Their recruiting offices were set up directly across the street from my daughter’s high school right next to the Burger King where all the seniors went to lunch.
Shady as fuck
They also exclusively target lower to middle class areas because rich people have options, and the capitalist oligarchy love that poverty to cannon fodder pipeline.
Which is conveniently the real reason they are trying to ban abortion. Because poor kids without options are easy to recruit as cannon fodder
I think you give pro choice and religious nuts too much credit.
I would imagine that behind closed doors, men in positions of power have had conversations about the potential recruits the military is losing with easy access to abortion, but I agree with you.
For the most part there is no grand conspiracy, just passionate nuts who believe they’re going to live forever who found a shortcut to what they imagine is God’s approval. Like that nut who climbs buildings to raise awareness or whatever it is he’s doing. They believe when they die, they’ll wake up on a cloud and hear “Jesus Loves the Little Children” playing in the background. Their lord will walk up to them and embrace them, tell them what a good job they did shouting about saving babies as he pets their hair.
I grew up in that world. So glad I don’t still live in it.
Sir this is a Wendy’s
If you’re still believing they’re religiously motivated you’re exactly where they want you.
So is the alternative to kill people in the womb based on the possibility they might end up joining the army at some point in their lives?
The alternative is to not convince fools that fetuses are people just so that they’ll create more soldiers.
Fetuses aren’t people? When does that happen exactly then?
Why do they always send the poor?
You depend on our protection, yet you feed us lies from the tablecloth
Why don’t presidents fight in wars?
They target a lot of wealthier neighborhoods as well. Lot of failsons that can’t get into a good college because of their shit grades, but a couple years in the army as an NCO means they can get into a decent school afterwards.
Yeah, there are special divisions for fortunate sons, who get fancier barracks and light duties away from harms way. We know because George W. Bush served his military career in one in the Coast Guard.
Isn’t there a law against people who take advantage of kids being near schools?
The one in my town is right next to GameStop.
I went to highschool and university in the US - I was lucky that I got a scholarship and that covered pretty much all my tuition costs.
But I had a friend, one year older than me, who joined and served in the US army for something like 2 years just so he could get his university costs covered and to save some money for living expenses.
It may not be intentional, but the high cost of higher education is an excellent recruiting tool for the US military.
Wasn’t there some tweet of a US general that said to not get rid of high college costs because they would get less soldiers signing up?
The poverty draft is very real. Usually it’s for enlisted who have no other prospects. But I was in that same boat in college. 2 years in ROTC before something made me realize I was not going to enjoy military life and dropped it.
I went to school in a dirt poor place. Like half of my graduating class joined the military. Recruiters were in the halls like every week. Yeah, it’s absolutely intentional.
It may not be intentional
Nothing is unintentional.
Totally not intentional, I’m sure.
Yes. It was. Now days most jobs offer to cover college. I want to know how they benefit because I don’t get it.
They get relatively cheap, more educated workers for at least a short time. And they’re often able to keep them at a cheaper salary than hiring someone with the same education. A (proactive) promotion that doubles your salary from $35 to $70k a year generates a lot of goodwill, even if that education and position would usually start at $90k.
Also people who “go to college” that work pays for don’t live on campus, so the company is only on the hook for tuition, and not room and board. And it’s often not full time. It’s worth $10k/year for all that.
It’s creepy that they’re allowed to text children without their express consent. Assuming that this is a real text exchange and that OOP didn’t wilfully give the recruiter their number earlier.
When I was a senior in high school back in the 2000’s I got multiple cold calls from Army recruiters. I have no doubt that they’ve moved on to texting, and that this is legitimate.
Yep. Cold calls, emails, texts, whatever they could get their hands on all through my senior year in high school and at least my first two years of college. Not to mention their tables in the high school cafeteria, at robotics competitions, my engineering university’s job fairs. Don’t remember how I got them off my back, I might have just aged out of their main target cohort, but my mom likes to talk about how she told them she was pregnant (because she was lol) and they never contacted her again. Do with that information what you will.
This is Facebook messenger or instagram, either way public profiles
Not really any better. Soliciting (presumably) high school students via their phone or via social media is fucked up.
So they’re old enough to decide to join the military but not old enough to handle receiving an unsolicited message on social media?
Recruiters start working you long before you’re old enough to join.
We usually call that grooming.
Recruiters groom children to kill.
