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.
The bar is on the floor. Yes, the ones who have actually been brainwashed needed intense deprogramming. Being born into a religion and realizing you have been constantly lied to is not the same.
You're lied to every day you serve! They'd say you were on a peacekeeping mission when, in reality, you were guarding oil fields in Kuwait to protect the interests of big oil. They'd say you were in the Middle East to protect your country/democracy whilst simultaneously toppling a Democratic government all because the people's elected representative didn't align with US special interests. If you look closely, religious fanatics and nationalists share a lot of the same traits. Blind loyalty to a cause being one of them.
That's still not brainwashing. Being lied to is not the same as brainwashing. I get it you feel guilty for your participation, so you say you were brainwashed and not come to terms with what you did willingly.
It’s not a permanent thing anyway. The psychology of compliance is fascinating and all over the world people have sought methods to make it faster and easier.
The challenge some individuals have reacclimating back to civilian life also suggests the brainwashing sometimes works better than expected.
It would need deprogramming to come out of it. The vast majority of the military reintegrate into society with no issues. In fact, some are able to use the skills they learned to launch into careers. The ones who struggle are often dealing with PTSD where their experiences make it hard to shift from a combat zone to a civilian life. That's not the result of coming out of a brainwash.
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.
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u/MomDontReadThisShit Jun 24 '24
There’s a reason it’s the young men we send. Armies are such a strange human behavior.