable of taking orders. We get plenty of that profile in my jobs (I used to be one if I'm being honest) and though they excel at the technical aspects of the job they are so bad at everything else that's required that they often end up getting hurt or getting others hurt even in daily activities. Performing demanding technical tasks (like running software updates on a linux distro, only the bash script is corrupted so you've got to understand WTF is happening, pull the required info from the aircraft's systems, slip it into the patch so it will be authorized, then push it manually) in 40lbs of safety equipment on a flight deck with moving ordnance and launching/recovering aircraft is something we need a well rounded person for, not a prima donna.
Basically you are making an outsiders mistake of thinking you understand what's required to make that ship function. If you are interested in learning what's really required there are any number of people in this topic that would likely be happy to tell you. I'm one.
My feeling is that a lot of people work in dangerous workplaces, where mistakes can and do kill people. The miltary is one of those workplaces: if you look at the stats[0] you can see that ordinary workplace injuries absolutely dwarf combat-related injuries.
Even in wartime[1], the number of deaths from enemy action rarely exceed those from accident.
What makes this worse is that the military is a pretty dangerous workplace. Even in peacetime, the US military typically loses more people to accidents than any other profession (I suspect a lot of this is down to people being 'on the job' even when they're not, but even accounting for that, the stats are bad).
If you compare the military to other institutions that do similar things the military doesn't look good. If you have an underperforming car plant that keeps on maiming employees, and the last two car models were both hideously expensive flops, then you don't go around telling people that they 'don't understand' the special requirements of your institution. You reform. I think a lot of the people in the US military are on that page already (judging from the stuff I've read about the upcoming overhaul of the marines), but in general, I think militaries would be better off if they were way more open to civilian criticism.
We are absolutely open to criticism; my point is you don't even know WHAT to criticize.
Your entire argument is predicated on a flawed understanding of what we do and the resources we have to do it.
Note that I'm not saying we are perfect (or even close), and there are so many things we could do better I could write a book, but you are moving goalposts rather than addressing the points I brought up.
The plain and simple fact is that the things we do and the conditions we do them under aren't analogous to anything in the civilian sector (with some very small exceptions) and need to be looked at and understood as such.
I'll be the first person to tell people they probably shouldn't join, but it has nothing to do with this particular argument that you are making.
> my point is you don't even know WHAT to criticize.
Yeah, sure. That's what I'm responding to with all the stats. The nice thing about numbers is that they are fungible. Anybody can read a chart and tell you the US military is really bad at workplace safety, whether or not there is a war going on.
It's a bit like the US police force. You can show a bunch of figures to a LEO, and the figures for law enforcement in the US are worst in class - the US spends more and gets less from its police than almost any other nation on earth - and they'll just say straight up that you don't understand their jobs, not realizing that the figures clearly show they don't understand their jobs either.
Now, the US military is much better than the US police force, but there's the same underlying problem. It doesn't have to fix its problems because there's no soldier's unions, there's no competitor coming in to eat its lunch, and the only oversight is the worst kind of political interference.
If I was in the military, I'd see it Iraq and Afghanistan as a golden opportunity for reform, just as the Sino-Vietnamese war was for the chinese PLA. You can use defeat as a bludgeon against entrenched tradition. It's no good in that situation just saying to outsiders that they don't understand your special requirements - you want to actually encourage academics, journalists, etc, especially the unsympathetic ones, to pitch in and try and work out what went so awfully wrong.
The first step in that would be to absolutely draw every parallel and draw every lesson you can from the civilian sector, because that's your testing bed for organizational strategy. That's what people like Robert MacNamara did in WW2 - they took civilian traditions like accountancy and statistics, and applied them to the USAF, to devastating effect. If you're in a situation where you feel like there's some experiential special sauce, it needs to be absolutely pinned down, quantized, and described, so you can work out how its effecting all the other metrics.
I think what you wrote makes perfect sense and I could get behind not caring so much about some standards for some positions. What would you propose for the support jobs like “Culinary Specialists” or “Logistics Specialists”?
My thinking is that a peacetime military is basically a skeleton that needs to be able to be rapidly fleshed out when it becomes necessary. That's not exactly a novel thought, but I think there's a lot of room to explore when you stop thinking about fighting wars, and start thinking about how to build the machine that builds an army (preferably within weeks) if a war breaks out.
European countries can be quite good at this: the whole logic of Finland's conscription system is to have it so that if a war breaks out, you can mobilize the whole nation within a short time, and everybody knows where they fit in.
In previous big wars, nations have typically just slashed their standards when the war broke out to meet manpower quotas. It would be better, generally speaking, to build an institution that can, in an emergency, use everyone. That would mean, in peacetime, working out if there are profitable places to put people to use, so when you get a deluge of asthmatic flat-footed civilians signing up because a big war has broken out, you don't waste time trying to make them into infantry.
Obviously, my view is informed by being a peacenik. If you want an army to do offensive, expeditionary operations on a budget, there's much less to change. Having a big and capable HR department would be important if you were going to get all the dysfunctional people in a country to fight in an actual war, but it would be better, in a small professional force, to just not induct anybody who doesn't meet a bunch of stringent standards.
At this point you are just trying to force fit your ideals to the real world. Please stop, you clearly don’t understand. the original post i made is clear, make your army hard. or lose your country. maybe you’re russian…
> As a non-military guy, this is what I've always found really nuts about military institutions. In normal life, people do an extraordinary array of difficult and uncomfortable things, and generally learn a whole lot for specific roles in their workplaces, without anybody raising their voice.
I've worked at large orgs, to include F500s and national-tier multinationals with plenty of yelling.
> In normal life, an organization that bullied its employees in the way that's routine for militaries would be considered extremely dysfunctional, and you would expect to see extremely dysfunctional and toxic people flourishing in that atmosphere.
Bollocks. I've worked with plenty of ruthless, absolutely out-to-get-you sociopaths in brand-name corporations that I'd bet most of you'd know. Just cuz there wasn't out-and-out yelling doesn't mean it was nice, and most were far more dysfunctional than the military orgs I was involved with while enlisted.
There is something to be said for not shying away from conflict and having it out.
I take your point, but if somebody called me a 'porky pig' in the first month of a new job, I'd probably a) quit, and b) assume the organization was seriously messed up. I'm not a particularly sensitive person, but I don't want to waste my time on an organization where high levels of interpersonal aggression is normal.
Intuitively, you'd expect organizations that have management styles that make everybody miserable to have high turnover and low productivity. That's why it doesn't make sense to me when militaries actively teach and propagate management styles that are, by normal standards, misery-inducing.
>I take your point, but if somebody called me a 'porky pig' in the first month of a new job, I'd probably a) quit, and b) assume the organization was seriously messed up.
Even if that job requires physical fitness?
As another stated, it's a good thing that such people quit basic training.
I was a Chief and got out at 16. They made me CMEO so instead of doing my job, I was handling Equal Opportunity and Harassment complaints, which are taken very seriously. When I was told of something, I had mandatory reporting timelines and had to send messages to big Navy, NCIS, etc. Nearly all of the complaints were from junior sailors who lacked the resiliency to withstand an ass chewing or were suicidal because their Chief made them work late correcting something they messed up. It was all very strange and it wasn’t worth the mediocre retirement pay. I am much happier as a civilian.
