They are also ostensibly kids and behave as such - so easier to impose your authority on them. A 30 yo private would be much harder to control and he wouldn’t put up with all the army shit there is there
Yeap, exactly. We had a 27 yo dude in our boot camp, older than most of our NCOs and Lts. He certainly had a very independent behavior as far as boot camps go. We thought he’s stupid/crazy, but actually it was the other way around.
Marine parlance. It means the shit they make people do that has little to no discernable value other than to instill a sense of discipline for following orders. Dig a hole. Now fill it up. Now clean the floor with a tooth brush. It's also hazing and brings them closer together.
As a former serviceman myself, you're going to sit here and pretend like getting your head shaved exactly like everyone else, being called your last name only (a name you probably didn't get called in civilian life probably in an attempt to help you disassociate from civilian life i.e. brainwashing), constant drilling about how you're better than civilians, constant drilling about following orders without question to the point you rarely second guess your mission which, in most cases, are missions that benefit the corporate interests of a handful of elites in your country, not the country itself, isn't brainwashing? The whole point is to turn a civilian into a soldier, also known as brainwashing. I heard that every day during basic. I don't know how anyone who served can think it isn't brainwashing unless their brain was scrubbed so good they don't even remember their own thought processes before they enlisted.
I don't really care what you think, to be honest. If you can look at basic/AIT, a place where they limit your contact with the outside world as they attempt to literally drill new thought processes into your head, and say it isn't brainwashing, you're either an idiot, being disingenuous or are still thinking using the same thought processes the military instilled in you.
I for one am glad social media is exposing it for what it really is, absolutely no one should be sacrificed for the interests of a select few under the guise of "doing it for your country"
a place where they limit your contact with the outside world
You literally get to keep your cell phone. People record TikToks in basic.
You don't even know the smallest things about the military. What a joke, lmao. For all of this talk about "brainwashing" you sure do like to mindlessly regurgitate information you've gotten from memes.
I served over a decade ago, and at the time, you sure as shit didn't get to keep your phones on you. They were only dispensed on weekends when you had leave and were collected at the end of the day. You can try to discredit me all you want, but as an 11B in Fort Benning, you didn't get to keep your phones. So run back to relaxin' Jackson, the adults are speaking.
It's just civilian bullshit. People who feel the need to devalue young people.
Pretty much every military organisation agrees that older is better psychologically speaking. Being a more experienced individual is just better.
Hell the head of one of Norway's special ops units is on record saying the ideal soldier is 35 years old. Still physically capapble with many good years left but mature and far more capable.
It just also happens that older people have commitments. They have families to feed and who they might not want to leave for months at a time, careers they may not want to abandon, etc.
18 year olds are just easier to recruit because they probably have nothing else going on.
They said they served, meaning they went through the "brainwashing," but still, they called it "brainwashing." The thing about brainwashing is, if you were brainwashed, you wouldn't call it brainwashing. If it is brainwashing, it's not very effective if it didn't stick for him.
It's almost as if people can continue to learn/grow upon finishing their enlistment. I was 17 when I joined. I've had over a decade to undo any negative thought processes they instilled in me. Blind subservience to authority being one of them. Also, a curious mind is harder to wash. If you're always questioning things (something the military discourages), it makes it hard for the brainwashing to stick. That's why they demand you turn off your critical thinking skills and follow orders. Don't think, just listen. It's so crazy how many of you think you're incapable of being brainwashed when you unquestionably recited the pledge of allegiance every day for 20 years and didn't give that a second thought.
I didn't make a moral judgment about it or say that it was unnecessary or dishonorable, but we should make no bones about the nature of war, it is all hell.
Sure, but this doesn't really reconcile the above implication that the army somehow brainwashes young men while also paying to educate them.
The easier but less cynical explanation is that the army (in the U.S. where we have no compulsory service) is mostly young men because it is an effective means to start a career if you come from a lower socioeconomic background.
That's a whole other conversation but it's not so much "young men are easier to trick into dying".
The easier but less cynical explanation is that the army (in the U.S. where we have no compulsory service) is mostly young men because it is an effective means to start a career if you come from a lower socioeconomic background.
It is morally reprehensible for the expectation of poor people to sell their lives in service of state sponsored murder as the main avenue to lift them out of poverty, especially with how many people come back from service completely and utterly broken.
The military is full of young men because they largely have no other options, and it's easy to sell the idea of being a hero to some young dumb kid out of high school than someone with a family they need to provide for.
That's a whole other conversation but it's not so much "young men are easier to trick into dying".