I guess they probably do now because like 90% of high school grads have or did something that makes them ineligible to join and if they want more recruits they need to get students to not do things that make them ineligible and that might mean reaching out more than six months before they’re old enough to join.
90% would be ineligible? how come?
The largest reasons are lack of physical fitness or criminal convictions
Also recruiters can’t or don’t want to recruit teens on ADHD or mood meds. If you can’t be an effective fighter without medicine they don’t want to find that out in the middle of a fight.
Yup. I graduated high school at 17 and they were after me those last two years, at least. I was told I could have any job I wanted in the Navy due to my test scores. It was flattering and tempting.
Why didn’t you pick like Fleet Admiral and then decommissioned all the ships before promptly quitting?
We were all told we could have any job because our test scores were high. Come to find out that was a lie and while they might look at what you want to do, they’ll put you where they need you.
It’s not about “handling” anything. Not sure how you inferred that from my post.
Are you okay with army recruiters having your child’s cell phone number without their express consent?
When I was in high school our home phone number was published in the phone book and military recruiters called it a few times when I was getting close to finishing high school.
I’m not giving my kid a cell phone if I think them having it would endanger them. If unsolicited phone calls endanger them they shouldn’t have a cell phone. They should know what information shouldn’t be given out to strangers over the phone, on a call or via message. They should know how to block numbers and recognize calls that are best left to voicemail, &c.
You can join the military before you can drink. This country doesn’t make sense.
At least you can’t get drafted before you’re old enough to vote anymore.
It makes perfect sense when you remember that the worth of human life and ethics aren’t factored in when people decide how the country works.
Back in the early 2000’s I had a recruiter call my house asking for me, creepy AF.
I’m going to college right now and I’ve been getting messages from recruiters lately. They literally text me from their work numbers now.
Wait till you learn about places with conscription.
Boy am I glad I left such a place as a youngster.
That is hell. Living in a country with mandatory conscription, I do a lot of legal work never to get there.
I am civilian. Fuck everyone who thinks they can force me to be any else.
In the US, you’re still required to register with the government agency in charge of conscription when you turn 18 if you were born male. Just in case it might be needed in the future.
That law is so unpopular they stopped charging people for failing to register 40 years ago, and instead made proving you did prerequisite for various things (again, if born male). If you fail to register, you are simply banned from a bunch of jobs and educational options.
Let’s just say conscription is still one of the major ways males are discriminated against, even in the countries without mandatory service.
And we should solve it not by drafting women, but by stopping the practice altogether.
I get it for countries where their self-preservation is on the line (Taiwan) or where it’s simply been national policy since the dawn of time (Switzerland), but it’s definitely different when it’s for a dictatorial, unpopular, or corrupt government.
If people want a national defense they should pay for one. Not force 18 year old guys to be slave soldiers as a cheaper alternative.
Taiwan is one of them, I am never going back again.
Nice.
When I was in high school and I replied to the appearance of an army recruiter in my social studies class I objected to his presence there with the phrase, “surely you don’t think it’s appropriate for you to be here recruiting impressionable youth to bomb brown people in the name of fascism?” My teacher made me stand in the hallway and gave me a “0” on the days quiz. There was no fucking quiz.
I’ve got forced military service, but my country ain’t at war, so I’ve just gotta work 6 months in shitty jobs, that are necessary for society for free. Oh, and your free time in the barracks consists of drinking beer, playing cards and smoking
You’re only doing that to serve a ruling class that doesn’t want to pay you.
Good job, your nation is made up of useful idiots.
no necessarily, we’ve mostly done things that don’t serve the ruling class only, like clearing up after natural desasters
You must not know how societies function.
how do they function then? really, I’m always in for learning something
I still fondly remember my friend Bob Niederider from high school in the '80s. One day an Army recruiter came to talk to our history class, and at the end he asked if anybody had any questions. Bob raised his hand and said “yeah I have a question: does napalm still stick to kids?” I didn’t really appreciate this at the time - and the recruiter certainly didn’t, either.
What was the response?
It was basically the scene in Full Metal Jacket where the Marine commander grills Joker about the peace sign and “Born to Kill” on his helmet.
Sadly all the branches have one at the schools. I made the mistake of taking the ASVAB test in high school to get out of class, scored well and was hounded by all of these guys. The marine recruiter showed up at my house carrying a CRT TV/VHS combo to try and convince me to join lol
Marine got a workout that day
This was in FL too, this guy walked the walk I guess.