> an XO overrode a maintenance officer in order to bark orders that work needed to be done in a way that was contrary to documented procedures and resulted in loss of life (in training no less)
It seemed like a sore point so I didn't ask questions about it (form things I pieced together it sounded like they were injuried and their copilot, maybe others, died; in sounded like the XO probably didn't have any serious consequence or I think they would have mentioned it). Generally, I would only ask questions about the good stories they shared but let them just share what they wanted when they were not happy stories.
I signed up for 4 years for the US Army in order to finish college. Ended up doing 5 years for being stop lossed due to a deployment that got extended. When I joined I had 72 hours college under my belt, went in as a PFC. The reality of service is it is both the good as portrayed here and the shit experiences I know we have all had in the service. Would I change anything, no. Was it all cake, hell no. But I wouldn't change anything. The single best thing about service, that I think most people actually need in life, is the forced mega dose of reality, and how the military deals with it, especially when as a person you've refused to, and made it the militaries problem. Everything about my time in has helped me in my civilian life, except how to explain to people that they are denying reality.
I don't doubt your experiences, more generally the military is quite unreal - a world with very different cultures, rules, clothes, jobs; a world where you can exist without dealing with outsiders very often. There's almost nothing else that is quite so much a parallel reality. A lot of people leaving the military have trouble adjusting to real life.
The Military forces you to strip yourself of your preconceptions. To see things as they are. No lying to yourself, no lying to others, that is a great way to get called out, its expected and encouraged, but you better be right. The concept of this if foreign to civilians. Most civilians would be down right offended at the idea if questioning someone's beliefs, its expected in the military. INTJ's that I have met seem to do this naturally as Civilians but they are the exception. Academic debate, papers, also does this but the acts are again frowned on outside of that environment. After years of this Military members have a core belief system that has been striped and rebuilt, with all the fluffy civy nonsense discarded. All this happens during those in-between times in the Military, the times we spent waiting for the next event, training, location to be at, bullshitting to each other. Someone inevitably say's something so naïve or untrue, they get called out on it. This happens enough and you start examining yourself. You want to fit in, belong, your subconscious starts to reorient its self and realign your thinking.
I've recently came across what appears to be a pretty sober take on what is being a soldier about from Ukrainian soldier[0]. It's likely much different if one serves during peace time or away from the front lines.
Some reserve units in the US are highly technical too. I did a cyber education course at AFIT when I was in Air Force ROTC and there was a particular reserve unit somewhere in Maryland I want to say nearish NSA that had a lot of super smart security researchers that came to guest lecture us including Raphael Smudge (creator of https://github.com/rsmudge/armitage)
> a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve, or in fields (like tech) where people can often find less intrusive ways to pay for college.
I think that's a serious problem. Americans have little idea how the US military works and tend to form extreme opinions, either glorifying it or villifying it - the former especially in the last 20 years or so but neither is at all healthy. When people understood the military - when we had a draft and a wide spectrum was personally familiar with it - we had popular entertainment like Gomer Pyle and MASH, and expressions like FUBAR and SNAFU. The military was seen as an enormous, absurd, powerful bureaucracy; people understood its limits and capabilities, and could make decisions about using it. Warfare was not glorified so much, but seen as the scourge it is, the last option, because many actually had experience of it. They also had skin in the game during a war, risking being drafted and knowing people who were. Now we fight the 20 year GWOT, send people on one tour after another, and many outside don't even realize there's a war on or wonder how it's going - but they do say 'thank you for your service' endlessly (a young relative in ROTC (US undergrad trainee program) was thanked several times wearing their uniform around town!).
Part of the problem is the narrow population from which the military recruits. In the US Army, 79% of recruits come from families which already have service members. [0] Consider that only a few percent of the population is in the military. Also, I read that the military does not recruit in - or puts very little effort into - major cities (though I can't find the cite now, and it was a few years ago). [EDIT: cite found: 1]
The flip-side is that with mandatory manpower for military adventurism, politicians and the military leaders who advise them have fewer reasons to temper their aspirations.
> Part of the problem is the narrow population from which the military recruits.
I wonder if this relates to how military service (not civilian-contractor roles) appear to have a bit of an, er, "sign your soul over and hope for the best" mechanic.
I dimly recall some event where some state was offering a "Try it for a year" promotion for their National Guard service, and the guy on it ended up being stop-lossed over to Afghanistan or Iraq.
>The flip-side is that with mandatory manpower for military adventurism, politicians and the military leaders who advise them have fewer reasons to temper their aspirations.
That's not really true. Open democratic societies that still practice conscription like Israel for instance, have a much higher level of civic engagement and understanding of foreign affairs amongst the average people. The population is ultimately much less tolerant of macho strong men and war mongering when they know what it looks like in reality.
>Israel uses their military heavily, so I'm not sure it will provide a great example.
Take a look at their neighbors. When you're surrounded by people who are ideologically bent on your complete destruction, paranoia is no longer an irrational response.
That changes the discussion from, 'do drafts in democratic countries temper civilian perspectives on the military' to 'is Israeli military policy justified'. Tangents happen, but what do you think of the former issue?
Israel? AFAIK Israel is increasingly radicalizing itself. Starting as an experimental European Socialists complete with communes and ending up rather jingoistic. Not an example I would use at all. I wouldn’t put all the blame on conscription as there are many other factors at play, but I also wouldn’t use Israel as an example less war mongering via conscription.
One issue with reserves, especially army. Through the iraq/afghanistan deployments BOG time was way up (ie, your service commit is not just that weekend a month). BOG = Boots on ground time.
In afghanistan Army deployments (both active and reserve) were far higher than other service branches.
My quick understanding is that normally they would like to target 1/4 BOG/Dwell time. So if you are thinking of reserves, particularly army, be asking, could I be gone 12 months out of 48, with potential for more?
I can't speak for other people's experiences but I did deploy to Afghanistan as a combat arms reservist in the Canadian army. Typically, you're expected to be overseas for 6 months but anything from 5-8 isn't that uncommon. Other roles had other expected deployment lengths. To prep for a 6 month tour involved full time training for about 8 months. This is the same training time the regular forces got and was done with them.
I think you may also underestimate the amount of training reservists do. To get fully qualified in my trade took over 3 months of full time training split up over a couple years. During my time in the reserves you'd do 1-2 evenings a week from September to May/June. You'd also have 1 weekend a month training for most of those months and 1 week long training exercise per year. During the summer, people who had the time could do full time work taking or teaching on courses.
> Is there data on how much real service one might be doing?
Not really ‘data’ but the last time I was in a combat zone there were mortars/rockets flying in on a daily basis, usually around chow time.
Also ‘safe’ jobs weren’t a guarantee. We were going out on a convoy mission and the reservists unit escorting us was short handed so just found a warm body to ride in the gun truck in the form of an office girl in the Air Force who had been in country three weeks and probably hadn’t touched a weapon since basic training.
Mission takes priority and if you need a body you find a body.
Also my last ‘real’ deployment was in a reserve unit and I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone. Zero discipline and we were a transportation unit so mobile enough to get into all sorts of trouble. We got out of there before things got really bad (our mission was over so they just sent us home) so there’s that.
Yeah that’s what I’m saying. If you’re going to do it and head into a dangerous situation you’d likely want to be with a bunch of people of professional mindset, not people who thought this would be an easy paycheck + health benefits.
Being in a transport group sounds horrible. Possibly taking orders from someone who doesn’t know where they’re going etc etc.
>> My favorite part of the article is dispelling the myth that in the military senior people bark orders
I heard Petraeus (I think) on a podcast and he said the biggest misconception by civilians about the military is you can just order people to do things, and the biggest misconception by the military about the private sector is you can just sack people.
