Escape hatch-ed into the the military for the 2000s financial crisis, became a Navy Nuke and was one when those commands didn't have the lowest morale out of all the military (though we were competing against Drone Pilots who hit rock bottom enough to boo their commanding officer off stage).
The military is a fucked up place with utter bullshit like the CO using a suicide victim's "voice" to say we should work harder, where failures of people stay in (too afraid of civilian life, or trapped in the military since they're the only one who covers their child insurance wise, or worse get their rocks off at the command climate), and along with the entire thing being utterly corrupt (there are no economic pressures to do better, no social pressures since everyone is trapped by that contract, and no oversight pressures since politicians are afraid of the fallout of being hard on the military).
(On the bright side with the failure of the military to recruit, we know things are NOT completely hopeless economically/emotionally/socially for gen Z. Since when things get that bad, they're likely to ignore the advice of people who have recently been in)
Gen Z has a higher home ownership rate than Millenials or Gen X at the equivalent point in time. The idea that Gen Z has it bad is a media myth and/or a cultural phenomenon of whining to an echo chamber on Reddit.
The article you post just says some gen z were able to take advantage of low mortgage rates in 2020. And in cheaper parts of the country. It doesn't mean anything for the overall socioeconomic condition
Ohh. Sad to hear Navy Nuke is anything other than perfect. I had a great time in the Marines. I knew the GI Bill promises were BS and the training I got would not be applicable to the real world (honestly, how often do you call in fire from naval artillery in your corporate software development job.)
I joined explicitly to play GI Joe for a couple years and explicitly chose a job that had me frequently out of sight of my chain of command.
And I knew from family members the tradeoffs involved with making it a career.
The military always had s** jobs, but if you played your cards right you could avoid them mostly. Sounds like it's harder to avoid the crap these days.
Should mention I was in from 85-90 w/ a couple years of reserves. Ymmv.
I dont think anything you've said is wrong or isn't still a thing. But the problem is there are new problems in addition to what you described.
Nukes are a good example of how the military simply does not care, is not allowed to care. The Congress will not resource problem sets. But they will increase requirements against those problems. And the military can only use coercive tactics against the individuals in the jobs. So the job is getting harder, the commanders getting meaner, and all the while your pay is inflating away as you watch (dod) civilians play on greener grass.
No joke, a certain combatant command will pay civilians >200% of an servicemember's total military compensation for the exact same workrole. When SMs bring it up, like with the posted job offer as they ETS, the command accuses them of being mercenaries who chase money and don't believe in America or the mission. It's the same mission for the same employer.
I'm afraid us older guys may not have a good sense of what military life is like today. I knew a lot of military families in the 1990s and they seemed satisfied. That contact ended for me about 20 years ago, so I don't know how things have evolved, but a quick check shows that my old friends' kids didn't join up.
By the way, TFA mentioned the Marines as the only branch still meeting quotas, so maybe things are not so bad there.
> On the bright side with the failure of the military to recruit, we know things are completely hopeless economically/emotionally/socially for gen Z.
I don't know why that would be the bright side, but I draw the opposite conclusion. As you say, you joined because it was an escape hatch (from a worse option, I assume) and declining recruitment suggests that gen Z has better alternatives.
Better to suffer in Mom’s basement than the sandbox (speaking as someone who has three brothers who have served numerous tours in the Middle East). No IEDs or MREs in the basement.
Summary: Military kids traditionally are the majority of recruits, but America's military misadventures the past two decades have left veterans not very enthusiastic about their mission, and the current civilian job market is really good, so veterans are telling their kids that a civilian career might be the better path. Also, the general population isn't a great source either, as 3/4 of youths are deemed unfit for service, and parents are questioning whether the military would be a happy place for their kids. Fortunately, the Pentagon has crack marketing people working on the problem.
A large part of the failure to recruit is a gigantic 500 pound gorilla in the room no one wants to acknowledge:
Young Southern White men make up the bread and butter of the military. They have been the target of recruiting campaigns for decades upon decades. This group has collectively checked out of a society that has nothing but contempt for them. When the highest levels of the government and half of the political establishment have nothing good to say about you, opine about how "toxic" your existence is, and openly laugh at your struggles... who would want to put their life on the line for that? When patriotism, their basic existence, etc. are derided as "fascist", then why even give a shit? When you're suffering from record levels of depression, dying from suicide and drug overdoses at rates never seen, still being openly discriminated against and laughed at, supporting the system that not only allows, but encourages that behavior is ridiculous.