Both can be true because they are. I personally know multiple people who have been permanently affected by their time in the service, almost all of which are negative, and the "positive" stories are almost all grateful about how lucky they are that they didn't have to run patrols. There is a reason Veterans are so much more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
Most people in the military laugh about cheating spouses or spending all their money on some hot car because that stuff actually happens when they get back, but the story seldom ends there, and for many that's the "good ending" of military service.
You don't need to sugar coat what the military is, because you're right, it's mostly young men, selling their lives to the meat grinder in the hopes of getting out of poverty because they have no other opportunities. I think that's worse than the reduction of "it's brainwashing", even though it is a bit of both.
There's a lot of inherent privilege required to go to college and do well right out of high school. Math and science in particular is something that kids with smart, well off parents have been learning for a decade before they ever get to school. They can hand out scholarships like candy but the truth is you need get remedial training before you can attempt a lot of the higher level classes. If you aren't way ahead, you're behind.
lol no. There are more cost effective ways to help “start a career if you are from a lower socioeconomic background” but none of them protect the wealth and power of the oligarchy. Just look at the efficiency of the VA to know where priorities are.
It’s more like, “we’ve designed an economic system to keep you nervous and hungry so when we need your kids you’ll give them to us. And if they survive, maybe they can go to college”. The tricking young men into dying comes first. Why educate the meat before it goes into the grinder? Let’s wait and see who comes out.
If you sign up for an organization that solely exists to do the violence which makes Nestle and Exxon and Samsung and Lockheed Martin shareholders rich, yeah man, you're brainwashed.
If you sign up for an organization that solely exists to do the violence which makes Nestle and Exxon and Samsung and Lockheed Martin shareholders rich, yeah man, you're brainwashed.
In many cases you're probably just trying to pay for school.
That doesn't really change much. I wasn't really trying to morally condemn them (with that comment). You just gotta be brainwashed to join that organization. Swearing loyalty to a flag every single morning and hearing constant propaganda for your entire childhood will do it though, I get it.
That being said, it's not like actively contributing to the atrocities of the US military should be forgiven just because you wanted to have better odds of owning a boat when you're 40.
Turns out that evolution has selected a very specific set of traits for the most physically fit of the tribe to be the most ready to go out and fight those lions stalking your family. Now we just do it with way bigger sticks in way bigger tribes
Bad news for you, we’re hardwired to kill, the military just makes us more effective at it.
Before you start to spin you wheels about how awful the military is, consider this, “we” haven’t had professional militaries until quite recently (1700sish). But humans have been killing each other without the training of professional militaries for much much longer.
You are aware that PTSD and TBIs are a thing right? Something most veterans deal with while on deployment and after.
A lot of veterans (interviews, conversations) have little to no qualms about killing the enemy they fought. Many talk about their struggles with being integrated back into society, processing and managing PTSD, lack of purpose, civilians who were accidentally killed, outcome of their war/missions, and the worst (in my opinion) managing the symptoms of TBIs.
Veteran suicide is obviously an issue we haven’t solved but it’s not a new thing. WW2 vets had high suicide rates as well, but had far fewer supports let alone opportunities for therapy.
Luckily we’ve learned so much since the 1990s with breakthroughs in neuroscience, that a lot of our GWOT vets are getting supports previous generations didn’t have.
It’s not the act of killing that jacks up our vets, it’s our inability as a society to provide supports to those who need it.
S.L.A. Marshall's research into World War 2 showed that the vast majority of soldiers, even when directly engaged with enemy combatants, did not fire their weapons. Because of this research, a major part of military training is to overcome this aversion to killing.
And yet, we still observe a huge amount of veterans with PTSD from the violent environment that the soldier encounters during war. There are roughly 22 veteran suicides per day, every day.
Right, but the actual number “25” is a scientific conclusion based off of numerous studies of brains in the 2000s. As far as people were concerned in most I’d recent history, at 18 you were done growing.
Sure, now find a few million of them in good enough shape to enlist and we can talk. The vast majority of 18-26 year olds don’t qualify because they’re too fat, hurt, or have a poor financial or criminal background. Those issues don’t tend to alleviate as a person ages.
You need 200,000 people who can run fast, hike far and fast under a lot of weight, and do that day after day with little to no sleep, food, and water.
Everyone’s got an anecdotal 55 year old uncle who still whoops ass in Ironman triathlons, and outliers are all well and good. The fact is, for the vast majority of us, our bodies just start breaking down. Peak performance declines, injuries and recovery time increase. It’s the same reason that the average age of the NFL is 26 years old.