I spent 4 years in the USAF and echo the same sentiment. Military service isn't for everyone but I had a positive experience and my decision to join remains one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.
> a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve
Why do Americans need to be connected with the military though? What do you think the benefits of being more connected would be?
Many of us are disconnected from members of the constabulary, from members of the ambulance services, from members of the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing, Pipefitting and Sprinkler Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada.
From a leftist perspective, it’s beneficial to have something like a draft because it forces all classes to confront the reality of our wars. Instead of how it is now when it’s mostly the lower class that goes to war.
The last draft we had was Vietnam, which was a PR disaster for the US military because middle class america saw (and experienced) the war for what it was: destructive and unnecessary.
I guess the difference is the sprinkler fitting industry doesn't result in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths the way a war does, so I don’t really care how the general public perceives it.
Really depends on your AFSC (job code), unit and era. I was in one of the more infamous career fields (Security Forces), and the running joke was that we were "real military" compared to the rest of the "Corporate Air Force". A lot of maintainers I knew had similar sentiments towards other office-based career fields.
And that was only at a stateside base - the dynamic got really weird when we deployed on in-lieu-of taskings to relieve understaffed Army units in Iraq. Their Military Police had a similar level of intensity as us, but most of their rank-and-file in the role were augmentees pulled from other career fields without a law enforcement background.
Posts like this are really helpful, a lot of Americans are disconnected from members of the military, especially in the upper classes where people do not need to serve, or in fields (like tech) where people can often find less intrusive ways to pay for college.
8% of the US population are veterans. 34% of the US population have a bachelors degree. That suggests to me that quite a low proportion of people use the military as a route to education.
"Enlisted recruits in 2006 and 2007 came primarily from middle-class and upper-middle-class backgrounds. Low-income neighborhoods were underrepresented among enlisted troops, while middle-class and high-income neighborhoods were overrepresented." [0]
"Military recruits mirror the U.S. population and are solidly middle class.
A recent report shows that more recruits come from middle-income families, with far fewer drawn from poorer families. Youth from upper-income families are represented at almost exactly their fair share."
Your source is inaccurate because it's for enlisted only. Upper class are far more likely to be officers or warrant officers.
My point stands: upper class serve more than lower class.
Thanks for providing some citations. The military.com link is to a military recruiting ad, and Heritage's business is generating talking points and 'research' for conservative/Republican policy (look at their front page).
Here's a report saying that 79% of US Army recruits come from families with service members. [0] IIRC, the military is overwhelmingly rural and does not recruit in major urban areas - which matches my experiece in major urban areas. [EDIT: 1] Also, the officer corps is overwhelmingly white people, afaik, in a country that is only about half white people in that age group. However, I realize I've only provided one [edit: 2!] good cite[s] myself!
>The military.com link is to a military recruiting ad
military.com is a news and information website that covers topics such as benefits to military members, veterans, their families and those with military affinity. Even if there are links to recruiting, this does nothing to refute the facts.
>Heritage's business is generating talking points and 'research' for conservative/Republican policy
Reality has a conservative bias apparently. The facts are here for all to see.
>Here's a report saying that 79% of US Army recruits come from families with service members.
Which is a meaningless statistic. This number could be the same across all income classes, or again, higher income classes could be overrepresented.
>the military is overwhelmingly rural and does not recruit in major urban areas
That is hilariously wrong. Your own sources shows Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Tampa, Atlanta, etc. all in the top counties for recruitment. "Blue cities" != "[all] major urban areas". Your anti-Southern bias is showing.
>Also, the officer corps is overwhelmingly white people, afaik, in a country that is only about half white people in that age group.
This is to be expected due to requiring a four year degree, among other things. Whites are slightly overrepresented in the officer corps. The US is 73% White (including Hispanic), and the officer corps is 75.8% White (including Hispanic). Asians are also ever so slightly overrepresented in the officer corps.
I can easily attack your source(s) as fake news outlets (New York Times especially), but I'm not going to use fallacies like you have here. Your sources simply do not back up your claims.
The richest quantile is overrepresented. The aforementioned report was compiled by Dr. Shanea Watkins, a policy analyst specializing in empirical studies.
Unless you have sources that claim otherwise, my original claim stands.
I think it’s fair for the person you’re replying @ to point out the heritage foundation is a self professed conservative think tank if you point out that you believe the NYT is not trustworthy. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a conservative think tank but it’s important to consider how data presentation might be impacted by the person(s) presenting the data. Which is in line with your suspicions of the NYT.
I wouldn't be so even-handed. Asserting something is biased doesn't make it so; assertions aren't taken as fact or truth. Assertions are worthless and two assertions are equally worthless. I talked about the factual basis of my claims and the parent claims, not assertions.
>Whites are slightly overrepresented in the officer corps.
This is why whites were overrepresented as a percentage of troops killed in Vietnam, because so many young officers were killed leading platoons in the jungle.
My point stands: upper class serve more than lower class.
While that may very well be true, it i worth highlighting that the reports you are citing as evidence is looking at the years 2003 and 2006-2007, and a lot has changed, economically and politically, since then.
Also their cut off for "high-income" seems to be significantly lower than what most people would consider "upper class".
Because that is reality. $65k is where the richest quantile for neighborhood median household income starts, by census tract [0]. The linked report was compiled by Dr. Shanea Watkins, a policy analyst specializing in empirical studies.
Unless you have sources that claim otherwise, my original claim stands.
Or that just means that upper class doesn't start at the boundary of the top quantile.
I'm sorry but no stretch of the imagination has upper class as a couple making 33k/yr each. That's absolutely absurd. That's $16.50 an hour with no overtime.
Looking at it, upper class typically is the top one or two percent of the population.
The OP specifically mentioned "upper classes". It is a fact that the lower classes (lowest quantile) are underrepresented, and the higher classes (highest quantile) are overrepresented [0].
> “Upper class starts at $65k/yr” is peak Heritage Foundation.
Yes, peak facts that don't care about your feelings. $65k is where the richest quantile for neighborhood median household income starts, by census tract [0]. The linked report was compiled by Dr. Shanea Watkins, a policy analyst specializing in empirical studies.
Unless you have sources that claim otherwise, my original claim stands.
There might be good reasons to use that breakdown, but I still think referring to people with a household income of $65K as "upper class" is misleading.
There's also something a bit strange with this breakdown. The top 20 percent of households made more than $91,705 [0][1] in 2007. $65K appears to be the top 20 percent of census tracts. That doesn't seem right, though, because you wouldn't expect 20 percent of the population to come from 20 percent of the tracts, unless they're exactly the same size (which tracts are not), so maybe I made a mistake in interpretation.
The OP specifically mentioned "upper classes". It is a fact that the lower classes (lowest quantile) are underrepresented, and the higher classes (highest quantile) are overrepresented [0].
No need to be rude. It sounded like you were suggesting that if the two populations were merged, the underrepresented-rich effect would rise above the minimal level for enlisted alone (0.1%). And I’m saying it’s not going up by much.
The section of the report on officers starts at page 9, I’m looking at the graphs on pages 9, 10, and 11. If you see the data elsewhere, please share.
$65k is where the richest quantile for neighborhood median household income starts, by census tract [0]. The linked report was compiled by Dr. Shanea Watkins, a policy analyst specializing in empirical studies.
Unless you have sources that claim otherwise, my original claim stands.
Yes, and that data stops the grouping of household income at $87k and higher, which isn’t really that high of a floor, and is telling in itself. There are no further breakouts, such as 87-100, 100-200, 200+ because it would presumably be insignificant.