I remember when the Xbox 360 came out, I was in high school.
The army brought a Ford Excursion that looked fresh off the Pimp my Ride show, with a huge flat screen that flipped down out of the back, 4 huge subs, and the current football game playing.
You could only play the Xbox if you signed up.
Man that is creepy. Some “I have candy in my van” vibes.
Wow what the fuck
Literally an idiot trap
It was required in my school to take the ASVAB. If we missed we’d face repercussions. I purposely answered questions wrong-- not all of them because it would look too obvious, but I apparently still scored high enough that they still considered me. I got my results in class, we had someone from the military come speak with us and try to get us to sign up, and even text messages.
Shit was so fucking annoying.
I asked a friend of mine from where I used to live if she had to take it and she asked me what the fuck I was talking about.
I mean, shit, I guess when you live in a state that is known for having awful levels of education they figure they can shove you in the military instead.
…Or football.
Joke is on you; they left all the kids that made perfect scores alone. They knew they couldn’t convince them to join.
My highschool had the same thing, they made it sound mandatory but a handful of us found out they couldn’t force you to take it. So yea while 99% of my classmates took it the 5 of us got to sit in a empty classroom and wait it out
Yeah, we had to take it in school as well. Since I had no interest in dying in Iraq, I just filled in bubbles at random. Still got phone calls and mailings aplenty begging me to join the military. They even mailed me a video game that the Army made, though I never played it so I don’t know how bad it was.
Was it Americas Army? I played that when it released. Not bad. I’m not a fan of shooters, but it was at least interesting to see a game that had an honest attempt at making it as “real” as possible.
The sniper mission was the only thing I didn’t complete. It had one mission where you had to sit and wait for up to 48 hours real time before you could take a shot at your target. Neat concept, but totally impractical for a game.
What score do you think is the cutoff to not be called?
My guess is they call you regardless of score and use the score to decide how to make the sell. They need all levels of people to stand in front of bullets and maintain a base/outpost.
This is a good theory. I scored high on the ASVAB and recruiters would call me telling me I’d have an awesome technical career in the military where I’d get to play with James Bond style gadgets. I just so happened to be a bit of a nerd, but I still told them to fuck off.
It would make sense that they tailor the recruitment process to kids based on how they score on the ASVAB, and the score doesn’t really matter. I wouldnt be surprised if they just use the lower scoring kids as some sort of cannon fodder.
The score matters as far as what jobs you qualify for, and it also tests different aptitudes. For example, two people could have the same overall score (say a 70), but one person could show mechanical aptitude and be pushed toward a Machinist position, while the other could do poorly on mechanical but do well in electrical stuff and become an electrician.
They also don’t want to waste their smarter people as basic grunts or cooks, so a higher ASVAB score can mean you’re less likely to get the job you want if, say, you score 90+, but always wanted to be a chef. If you have a specific job you want to go in for, you basically have to get it in writing that you’re joining for that job, otherwise you’re at the mercy of the “needs of the {branch name}” - you will be what they need most that you’re very good at.That’s not true. If you want to go combat arms with a high score they just have you sign a letter of intent for Green Berets or Rangers. If you fail off that you go to a normal infantry unit. “Grunts” actually have to be pretty smart. It’s a Hollywood thing that all the grunts are just cannon fodder. Our Army runs, in combat, on millions of decisions made by Corporals and Sergeants with teams of 4-6 people under them.
They do present you with all the other jobs you could do though.
I did say if you have a specific thing to get it in writing. If you sign a letter of intent, that is getting it in writing. Plenty of guys in my boot camp got told they could go do X job in the Navy but ended up getting a different designation during boot. This was back in the mid 2000’s so it may be more standard to have the LoI but at the time plenty of us did and plenty of us didn’t. And for my job, I only got to join “the nuke program” - we got to give a wishlist for which rating but it didn’t mean much. I got the rating I wanted, but several guys wanted Electronics Technician and ended up as their last choice - Machinist’s Mates. And I’ve met some decently smart infantry, but I’ve also met plenty of infantry that were (affectionately) window lickers. More seriously though, the ones we joked around with about being window lickers aren’t actually stupid, they were just average guys, just not as quick as some of the other vets in the group (the Marine vet embraced the crayon eating jokes). I’m sure they were fine at their job though, and they followed orders well which is probably the most important thing in a soldier or sailor.