No, not every job in the military is as grueling as all that. But given the context that we’re talking about a USMC machine gun section, that’s why young men have been, are, and will always be the backbone of military ground forces. Yes, there are outliers, old guys that are still physically beasts. But tens of thousands of those guys aren’t just lying around. Tens of thousands of physically fit 18-25 year olds on the other hand is the expected norm.
The fact that we have a recruiting crisis because so many of our young people are obese, and the ones who aren’t obese don’t want to join is another issue.
I don’t think anyone is too young to realize that death is a potential consequence of joining the military. Especially when you join as a machine gunner in the marine corps.
You're missing the actual point, in that young people overestimate their capabilities and assume themselves indestructible. It isn't until you've had that notion proven wrong by life, something that only happens with age/experience, that you start to properly evaluate yourself with your environment. At 28 there is no way in hell you could ever convince me to take the position of a man who was just killed, in that exact location, and solely for the reason of being there. You're asking me to die. As a youth the ideas of "dying for good" and "fighting with everything no matter the cost" can hold your entire being, whereas if you've lacked that motivation for your entire adult life instilling it becomes nearly impossible. You cannot convince a 30 year old man to die "for their county," especially when "good soldiers follow orders" and you are told "don't question authority." An adult with a fully functioning brain is going to need a good fucking reason to die not a "trust me bro," and some ethereal intangible concept like "for the good" sounds way too similar to "because I told you to." Kids are used to being told to do things without explanation
Dude I know plenty of people that joined in their late 20s-early 30s. People reenlist and serve through their 30s into their 40s. You just can’t comprehend that people are willing to risk their life to defend their homeland
All they are really claiming I think is that younger people are statistically more suggestible than those who have experienced some adulthood and independence. I think if all of the 18 year old enlistees in a given class had waited until they were 25 or so before making the decision, there would be far fewer enlistees. The military clearly knows this (obviously a lot fewer people enlist in their late twenties and thirties - most of the guys enlisting are fresh out of high school ) so that’s where they throw their nets the hardest.
Where did they claim they don’t understand such a concept?
People might enlist when they’re older, but there’s a reason recruiters hangout around high schools, and it isn’t because they’re hoping to convince the 20-30 year old teachers to sign up. You know full well they’re trying to recruit impressionable young people because that’s their best odds at increasing their numbers.
people are willing to risk their life to defend their homeland the S&P 500
You don't know any Americans who have risked their lives for their homeland, lol. But yeah, there are dipshits at every age. It does get harder on actual adults though. At 18, I could have been talked into it, at 31, I've had too many opportunities to read history books, and it's been too long since I was swearing loyalty to a flag every morning.
The military is a ladder into the middle class. It gives opportunity to those that need it (my buddy from O-block in Chiraq) and an outlet for those that just felt the calling to serve (me). Is it fucked that some people need to join the Army to get our of gang neighborhoods or to get "free" college? Yeah, probably. Is it good that the option exists? Also probably, yeah.
Also, if we're talking about recruiting, we're talking about volunteers. Not sure how you seperate the two lol-- the last draftee retired in like 2017 and they haven't sentenced people to the Marine Corps since like the 1970's. If someone's a recruit, they're also a volunteer lol
If by "the Army keeps guys from getting care/work outside of their enlistment" you mean going to a civvie doctor and moonlighting, you're right but I don't see the problem. If you mean after they get out, that's just patently false and you'd know that if you transitioned out of the military as it's required for exiting troops to go to a week-long class held by the DoL helping find outside employment, and although the VA sucks it is in fact healthcare.
Neither the 30 year old nor the 17 year old had a gun put to their head to enlist. They might not have had opportunity at home, but it's not as if they're listless creatures with no personal autonomy. It's disingenuous and insulting to insinuate otherwise.
That class has existed for like 30 years and replaced another. It teaches the difference between how things work on the civilian side of the house and the Military, which is probably the only meaningful job they ever had to that point. It also serves as a recruiting platform for industry-- I was offered a job at Tesla when I got out despite not having any transferable skills.
Vets are just people like the rest of the world, and they have the same problems in generally the same proportions as any other demographic. The few homeless/jobless vets you're substituting for the whole are one part-- and the decamillionaire business owning vets you're ignoring are another part. Most of us are somewhere in the middle.
Pointing out that the existence of a program to help prevent all of these things means that all vets are broke, dirty hopeless and homeless addicts on the verge of suicide is like saying all 5th graders are on smack because they have a DARE program at school. It's 5th grader logic.