The link YATA1's been posting actually does [0]. About 3.46 percent of people enlisting come from households making more than $100K, although those households make up about 8 percent of the population [1]. In general, it looks like it matches the population more than the quintile breakdowns do.
Because that is reality. $65k is where the richest quantile for neighborhood median household income starts, by census tract [0]. The linked report was compiled by Dr. Shanea Watkins, a policy analyst specializing in empirical studies.
Unless you have sources that claim otherwise, my original claim stands.
They're even more rare in the military than in the general population. Firstly for the obvious reason - they don't need any of the benefits so they don't join. Secondly - someone that becomes that wealthy while serving (via a trust-fund, large inheritance, or winning the lottery) would no longer be a good fit for the military. They usually get offered an Honorable Discharge. However, if they still desire to serve the remainder of their term, they can place the money into a blind trust.
> someone that becomes that wealthy while serving (via a trust-fund, large inheritance, or winning the lottery) would no longer be a good fit for the military. They usually get offered an Honorable Discharge.
That's shocking. Where is this rule? Have you seen it happen? I didn't know wealth defined fitness for service.
The evidence is to the contrary--middle class and above are over-represented in the US military.
"Their median family income is more than $73,000, compared with $66,000 for civilians, and recruits are most likely to come from families in the middle of the wealth distribution, with median wealth of $87,000, almost $10,000 more than civilians."
This is for enlisted members. It's probably safe to have some intuition that officers will skew wealthier.
>Combat is for the lower classes, preferably rural poor
(Former 11A here)
This kind of glosses over a lot of cultural reasons for why you find "rural poor" in combat branches. For a lot of the folks in my platoon, it was a family affair. Many were from e.g. Texas or Georgia, and had a brother/cousin/uncle/whatever who were also an 11B/13B etc. There isn't really a "preference" that the Army or Marine Corps has for poor people, but there is a cultural reason why people who like combat tend to be rural poor. This is of course my experience, and precise demographic data is hard to come by without a FOIA request.
Just wanted to throw my two cents out there. The guys in my platoon weren't the "dumb hicks" a lot of people seem to think populate the infantry.
The parent poster is talking about "rural poor", i.e., socioeconomic class, not "dumb hicks", i.e. perceived intelligence/education level. I think this is an important distinction.
Yes, this is anecdata, and yes, there are many reasons why people serve, but I know some smart people (from college and in my career) who've served (in infantry) because they saw it as their only way to get money for college. I think that says less about military recruiting tactics than the government overall, because there really should be more options presented to someone looking to get an education to move up the socioeconomic ladder.
I recently read an article where Army Chief of Staff, Gen. McConville, said that 79% of recruits come from families with service members, and how they need to expand the pool.
As far as the rural, the military focuses their recruiting in rural areas and barely touches major cities - an odd choice given where the population centers are and the efficiency of sales in high-density population. In a quick search, I found this from 2019:
I don’t have the links handy, but yes many are fully aware that the AVF (All Volunteer Force) is in some ways sectioning themselves off from the rest of the population. In other ways I could argue it’s almost becoming a “warrior caste” situation, where fathers serve, (at least one of) their sons serve, and so on. I’m not ready to say this is unhealthy, necessarily, but it’s a very real trend. The only way to fix it is to bring back the draft, in either full or some modified form.
>Where have you heard that?
My classmates in grad school, other networking events with perhaps over-educated professionals. N = 1 and all that.
> The only way to fix it is to bring back the draft, in either full or some modified form.
One idea is a draft for the reserves, not for active duty. That gives us the benefits of an AVF - the professionalism, etc. - and also gives Americans 'skin in the game' when at war, when reserves are called up. It's hard to imagine Afghanistan dragging on for 20 years if, for the whole time, civilians were being sent there to drive trucks, make dinner, even do some skilled labor, etc. And it would solve the civilian-military divide.
But how much effectiveness would we lose with draftee reserves? I believe that volunteer professionals are far superior to draftees in active duty, but reserve jobs frequently seem different.
> I could argue it’s almost becoming a “warrior caste” situation, where fathers serve, (at least one of) their sons serve, and so on. I’m not ready to say this is unhealthy, necessarily, but it’s a very real trend.
I've seen that phrase many times, but how can that be a good thing, especially in a democracy?
We got lied to about Vietnam. Iraq had WMDs. Afghanistan was a budding democracy, fully equipped to stand on its own. Russia was an unstoppable modern military and we need hundreds of billions to hold them off!
Now. All those people lied - buy we're blaming the civilian population for not having skin in a game which is clearly run by liars, and not "doing more" to stop these liars?
We've watched it mangle generation after generation of our young people, and none of the liars are held responsible.
Of course we don't want skin in the game.
In a healthy democracy, these military liars wouldn't last. It's not a healthy democracy.
> All those people lied - buy we're blaming the civilian population ...
Those people are us. The system is us, including you and me. There's nobody else to blame, and nobody else to do anything about it. Nothing in the parent comment offers a solution, or a better solution, or an improvement on the existing solution.
Blaming some unnamed entity, pulling out a list of bad things that have happened over a half-century, simplifying and hyperbolizing them, taking them out of context (of the good, of the possibilities, of the causes and effects, etc.) - that only disrupts the situation further, and that act is part of the reason our system sometimes doesn't work. That comment was written in your capacity as a fully fledged, fully vested actor in the system. Of course it isn't working right here, right now.
No. There's no context - they lied to get us into multiple wars. The American people don't want that shit. This sounds like apologia for the military-corporatic interventionist garbage.
Honestly it's the same infuriating "personal responsibility" CRAP like recycling - it's a smokescreen, meant to make a collective problem your personal responsibility. It doesn't matter how many bottles you throw out if you allow the factory up the street to make 1B of them, some of them are going to end up in the river, but do we hold the businesses accountable or make them switch to glass bottles? "That would impact their profits!"
A rational actor would avoid, if at all possible, anything to do with the military. It hasn't "worked" for us for decades and decades. Those people are NOT US.
That was one of the reasons I joined the USAF. Dad was in the 99th ID at the Battle of the Bulge (Purple Heart, Bronze Star) and later crossing the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen. Granddad was a Sergeant Major in the Cheshire Regiment[1] for His Majesty doing secret stuff he never talked about. I was the underachiever of the family - serving in Germany during the Cold War.[0] But I felt compelled to follow in the family tradition, and I'm glad I did as it helped me get my shit together.
Most of the people I served with had some college. There were a couple of guys in Basic with Bachelor's degrees, and we wondered why they went enlisted instead of officer. But each to their own.
There did seem to be a rule that the Ivy League turned out for Armageddon. Elliot Richardson, who as about as upper crust as you can get, landed in Normandy on D-Day, as did Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
$65k is where the richest quantile for neighborhood median household income starts, by census tract [0]. The linked report was compiled by Dr. Shanea Watkins, a policy analyst specializing in empirical studies.
Unless you have sources that claim otherwise, my original claim stands.
You're talking about a society with HIGHER wealth inequality than right before the French Revolution, and you're defining "upper class" as anything above 60-odd K - an amount that would not allow you to rent a two bedroom apartment...almost anywhere in the USA.
It... Doesn't support your point at all?
Here's the Wall Street Journal saying the quiet part out loud:
"If young Americans can access free college without having to earn the GI Bill or sign up for follow-on military service, will they volunteer for the armed forces in adequate numbers?"