I wasn’t going to join anyway, but the military recruiter who came to my school in the 90s ensured I wouldn’t enlist.
He ended literally ended every phrase or clause with “'n stuff.” And I do mean literally. Every phrase or clause.
It went like this:
“If you wanna join the army 'n stuff, you gotta get fit 'n stuff because basic training ain’t easy 'n stuff but if you start getting fit now, you’ll do fine 'n stuff.”
For 45 fucking minutes.
Dude you post A LOT on Lemmy, and with personal information too. I haven’t even clicked on your profile, but just from memore I should guess that you’re a married Jewish male, in his mid to late 40s, with a queer daughter. (I think you also mentioned living in an east coast state… but this is just solely memory, not actually trying to stalk or doxx you).
If you haven’t already done so, you might want to delete some of the posts that might have personal info.
I should guess that you’re a married Jewish male, in his mid to late 40s, with a queer daughter
Can’t be too many of those, right?
I think you also mentioned living in an east coast state
I did not, however I can think of one or two East Coast states that have more than one or two married Jewish males in their mid to late 40s with a queer daughter.
I mean that’s why I felt comfortable posting it, and not feeling like I am contributing to doxxing. But if all that is all solely from memory, I can’t imagine how close someone could come to dropping a pin on you if they went through all your comments.
Just a PSA, to each their own. Some woman on Tiktok just put 500 minutes into detailing a part of her life, so clearly different people have different comfort levels on the internet.
Oh and statistically there are less than 50,000 married jewish men in their 40s with a queer daughter. Probably closer to less than 15,000. But those are a lot of confounding variables, and I really didn’t feel like launching Minitab for this haha.
I only noticed this because your comments generally are well received and resonate with me, so your username stuck in my mind.
STUFF, N STUFF!
“For 45 fucking minutes, 'n stuff”
FTFY
For some people it may be compulsive. Still probably they didn’t want him as a recruiter.
It probably was compulsive, but after that amount of time having to listen to him, “fuck you and fuck the army” is, I think, a reasonable attitude.
So yeah, probably not the best recruiter.
Fuck you, and fuck the army, n’ stuff.
I had a very anti-war sociology professor that had been protesting since vietnam. Despite his qualms with military industrial complex, he would always say that the the military is the last vestige of upward mobility in the united states as it’s one of the few places where you can enter a playing field that is somewhat leveled for new entries, have merit impact your growth, and get access things like subsidized education. Sure there’s still racism, sexism, etc. but in terms of economic mobility it provides a decent ladder.
I once read an article that basically called the military a billion dollar vocational school program and it really shifted my perspective. Like I kinda don’t give a shit about most people or why they join - maybe it’s that chance at upward mobility, maybe it’s the desire to serve a cause, maybe it’s a desire to feel a part of something bigger, all of which are legit human needs and desires. As an idea, I’m kind of neutral leaning towards negative in the military. It’s when I start looking at it in the broader context thag I get angry, and it’s not necessarily at the rank and file, and sometimes not even the mid to high leadership. It’s the presidents and the politicians and business people who lead the whole thing and play games with people’s lives. I even have sympathy for the angry knuckle dragging meatheads because they just got duped, again, by the ruling class.
Its a noble path that has been corrupted by politicians.
Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt believed the military was a noble path. At Nuremberg, when asked why he continued to serve after learning the atrocities of the German Reich, he asserted Prussians don’t mutiny!
Essentially, he was glad to be a loyal machine that completes a task, rather than someone who stands for principle.
But then when honor doesn’t compel us to operate the Death Star’s superlaser for the Galactic Emperor, money will, and if not that, extortion.
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It’s also a great way to demoralize an entire generation of young people and have a lot of low-key insubordination in the ranks. Most people are aware the VA treats many of their veterans like absolute garbage. It took Jon Stewart years to force the VA to acknowledge that soldiers who had to work on burn pits got lung cancer from their jobs. Imagine how many other health issues they’re trying to dodge responsibility from. Mexico is also full of veterans who were promised citizenship but were rewarded with deportation after their contract ended instead.
Well a draft is for times of war. But mandatory military service in a democracy… Does that lead to anti war policies. If every family had skin in the game knowing their kid could go to war, does that help elect anti war politicians?
War is lame. It’s just a bunch of people killing each other while the real people in power sit in comfy chairs watching it all unfold. Can we just all get along?