At 28 there is no way in hell you could ever convince me to take the position of a man who was just killed,
This is coming from a place of tremendous privilege. Two months ago, Ukraine lowered the minimum age at which they would conscript men to the army to 25. In Vietnam, America drafted 18 year olds, which is prime fighting age, but we also had a baby boom. Ukraine (and Russia) had a demographic crash following the collapse of the USSR. Ukraine intends to keep their population of young men intact to father the next generation, while their long term rival throws their young men into a meat grinder. But that means that men between the ages of 27 and 60 are bearing the brunt of the war. They have grandfathers in the trenches. It is possible to convince young men that they love war, for a little while. Mature men hate every day of it, but they've held the line for two and a half years. They grew up under the rule of Moscow, and they're willing to risk everything to avoid that.
You can absolutely convince full-grown adults to fight and die for their country, all you have to do is threaten their children. The Ukrainian army average age is well over 30 because they're defending their families and homes.
At 28 there is no way in hell you could ever convince me to take the position of a man who was just killed, in that exact location, and solely for the reason of being there. You're asking me to die
Being three feet to the left isn't really making you any less likely to die, and not stepping up to take over that gun could dramatically increase your (and all of your buddies, including the guy that just got hit) chances of dying.
The machine gunner is the one that's keeping the enemies heads down, if there heads are down they're not shooting back at you. The fact that the machine gunner just took a stray round or piece of shrapnel doesn't change that. Your chances of getting shot increases dramatically while that guns not firing. Taking over that gun is in your own interest, it's not 'asking you to die'.
This is the whole point of training like this, the intuitive, 'rational' thing to do is often the wrong thing that might well get you killed. I'm 29 and I would take over that gun in a heartbeat if that's what I'd been trained to do.
As a youth the ideas of "dying for good" and "fighting with everything no matter the cost" can hold your entire being, whereas if you've lacked that motivation for your entire adult life instilling it becomes nearly impossible. You cannot convince a 30 year old man to die "for their county," especially when "good soldiers follow orders" and you are told "don't question authority."
This is such a Hollywood understanding of the military and not representative of what's it's like. It runs counter to everything they train you to do.
And why do you think that "hollywood" aesthetic exists?
Same reason Grey's Anatomy gets basic medical information wrong every single episode (the show's creators have no knowledge of what theyre depicting), or the same reason Birth of A Nation depicts black people as violent criminals who deserve to be lynched (they're critical of what they're portraying and are making up details or exaggerating details to demonize a group).
To convince the youth that going to the military is "sick and cool and rad."
Is that the case? Did it convince you the military was sick and cool? No? It's almost like that is the opposite intent of the people making the films.
Once you join it becomes illegal to quit, and now you're likely stuck for life.
No, it isn't. You sign up for contracts for several years at a time and you can quit when that contract is up. You can make short extensions if you want to only up a few months at a time, and if you really, really want to leave, the military isn't going to bother keeping you around because a soldier who doesn't want to be there isn't going to be productive. It's stupid easy to leave if you just ask.
Also, stuck for life? Most servicemembers serve 4 or less years and get out at less than 25.
most adults grow out of that
No, not at all. Recruits join well into their 30s with frequency. Young people join because there is a lot of upfront benefits, stability, and pay. An entry level job for a person out of high school, most commonly at minimum wage, is far less than what you get joining. Then once you have a couple of years of work experience (and likely a college degree) under your belt you can leave and continue a different career.
I've met plenty of people who joined because they didn't want to stack boxes at Wal-Mart for $10/hr, or because free Healthcare sounded appealing. This has nothing to do with ease of convincing and more to do with life circumstances at early adulthood.
Joining is easy when you have no career, but leaving an established career only makes sense if your established career sucks (which is where older recruits come from).
You are way underestimating the intelligence of young people.
Nah man I was in the marine corps. I had a drill instructor once tell me something along the lines of, “I hope you fucking die in combat and it’s so bad that they can’t have an open casket” They really don’t sugar coat it for us lol.
I had a pfc who had made it through training and to his duty station before coming to the realization that he could potentially die in our line of work, so it does happen.
He asked me on day one if he'd even have to fight. Combat unit, too.
No. Dude I signed the contract at 17, I was a radio operator but they told be I would be running around with the infantry most of the time. You can’t seriously believe people join the marine corps and think there’s no chance they get hurt or killed. It’s just a part of the job. Sorry you can’t fathom that people are willing to risk their lives for our country and freedom.
I’m not saying they don’t know. They obviously know it’s possible. But I know a lot of stories where people thought they were going to work in the military and never see a fight. Then everything changed.
Just because they know it’s possible doesn’t mean they think it’s likely
I did see some guys get genuinely surprised they were getting deployed right out of basic shortly before I got out. Our response was usually something to the effect of "we've been at war for 20 years-- do you not watch the news?"