It's really hard to say "rich people are overrepresented" and then "who will sign up if we make college free" in the same breath.
>You're talking about a society with HIGHER wealth inequality than right before the French Revolution
Immaterial. The class definitions are in quantiles which means proportional per capita. The facts of the matter is the lower classes are underrepresented, the upper classes are overrepresented.
QED.
>and you're defining "upper class" as anything above 60-odd K - an amount that would not allow you to rent a two bedroom apartment...almost anywhere in the USA.
"Upper classes", as in, the top quantile of classes. $60k (2007 numbers) would allow you to rent a two bedroom in almost everywhere in the USA, except the most expensive areas (in 2007). Not everyone is making $300k combined. Your SV bias is showing.
>It... Doesn't support your point at all?
It... 100% supports my point absolutely.
>Here's the Wall Street Journal
Paywalled opinion piece.
>saying the quiet part out loud:
Leftist shibboleth. Not that I'm surprised, but reddit is that way.
>It's really hard to say "rich people are overrepresented" and then "who will sign up if we make college free" in the same breath.
Yeah... Because it's an opinion piece from a random contributer that similarly fell for the fake news. Poor Americans are not joining the military in disproportionately higher numbers to pay for college and what have you. That is a fact. If college becomes free, the military can raise pay and sign on bonuses, add other programs, etc. They'll find a way, no doubt.
"The class definitions are in quantiles which means proportional per capita. "
Yes - hence the problem with income inequality in the numbers.
The "upper quartile" is so low, it includes people making 60k a year.
More granularity in your numbers would show that actually wealthy people don't sign up.
It looks like you're using statistics to lie. It's pretty clear that "wealthy people are overrepresented" is only true if you do things like, define "rich" starting at 60k.
>Yes - hence the problem with income inequality in the numbers.
Immaterial. You're just announcing to the world that you don't know how "per capita", census tracts, or quantiles work.
>The "upper quartile" is so low, it includes people making 60k a year.
Because that's the facts for the median income of the census tract.
During 2009–2013, Beverly Hills had a median household income of $86,141 as an example.
Pacific Heights has a median household income of $125,550 per year.
>More granularity in your numbers would show that actually wealthy people don't sign up.
It would show the complete opposite, as it shows with the quintiles now.
>It looks like you're using statistics to lie.
No. I'm using statistical FACTS to tell the truth. It's an inconvenient truth that shatters the narrative and the fake news the left has been spewing on this topic for decades, but it's still the truth.
The fact that you just can't handle the truth shows how bad you've been subverted.
>It's pretty clear that "wealthy people are overrepresented"
Of course it's clear, that is reality.
>only true if you do things like, define "rich" starting at 60k.
The upper quintile for census tract median income starts there. You want to deny statistical fact because it goes against the narrative.
The statistics show clearly that the lower classes (lowest quintile) are underrepresented. Poor people do not serve as much as the upper classes (top quintile) do. QED.
When people say “combat,” they mean the combat arms. Pretty much any soldier could be exposed to combat, but the infantry is going to see more combat than a Human Resources soldier.
Agreed, but not just because there is no longer a draft, but that the song referenced does not differentiate between the rank of those who serve. It does distinguish between those who serve and those who send them into harms way with no risk to themselves.
The most important thing to realize about military service is that you sign away all your citizenship rights (free speech, etc.) when you sign up for the service. Hopefully you won't be used in ridiculous debacles like the 2003 Iraq Invasion, based on lies about WMDs pushed by Washington (and see British role as well), but you'll have no say in the matter.
The other thing to realize is that, at least in the USA, they'll do everything they can to deny you medical benefits for injuries suffered in basic training, and this will persist after you get out, i.e. Veteran's Administration health care is pretty poor by all accounts. You can't just trust the system to look out for your interests in this area.
In addition, the 'educational assistance' is barely enough for a two-year vocational training program, certainly nowhere near enough for a full four-year college degree. It's better than nothing, certainly, but the advertising and the reality have a big disconnect.
If you're a teenage with zero alternative options and are completely desperate for a way out of an urban slum nightmare or a poverty-stricken rural life, the military is there as an option. I was once in a similar situation but I rejected military service because I'd heard too many Vietnam vets tell horror stories about how they'd been treated by the military. It wasn't much better for those who had to serve more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq, for equivalently dubious reasons.
> Americans' satisfaction with the way the healthcare system works for them varies by the type of insurance they have. Satisfaction is highest among those with veterans or military health insurance…
> Americans' satisfaction with the way the healthcare system works for them varies by the type of insurance they have. Satisfaction is highest among those with veterans or military health insurance…
Sounds about right to me. The VA health care system has problems [1] but on the whole doesn't seem worse than the rest of the US healthcare system, maybe better.
Anecdote: when my dad retired, my parents lost their insurance through his work, and my mom wasn't eligible for Medicare yet. They looked around at individual insurance options, which were horrible. My mom ended up using her VA benefits and was very glad to have them. The VA has treated my parents quite well, although the VA doesn't seem used to having a lot of female patients my mom's age.
It's a terrible system, and it was more terrible before Obamacare.
In general when someone retires they're old enough to be eligible for Medicare (government-sponsored health care). My dad was. But my mom was just enough younger that she wasn't eligible for Medicare when he retired. There were (and still are) all kinds of weird gaps like this.
Obamacare created new gaps that absolutely sucked - made over 58k and self employed? No subsidies for you and paying a skyrocketing premium higher than any reasonable home mortgage with a 10k deductible. Completely unrealistic. And then the IRS hit you for thousands in penalties via the individual mandate.
I lived through that, uninsured, for five years or so as a business owner - to “rich” to get subsidies, too poor to afford 20k+ per year for nothing except a theoretical out-of-pocket max (I say theoretical because there are many exceptions, loopholes, and the annual reset). Being hammered by the IRS for this was.. just.. swell.
So for me Obamacare sucked because it made the cost of individual market plans completely unaffordable and then taxed me for not being able to afford it. As a business owner responsible for employing others, it seemed especially ridiculous because here was a strong disincentive for me to continue on, which would mean a negative ripple effect beyond just me, i.e. layoffs, if I shuttered the operation.
Once the individual mandate went away, and some new options for employer cost sharing like QSEHRA/ICHRA came about, it has gotten a bit more manageable, but most small business owners I know still struggle with healthcare. Cost sharing programs like CHM are about the only workable alternative but they don’t offer the kind of bankruptcy protection a solid insurance premium would cover, and they are religious by nature. Alternatively, DNR and a term life insurance policy.
Best option is to be married, have spouse work for the man to get into corporate group plan for family, while you grow your business enough to sustain an insurance scheme.
But it sucks out there on the individual market - the raw actuarial numbers to insure you are bad - and subsidies disappear quickly with any amount of AGI. Since the vast majority of Americans are on employer-paid healthcare plans, this is a view into it that most don’t see. The cynical side of me (as a small business owner) says this is by design to keep you working for corporate America - consolidation of labor, consolidation of the profits. For me, Obamacare further entrenched this aspect of the system, which has become more terrible, not less.
> and subsidies disappear quickly with any amount of AGI.
This has not been true for 2021 and is not true for 2022.
Your payments for health insurance are limited by a cap that is hard to explain, but basically, you should not be paying more than 8.5% of your AGI for the 2nd most expensive silver plan in your state.
I (self-employed) have an AGI in the mid-100k range, and these subsidies more or less reduced my wife and my insurance payments by half.