Effectively, the US Military is experiencing a variation of "go woke, go broke". Guess they couldn't find enough Emmas with two moms to fill their ranks. I guarantee we'll see the US government start to peel back DIE initiatives to fill their ranks back up.
It's very interesting to read narratives like this online, and how vastly different it is actually talking to people.
Here's the simple reality: the US military is useless to join for young men because they cannot guarantee you a home anymore. You are exchanging your life possibly just to come back with slightly more money. This means even poor young men aren't considering it anymore.
Which were their actual base, poor men who were desperate and had no other option. Exploitation.
Men killing themselves isn't about "open discrimination". If such were true, other groups would have had far greater levels of suicide historically. They're killing themselves because they cannot make a living anymore, and this is due to the perpetuated belief that money is central to your worthiness. Something plenty of groups have been trying to fight against, what do we call those again? Com something...
We can distract ourselves all we want, that it's not how much we've fucked the economy, but rather some randoms online calling people toxic that are the real problem.
> They're killing themselves because they cannot make a living anymore, and this is due to the perpetuated belief that money is central to your worthiness. Something plenty of groups have been trying to fight against, what do we call those again? Com something...
It's nice to talk about those groups in the abstract, but when you look at them more specifically... well, let's ignore their historical record, and focus on the ones in the US. Their central tenet seems to be that white men (and women, when they dare object) are the source of all evil in the US, are solely and inherently racist, and must repent and atone for their current and historical sins for the foreseeable future.
Give up your borders, your identity, your remaining political power, and maybe, if you grovel hard enough, the new benevolent authorities will throw you a few scraps, after they're done redressing your historic wrongs.
You can maybe see why that's not a tempting offer. Learning from history, Ukraine once "accepted" such an offer - gave up their national identity and political power, to join the Soviet Union and its utopian classless society. They were repaid with Russification and the Holodomor. I'm sure they had people admonishing fellow Ukrainians for "acting against their self-interest" by clinging to their nationality then, too.
Disappointingly little discussion in the article about the moral and ethical problems associated with the US military. If military service were simply about "defending freedom", I suspect there would not be a recruiting problem.
While it feels to me like US military service may exist for the purpose of "defending freedom", it's mostly utilized for defending and promoting the interests of the wealthy. As others have mentioned, this has been the case for a long time, but there is a far broader understanding of this now than in decades past.
Who wants to sign up to put their life, or the life of a loved one at risk for the purpose of making someone else wealthier? It's completely absurd.
This is a common anti-establishment trope but it clearly lacks cognizance into the recent military past. The us military is more clear-eyed in it's role than some like the Korean war. It was a better argument when the us was in iraq. Morale and senselessness were worse in the 90s/80s and the 70s the military was absolutely reeling from Vietnam & counter-culture.
The use of "even" here is interesting. It's precisely veterans who actually know what it's like rather than everyone else who are naive and idealistic.
In addition to helping hit military recruitment targets, they also have less attachment to the American people, so they're less likely to revolt if they were deployed domestically.
You don't think Americans losing their participation refusal veto on military action (if they won't do it, the government will hire foreigners for it - whatever "it" may be, foreign invasion or domestic suppression) is dangerous?
The only way I can make sense of your attitude is if you believe wanting to get US citizenship, and being willing to join a military (from their point of view a foreign military) is a sign of virtue, and only good people would do it.
Veteran here. I would not stop a family member from joining but I would not push them into it either. It has to be their choice after they are fully aware of what awaits them. My offspring share my obstinance and questioning authority and ultimately boat rocking which is frowned upon in the military but very much needed just like in the civilian world.
If my kids wanted to join the military, I would support them. Especially the Navy; while one can (and does) say that the American military is the strongest military of all times, in terms of greatness in battle, the Army does not have a lot to show (no American general cracks the top 10). The Navy can boast Midway. And can be proud with Nimitz, probably the greatest admiral ever, Nelson included.
So, why would I discourage my kids from joining a great organization? How many people in the Navy have died in combat after WW2?