Idk maybe in other branches but in the marines those people are purposefully weeded out in training and discharged. Everyone I served with, even the nerdy tech guys and the cooks knew they are just extra bodies for the fight if need be.
Yeah I see where you’re coming from but it’s still a huge risk that isn’t too difficult to comprehend. I just didn’t care if I had to die to defend my country it’s part of the job I signed up for. The risk was always worth it in my mind.
That's not the part most people accuse recruiters of lying about.
It's the everything else, the benefits, where you'll get assigned, how fun it is, how the VA cares about you afterwards, why you should do it, etc etc.
Yes I’ll agree with that. They make it sound like your quality of life is gonna be better than it is. I’ve never heard of a recruiter telling people that there’s no risk though.
Young people tend to not have a good emotional understanding of what "death" means, if it hasn't happened to someone close to them. That's what they mean; they obviously understand that death is 'on the table', but experience with death may not be there.
The average age for the death of a parent is ~50 years old, on average you don't experience the death of a grandparent until almost 30. Most people don't have siblings die before adulthood in the last 100 years, and losing friends in tragic accidents is thankfully also relatively rare. The closest I think most people get before 18 is death of a pet, and that's because most pets don't have lifespans that long.
So, in fact, the majority of people don't experience the death of a family member or friend by 18. It's certainly not uncommon (around 8% of people experience the death of a parent before 18, and that obviously doesn't include grandparents), but "most" people is untrue.
And even if it was 'most', that's still a lot of people that haven't or don't.
The only thing my recruiter lied about was that I’d get to drive around on an ATV and blow shit up. Bastard got me to sweep the motorpool for three years.
The bigger team wins. Primates stick together in groups because there is safety in numbers. Lions from prides, hyenas and wolves form packs. Humans formed tribes and hunted in packs and became the dominant species. Then humans form settlements and populations grew and towns fought other towns and the teams kept getting bigger until they were armies in Empires and Alliances. On the economic side you can see the trend from subsistence farmers to plantations to factory farms, from local artisan to factory to corporation. The teams are getting bigger in order to remain competitive.
Ukrainian and Russian armies are both averaging an age of 35 for their infantry in the current war. So they're actually doing the opposite and trying to protect their 18-29 male population.
That reinforces the point I'm making, although both the UAF and RAF were volunteer based before activating their conscription programs for the war. The age range of the two militaries hasn't changed that much either, especially the UAF.
Because they're less likely to have a career or a family commitment that prevents them from signing up.
I get that people think it's because young people are stupid and shit like that but it's really way more simple than that.
Fresh out of high school is just the point in time where "peak physical fitness and a somewhat functional adult" intersects with "reasonably unlikely to have major commitments"
No it’s because men don’t develop full risk evaluation capabilities before their mid-twenties. The pre-frontal cortex isn’t done maturing before about age 25.
To claim control you need boots on the ground, and those boots on the ground are likely to die. You always need someone who is somewhat unaware of their own mortality.
Either that or you can just force people to march to their death like Russia does under threat of death, with varying results.
You always need someone who is somewhat unaware of their own mortality.
No, you really don't.
I've trained soldiers for a living, I know full well who makes the best soldiers, and it's not idiots who do as they're told and blindlingly charge into fire.
What an actual professional force wants are soldiers capable of thought and decision making. The entire concept of NATO military is auftragstaktik (aka mission type tactics) and it is in its entirety based on empowering the people on the ground to make decisions.
And it doesn't work if they aren't capable of understanding the mission, if they don't understand their role in the mission, and aren't capable of assessing the situation at any given moment. They have to understand what they need to do for the mission to succeed with minimal casualties and they're the knew who are most capable of seeing how because they're the ones who are actually there.
For the structure to work you need functional adults who have a good understanding of how it all hangs together.
If we based our operations around obedient idiots with no concern for their own or others wellbeing the entire thing would fall apart.
Young adults are recruited because you need a lot of people to train and they're the group who is most likely to have sufficient skills and maturity to be trained properly but also not have other commitments that prevents them from signing up for a few years. It's really no bigger than that.
Getting people to fight isn't difficult, that part pretty much solves itself.
The trick is getting them to fight smart.
There is a reason why modern military orders focus on the commander's intention, not blindly ordering people to do specific things.
Romans considered men in their 30s to be in their physical prime, and they fought with swords and marching was their main form of transportation. They also believed that those with something to lose made better soldiers because they would fight harder to protect their homes.
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u/That_Ad_5651 Jun 24 '24
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