This system still sucks - we are paying private corporations, via government subsidy, for their overpriced goods and services. But from a numerical perspective, it's much closer to being inline with most of the rest of the industrialized world: 8-14% of income for health insurance that covers most stuff.
And in all likelihood, Congress will not renew it at the end of this year.
"Obamacare created new gaps that absolutely sucked - made over 58k and self employed? No subsidies for you and paying a skyrocketing premium higher than any reasonable home mortgage with a 10k deductible. Completely unrealistic. And then the IRS hit you for thousands in penalties via the individual mandate."
I am currently paying $800/mo for a "silver" plan in a state that did not accept the extended Medicare. No, I don't get subsidies. I believe my deducible is roughly $2000, although I don't know because all of my costs have been covered, including the trip to the emergency room after I wacked myself in the eye. (The out-of-pocket limit for 2022 is $8700 for an individual. (https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/out-of-pocket-maximum-li...))
Before the ACA, individual market plans were cheaper (although for the first couple of years they were comparable), but did not cover asthma (as a "pre-existing condition). Hello, $750 daily inhalers.
Just out of curiosity I calculated roughly the cost in Germany. If you were self employed and made 5.000 € a month your health insurance would be somewhat around 900 € per month. Partly tax deductible if I am not mistaken.
So quite a bit of money. But probably manageable for many/most people.
I am lucky. As I only do freelance work on the side I am insured via what I pay from my main income. So no additional costs for me as long as I don't make more on the side than in my main job.
Premium costs vary by state. When I last looked (three years ago?) my bronze plan was $1600/mo with high deductible. It was higher than that six years ago. The affordability exemption started to alleviate me of the tax penalty once the exemption was available, and then the removal of the mandate removed the penalties entirely.
That's horrible, my sympathy. Personally, I think Obamacare fixed more than it broke, even immediately. In particular, it was a huge relief to get rid of the possibility you could be permanently uninsurable after even a tiny gap if you have a "pre-existing condition".
I wanted Medicare for everyone (still do), but politics...and lies about "government death panels"...
I want medicare for all (or at least wish that people could figure that out, in a workable way - probably not possible until international defense spending takes a huge haircut, meaning a very different world order), but I also don't think "death panels" are a lie - ignore the scary hyperbole, the point is that health care on a fixed budget needs to be rationed. The kind of plans we could offer the nation of 350m people without dramatic world-changing changes in budget structure would be pretty bare bones. That's a reality in all systems. None of us have a "right" to have endless repair services - we are "entitled" to services within the confines of the systems we create, pay for, and subscribe to. Limited budget, just like with NHS, means choices have to be made. Totally okay with that.
For what it’s worth, currently you can get a mid-tier Obamacare / ACA health insurance plan for no more than 8.5% of your income. It’s a big jump to have a new expense of 8.5% for sure, but we do have that option now.
From what I can tell, Alabama has all the regular subsidies for ACA plans. What they don’t have is Medicaid expansion. The federal government offers states money to expand Medicaid to anyone making less than the minimum needed for ACA plans. Some states like Alabama have refused the money and continue to only offer it to specific subgroups of low income people, usually only after they spent 100% of their assets also.
> In addition, the 'educational assistance' is barely enough for a two-year vocational training program, certainly nowhere near enough for a full four-year college degree. It's better than nothing, certainly, but the advertising and the reality have a big disconnect.
This is entirely false. I served my commitment on active duty and then went to college using the Post-911 GI Bill. I got 9 semesters (4.5 yrs) paid for with housing allowance as well.
I dropped out of school before I joined the military, and had $10k in student loan debt with nothing to show for it. After serving, I graduated with a CS degree, and a job lined up as a software engineer. I am truly grateful the opportunities I was afforded through my service.
As I read this post I kept thinking you had a rough time in service. This doesn’t match my experience at all. Then I saw at the end you didn’t serve, made assumptions based on stories, and had an axe to grind.
> The most important thing to realize about military service is that you sign away all your citizenship rights (free speech, etc.) when you sign up for the service.
False. I can say the same things as any citizen outside of my uniform. I am a US citizen with rights. I signed away no such rights.
> The other thing to realize is that, at least in the USA, they'll do everything they can to deny you medical benefits for injuries suffered in basic training, and this will persist after you get out
False. I have had access to every medical care I’ve needed, for free, for myself and family. This includes four major surgeries. I can go to an ER for free any time we have an issue. Zero stresses over medical expenses here.
> the 'educational assistance' is barely enough for a two-year vocational training program, certainly nowhere near enough for a full four-year college degree.
False. The military completely paid for my undergrad and masters at a high quality university (50k+/yr). Zero loans. They subsidized a second masters in software engineering. After all this I still have my full GI bill that I can use for myself or pass off to my kids for their undergrad.
> If you're a teenage with zero alternative options and are completely desperate for a way out of an urban slum nightmare or a poverty-stricken rural life, the military is there as an option.
Or if you wanted to serve with every opportunity in the world in front of you, the military is an option.
> False. I can say the same things as any citizen outside of my uniform. I am a US citizen with rights. I signed away no such rights.
You're not allowed to say disparaging things about anyone in your command chain, which goes up to the president. There's also limits on your political speech, in relation to making political statements in favor of candidates.
The limits on your political speech aren't limited to service members, but also includes a pretty decent percentage of federal employees.
> False. The military completely paid for my undergrad and masters at a high quality university (50k+/yr). Zero loans. They subsidized a second masters in software engineering. After all this I still have my full GI bill that I can use for myself or pass off to my kids for their undergrad.
I'm glad that the GI bill worked well for you. It does for most people, but note that not everyone gets the GI bill benefits they are promised. I don't agree with the OP that it doesn't cover enough for a four-year college, especially if you're going to a state school.
> Or if you wanted to serve with every opportunity in the world in front of you, the military is an option.
I agree with you, in general, but it's important to note that the benefit one gets, vs the risks one takes are heavily correlated to ones status prior to entering. If you're poor, with poor education opportunities in your past, the likelihood of being enlisted, and being in a more dangerous service (and post) are substantially higher. If you're rich and had good educational opportunities, it's likely you'll be an officer, in a better service and post, with relatively low risk (and substantially higher pay).
> You're not allowed to say disparaging things about anyone in your command chain, which goes up to the president. There's also limits on your political speech, in relation to making political statements in favor of candidates.
You are right, there are more restrictions for me. I'll change my evaluation of "you sign away all your citizenship rights" to mostly false. The OP made a rather encompassing assertion. I still retain most of my rights as a US citizen.
For anyone reading this that is curious, we do agree to a new law code. It's the Uniform Code of Military Justice. One aspect is that it ensures service members are held accountable to laws in countries where there may be drastically different laws. It also includes provisions such as article 88 which states:
> Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
And article 89 also limits speech more than an average citizen.
> not everyone gets the GI bill benefits they are promised
I'd be curious to hear the facts behind this assertion. The regulations are pretty clear on how to qualify. I've never seen someone qualified then denied.
> I'd be curious to hear the facts behind this assertion. The regulations are pretty clear on how to qualify. I've never seen someone qualified then denied.
The first article is for a completely different benefit. The GI Bill from WW2, the Montgomery GI Bill, and the Post 9/11 GI bill are completely different things. To be clear - the article reports on a great injustice and it's sad to read about. I had no idea. Thank you for showing it.
The second article is specific to the reserves and guard. The main point I gather is that the process of evaluating time served is flawed and caused mistakes which made members a) lose their benefits even if they were currently using them and b) place the burden and costs on the service member to resolve. I'll restrict my statement to active duty only.