The thing is, if you don't want to risk your life, but you still want to join the US military, there are plenty of positions in the military where you don't risk your life.
> regime that hates them and everything they stand for?
Well, that's you opinion. You are entitled for it. "Entitled" meaning here, there is a certain piece of paper that guarantees your right to have and express your opinion. Piece of paper that would be worth less than a piece of toilet paper, if not for the US military.
> Piece of paper that would be worth less than a piece of toilet paper, if not for the US military.
After WWII, only a tiny minority of wars fought by the US were in self-defense. Most of the time the military was on foreign soil of countries that never attacked the US. The most their justifications amounted to were terrorist attacks, to which it responded with full invasions that left millions dead.
It took half a century, but people are just not buying "we have to fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here" anymore.
If you used the same threshold for what justifies an invasion against the US, as the US does to other countries.. well, you wouldn't mind Chinese drones and bombers flying overhead, liberating you, would you? It's either that, or their constitution becomes worthless.
The ones who used to be willing to lay down their lives for honour and the love of their people and homeland, and who now see military service to the regime as futile and even self-defeating.
Yes. The US military used to have a defensive function toward western people, culture, morals and values.
Not any longer, which is one of the reasons why today there are many things which I am not free to criticise or satirise, and have to use anonymous public forums.
What are you talking about? Is this some sort of metaphor? Will anyone arrest you if you criticize of satirize? Where's that? In the western world?
I'm aware that in Germany you can get in prison if you are a Holocaust denier. In a few other countries too. The US does not have a lot of patience with Holocaust deniers. You will not get in legal trouble in the US, because of the freedom of speech. But the US will not move a finger if a country in its sphere of influence passes a law making Holocaust denying a crime.
But other than that, what type of criticism or satire can get you arrested?
Maybe your fear is of being "cancelled". But this is a cultural thing, not a legal thing. What exactly would you like the US to do?
Ancient Rome had this problem, which it 'solved' by selectively permitting various tribes to pass the limes (border) on exchange for military service. If the US is indeed an empire, it may choose this option.
Unfortunately, it did not end well for Rome, althiugh it worked for a while.
The US does have that system. And of all the theories as to why Rome fell, I really don't think the recruitment of others into the legion is really much of a factor (except, I suppose, a second- or third-order effect of it allowing the various armies to be larger)
The system broke down when they stopped trying to disperse immigrants across wide areas and directly integrate them into the social/military system.
Instead they allowed them to settle as a group, maintain their own leadership and armies and just function basically as ‘vassals’ states of Rome and we know how that ended…
I agree with you that the US military does not currently operate this way, but if the level of recruitment keeps falling (which is the article's title, after all), its not far off that the govt make a large scale citizenship for military/law endorcement service deal with poeple eager to enter. This is what Rome did.
On the contrary, it was after the system began breaking down that the empire was no longer able to disperse the incoming tribes the way it had for centuries prior and needed them to behave as vassals due to the lack of means both to effectively impose leadership and to govern effectively. This coincides with a more general increase in the number and autonomy of provinces throughout the empire for similar reasons.
IIRC Rome actually had a pretty good system for this, where they defeated any large migrating tribes in battle (even if it was kind of a joke battle, a lot of them were fleeing from other forces that had already drove them out) and then disarmed and spread the families out into different provinces. This broke the large potentially dangerous group up and kind of forced them to integrate into the roman system instead of being a different entity inside the empire. It didn't even really stop working, some bad leaders were just to lazy to do it towards the end.
I served a long time ago and there were several immigrants in boot-camp with me. A couple of them barely spoke english but they managed to follow instructions just as well as everyone else so I guess it worked out.
The military is a fucked up place with utter bullshit like the CO using a suicide victim's "voice" to say we should work harder, where failures of people stay in (too afraid of civilian life, or trapped in the military since they're the only one who covers their child insurance wise, or worse get their rocks off at the command climate), and along with the entire thing being utterly corrupt (there are no economic pressures to do better, no social pressures since everyone is trapped by that contract, and no oversight pressures since politicians are afraid of the fallout of being hard on the military).
(On the bright side with the failure of the military to recruit, we know things are NOT completely hopeless economically/emotionally/socially for gen Z. Since when things get that bad, they're likely to ignore the advice of people who have recently been in)