He's not totally wrong. If you enlist in the army and later during your service they tap you for a conflict which you have ideological differences with, YOU ARE GOING irrespective of your convictions... unless you want a military tribunal and possible jail time.
> they tap you for a conflict which you have ideological differences with, YOU ARE GOING irrespective of your convictions
Your statement is not entirely true, it is not irrespective of convictions. A conscientious objector is defined as either:
A member who, by reason of conscientious objection, sincerely objects to participation in military service of any kind in war in any form.
or
A member who, by reason of conscientious objection, sincerely objects to participation as a combatant in war in any form, but whose convictions are such as to permit military service in a noncombatant status. Also referred to as noncombatant duties or noncombatant service.
Yes there is an application which can be denied. Here is a GAO report on the rates of that. In an all volunteer force the numbers requested are pretty small.
I think you're being deliberately obtuse as to the parent poster's point. In 2003 the military was abused to start an illegal war that many knew from the start was wrong and had ideological objections. The Iraq war had a grievous effect on morale and on our moral standing in the world. Most of us are quite willing to defend our country by force, the question is how to avoid being sent into another pet project like that. If we want the military to be respected and prestigious, we need more robust protections against what happened in 2003.
I served in the military for 11 years as an air traffic controller; 95% military jobs are non-combat related. Moreover, the military does more than fight wars, we launched aircraft to aid Indonesia after the tsunami hit them, Haiti after the earthquake hit them, Antartica for scientific research, etc... Additionally, the military completely paid for my bachelors and two masters degrees and I am now employed as a data scientist for a cyber-security company. I still have GI Bill benefits if I want to pursue further eduction.
I think there is some incorrect information in this post. I know people who have completed their Bachelors and Masters completely funded by the GI Bill, including living expenses.
In the experience of the people I know, the VA goes out of their way to give benefits as needed. One case, in particular, they were granted 100% disability for life with a packet submission and one phone call.
The details matter. A lot of people sign up for a two-year active duty contract (it's an eight-year contract in all though, you're in the reserves afterwards). That only gives 70-80% of the benefit (which only runs for a max of 36 months, not a full four years). You're also restricted to in-state public schools, no private (Ivy League etc.) or out-of-home-state schools. Most of the military people I talked to at my local community college barely got two years of schooling out of it.
The link you posted says 100% of benefits which is either all tuition at an in-state school or up to $26k/year at a private of foreign school. $26k a year is a lot...
You also get 100% of the benefit if you served for 36 months. That is a far cry from what you described.
As others have noted, a lot of what you wrote is wrong. The Post 9/11 GI Bill will cover any tuition up to the maximum in-state university. You also do not have to return your Home of Record and can declare citizenship in any state post service and receive in-state tuition (you will of course need to meet the states requirement for citizenship).
Also, many universities (private and public out-of-state) have the Yellow Ribbon program that will cover gaps between what the government provides and the university's costs.
Finally, the Post 9/11 GI Bill also provides BAH based on your universities location which can be quite substantial.
I used the Post 9/11 GI Bill to get my degrees in CS and ECE. If I was single, the money from the program would have more than covered me.
Yep, same here - GI bill + yellow ribbon paid for me to go to a very expensive private university in DC. Also gave me an additional $2500 a month in BAH while I attended.
Yep! I had my entire undergraduate degree and my MBA (for a couple of semesters) paid for. While I’m undergrad I also got BAH which was around $1,000/month in Southeast Ohio. Not to mention full Pell Grants. I used every cent of my GI Bill.
> If you're a teenage with zero alternative options and are completely desperate for a way out of an urban slum nightmare or a poverty-stricken rural life, the military is there as an option.
yeah... I was in DEP for Marines felt like an ahole when I didn't follow through/returned to school. I was desperate to escape my life situation but I had to wait a while before going to bootcamp. I made a dumb choice with what I was going to do, despite getting 90's in ASVAB. I was going to drive trucks. I felt bad for the people that wanted to get into the military but could not pass the ASVAB or they had a medical condition. My education was funded with student loans/aid but I was able to leave my home.
Edit: in retrospect if I didn't go into school (debt) I could have just lived off labor jobs... It was the piling up debt from school that was freaking me out because I was also failing out of it (low 2.0's GPA). Idk if I would have ended up in tech/make the 3-4x labor wage (medium-level dev).
There are limits to your ability to take leadership roles in political parties and to make political statements while in uniform or where there could be reasonable confusion about whether your activity is as a private citizen or as a member of the military.
That is a far cry from “sign[ing] away all your citizenship rights (free speech, etc.).”
> they'll do everything they can to deny you medical benefits for injuries suffered in basic training
I know of a guy who got run over by a speeding MP during Basic and had his leg broken in like 3 places. The guy who got run over got a medical discharge, and now gets a full pension and Tricare
Every vet I know about has some disability payments. (Part of that may speak to a lack of safety culture, but they don't fight too hard to prevent anyone from getting them.)
Thank you for the post. I had friends in college who were previously marines, but their entire school was paid for along with something to the effect of “Anything you need to achieve the career you want, within reason”. New laptops, writing easels, etc.
Are there varying levels of educational assistance?
For the GI Bill, I put in $1200 ($100/month for the first year), and I while enrolled at an accredited university I was paid $400/month. I could use that however I wanted. Early 90's, that didn't come close to paying for much, but it was certainly something.
I was in the Marines, however. The Army, Navy and Air Force had matching funds and paid a lot more (like triple). This may have all changed or become consolidated.
I've also been through the VA for something and it's very much a government bureaucracy. If you have things documented it will run smoother, and it may run slow at times, but there is certainly no policy of denying everything.
The poster above just has an axe to grind and isn't concerned with reality.
It changed a ton. Over the late 90's (ie, in my day) the per-month payments were increased up to a little over 1k. The Post-9/11 GI Bill is structured very differently and is far more generous: Tuition + BAH. There's a ton of fine print around the tuition part, but in practice it really does fully cover tuition just about everywhere in the US.
My experience is a bit old (2008 ish) so things might have changes.
I had the GI Bill. I submitted paper work each month that showed I was taking a certain number of credits towards my degree to the VA dept at the school. Money was deposited into my bank account a couple weeks later. I could use that money for anything I wanted. Sounds like this is what your friends had/have.
There are other programs such as paying off student loans when you join up, but I am not familiar with them.
"The GI Bill can pay up to the full resident tuition at any public school, if you are qualified to receive benefits at the 100% rate based on your active service shown above.
If you are attending a private or foreign school, the VA will pay you an annual maximum of $26,042.81, that amount increases to $26,381.37 on Aug. 1, 2022."
This reads like one of the perspectives other comments here lament, ie about Americans disconnected from the miilitary, and not having a clue what it's like.
There is so much misinformation in this post is appalling. Plenty of responses have pointed out some but I will just say this: I know several people that have received masters degrees while serving
> In addition, the 'educational assistance' is barely enough for a two-year vocational training program, certainly nowhere near enough for a full four-year college degree. It's better than nothing, certainly, but the advertising and the reality have a big disconnect.
Could you expand on this, please? My experience was different so I'm curious about what you actually know.
UCMJ is pretty clear re: the free speech angle and all points in that direction. UCMJ != the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Always blows my mind when people complain about this aspect.
The last I heard, there was a US destroyer undeployable because the Captain refused to get vaccinated and (so far) has successfully sued to prevent his being transferred to another position.
The US spends a lot on public education. A lot of it is inefficient due to highly politicized unions and top-level admins that pilfer the money out from benefitting ground level teachers and students.
> 1. Thanks to decades of increases, America spends more per student than any other major developed nation.
U.S. per-pupil expenditures have nearly tripled over the past half-century, from $4,720 in 1966 to $13,847 in 2016 (2018 dollars).
America spends more per pupil than any other major developed nation—10% more than the United Kingdom and 28% more than France; in the OECD, only Norway, Switzerland, and Luxembourg spend more.
Per Pupil Nearly Highest in the World and in History
The U.S. spends 35% more per pupil than the average among countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).[7] Among those countries, the U.S. falls behind only Denmark, Norway, and Luxembourg.[8] In 2015, the latest year for which OECD data are available, combined primary and secondary spending in the U.S. reached $12,800, significantly higher than other major European nations such as the United Kingdom ($11,400), Germany ($11,100), France ($10,000), Italy ($9,100), and Spain ($8,300).
Similarly, we spend a lot on other social programs. But inefficiently.
This is due to both governmental inefficieny and rent seeking.
Your post is standard Gish gallop. It is easy to post a slew of false statements and put the burden on others to correct them (and then respond by saying they are "besides the point"). Standard Gish gallop.
If I knew my country's armed forces were 100% a domestic defense and emergency response force, I would absolutely have considered signing up when I was young. You learn good skills, and I see great value in some larger-than-self contribution to community there. My father is German and left Germany for good not long after doing his compulsory 1 year service. He hated it, and it was one of many factors that led to him emigrating. But one thing my aunts have told me is that before he joined he was a disorganized messy irresponsible person, and afterwards he was neat and structured. He is also an amazing marksman, which he learned there (before he left they were talking to him about advancing him through sniper training). He amazed my Canadian uncles when he went hunting with them.
But even here, in Canada, the armed forces gets involved in adventures abroad which I can would characterize as "dubiously thought through" at best ... but "blatantly imperialist" at worst. Being deployed to Afghanistan or some other adventure that I could not support would both enrage and depress me.
Yeah. I’ve grown up starkly anti military due to the kinds of fights the American military has fought in my lifetime. It’s been evil. Plain and simple. And yet, I’m glad we have a strong military given happenings in Ukraine. I would strongly support putting boots on the ground.
To have the training necessary to join the volunteer defense forces in Ukraine or something similar resonates as a valuable, important skill.
In the US, the military doesn't choose the targets. Elected civilians do. The way to square those feelings is to direct them at the people who give the top-level orders, and the rhetoric used to support those orders to the public.
There is an entire branch of ethics and philosophy dedicated to the topic: Just War Theory. The US interventions in Serbia and Kuwait were both well-justified in my eyes.
You're not responding to the point the OP is making though. They (and I) are aware that the military isn't making these decisions, and I'm not blaming the military for them. But who gets the blame isn't the question being asked here, it's whether we as individuals should join, and for that the question of blame is irrelevant. I would also serve if there was some kind of guarantee that I would only see deployment in self-defense or against another Hitler. But what I absolutely will not do is be cannon fodder in another imperialist war like Iraq or Afghanistan, and part of serving in the military means you don't get any choice in the matter. So I don't join.
Edit: but bravado aside, I think no, it would not. I think Russia would just back down. If they were willing to escalate, I think we would have seen a nuke in kyiv by now
Edit edit: and it is worth it to show we are willing to stand up for such things. We cannot afford to roll over to anyone with nukes
Russians would likely shoot at US forces in Ukraine. Then what? I sympathize with the Ukrainian people but Ukraine is not a US treaty ally.
If you're brave enough, the Ukrainian military is accepting volunteers. Other foreigners have already enlisted. Go join them. And I'm not being snarky: if you really believe in the cause then I sincerely think you should do something about it.
The United States is capable of getting involved even if Ukraine is not a treaty ally. I am stating a geopolitical policy preference. Yes, that involves some US soldiers dying.
It doesn't just involve US soldiers dying, it probably means some cities turned to cinders.
There's a line you cannot cross, and wasn't crossed in the entire cold war as bitter as things got-- and that is NATO troops on Russian soil or vice versa.
You are advocating conflict escalation and expansion that will drastically shorten the decision tree that ends in the permanent end of human civilization in its present form. Given that the Ukrainians -- with Western material, financial and intelligence support -- appear to be capable of destroying the combat power of the Russian Army in the field without a direct NATO intervention, what you're in effect asking for is to take on the literally largest conceivable risks for minimal added benefit beyond feeling tougher and stronger and like you're doing something, all without personally having to leave your chair. Forgive me if I don't think that's a good trade off.
And as an aside, my personal view is peak nuclear escalation risk is in another 3 or 4 weeks when Russian forces in the east and south hit a similar point of exhaustion/forced withdrawal that we just witnessed in the north. I don't think Putin is going to react well once the news finally penetrates that his miscalculation has destroyed his army and revealed him and the Russian state to be laughingstocks.
You can’t simultaneously claim I’m risking nothing while also encouraging a path with the potential for nuclear war. If the latter is true, the former is not.
I said you would not have to leave your chair, as in you are treating this like a game, as in you are not taking this seriously, as in you are prioritizing your personal emotional satisfaction over any sort of analysis of strategic interest. What do you believe is at stake here that would justify dramatically increasing the probability of a strategic nuclear exchange? I agree that a strategic nuclear exchange is p<.5 in the event of a NATO-Russia war, but how high a probability should we tolerate before the risk-benefit analysis of nato intervention collapses? The end of civilization is an almost unbounded price to pay, and even at a very low probability of occurrence we would still be taking on an extraordinarily expensive risk. So what are we buying for that risk? That Russia loses this war? To the extent that their political objective was to turn Ukraine back into a satellite client state, they’ve already lost. Destruction of the Russian armed forces for a generation? The Ukrainians are already doing yeomans work there. A chance for regime change in Russia? If so we’d be increasing the probability of a strategic nuclear exchange well above .5 then. A chance to punish the cretins who bound and shot, and raped, and tortured civilians to include children? Laudable but many of the immediate perpetrators are likely already dead, and to be frank it’s generally not a good time to risk nuclear war when you are feeling personally outraged. So what then? A chance to feel like you fought the good fight? As others have noted you have every opportunity to personally go fight that fight without NATO involvement, particularly, but not necessarily, if you have infantry or medical training.
I know I’m being an antagonistic asshole, but I would genuinely be curious to know what precise benefit you think nato intervention would achieve and why you value that benefit so highly as to incur near incalculable risk. I’m assuming you haven’t done that analysis, but then I’m an asshole who may be selling you short.
Were you around for the buildup to the second gulf war? The rhetoric against Saddam Hussein was not terribly different in tone than that against Putin. People were similarly outraged and many people wanted us to invade because of all the awful things he did, e.g. his treatment of the Kurds. In fact, pretty much all the major conflicts that have happened in my lifetime have been accompanied by a call to action based on moral outrage. I don't mean to offend, but it seems to me it's people such as yourself who have abetted our participation in so many conflicts, and precious few have been better for our involvement.
I'm fully on board in supporting Ukraine, but the quality of the coverage is no better. I don't often watch TV, particularly American TV, but I was down at a friends recently and he had CNN on and I was like... yep, same old same old, just as bad as it was in the early 2000s. Sensationalistic, simplistic, and highly biased.
Beats the Fox News bias, but still bias.
But, I'm neither liberal or conservative. I'm a socialist, and mainstream politics is pretty alien to me on both "sides."