Oh wait, you have oil? Oh, um, he hit me first. 💥🔫⚔️🛢️💯
It’s not even much scenic and heroic, actually, despite armies trying their best to market it as all glossy and amazing.
Nah - just a meat grinder, dying in the dirt after your limbs got shredded by someone’s grenade, or after getting a bullet into your chest. Painful. Lonely. Scary. Death. No one’s gonna hail you; your corpse will be a shredded bloody meat covered in urine. A corpse that may never even get found. That’s war.
And if you’ll stay alive, you’ll envy the dead. Death ahead, death behind. One order - and you can be convicted to certain end. In front - the enemy. On the back - soldiers of your own country ready to shoot you down. You lie in the trenches, hoping no grenade, no bomb will find its way there, your feet are cold, you feel feverish. No one cares. Everyone here is one foot in the grave. That’s war.
Barely anyone who survives doesn’t have severe PTSD. And the worst part - humans do it to themselves. For bullshit glory. Desperate for money. For their twisted model of honor. But really - because those in power don’t see problem in letting other people die for their own interests.
If you’re lucky to have never witnessed war, take a look at unedited, uncensored footage. Watch it, watch people die like animals for the most stupid reasons imaginable. Watch soldiers screaming in pain. Watch civilians dying in debris. That. Is. War.
We never deserved to have this on us, and it is people just like me and you who make this violence happen, who spill the blood, scared of meeting their own end right where they’re at. This is stupid. This should end. And we can make a change.
It’s pretty fucked, honestly. They regularly posted up in the lunchroom at my school, recruiting students with promises of scholarships.
We didn’t get text messages like this, but I’m not surprised to see it. I do wonder how they get the numbers though. Is it just data broker bullshit or is the school system selling out their own students’ information?
My college definitely gave out student contact info to the ROTC/National Guard recruiters. I got more than one unsolicited text exactly like the one in the OP throughout college.
Wait till OP hears about mandatory service in other countries.
Do the kids of the ownership classes also have to serve with the rest of the grunts? Or are they sectioned off to champaign units the way George W. Bush did his Coast Guard tour? Or given exception like for Trump’s bone spurs?
If aristocrats are on the front line with the of the enlisted, there might be better regard for vets.
I wonder if those countries also face the same degrees of top-down abuse and sexual assault for which the US Army is reputed.
War is Hell, but the US armed forces have more special hells than Big Trouble in Little China
Over in Russia, the art of dodging the draft is a finely developed one. It has been so even before the, ahem, special military operation.
Do the kids of the ownership classes also have to serve with the rest of the grunts?
You will never see the child of a ruler get sent to the front lines.
They all have enough money to avoid serving, anyways. Just go to a different country.
Lol that’s what I was going to say.
There’s nothing wrong with mandatory military service if your military doesn’t pick fights with everyone else’s.
I’m of the opinion that when a democracy forces you into the military there will be no democracy left to defend
I think the US would be a lot better off with a mandatory period of service. Not exclusively military, but an option between that and some kind of civil service. I think it would do a lot to bring the country together.
No, slavery is slavery, even if its for a noble cause.
Slavery requires a lack of compensation, which was nowhere implied. A mandatory civic responsibility to participate in the government—a government that everyone benefits from, and one that doesn’t fucking work if people don’t participate—does not meet any definition of slavery.
Slavery requires a lack of compensation,
No, that is a definition that was constructed as apologism for various different forms of forced labor
Be that as it may, a civil service obligation does not meet any reasonable person’s definition of slavery. Equating the two is both offensive and fallacious.
So you see no distinction between…
“chain around your neck, abducted from your place of birth, sailed across the world stuffed into a deck 2 foot high, sold to the highest bidder, brought to a farm, whipped until you’re bloody, served gruel, tortured at will, killed if you escape, never being compensated for your labour, worked until you die or killed off when no longer economically useful”
… and …
“joining the forces for 9 months, fully paid, or become a conscientious objector and file books in a library for 9 months; in either case your full legal rights remain”
?
I didn’t say I see no difference? Killing someone by slowly torturing them over years and just shooting them is different. They’re both still murder though. Forced labor is slavery, some slavery is worse than others- but all slavery is bad.
There’s a wide spectrum of bonded servitude between plantation slavery circa 16th century and the Levée en masse. Regardless, when jobs are obligatory, and the option to change jobs is difficult or impossible, it opens the victims up to abuse, which develops universally.
So while I can see you’re trying to make a case for the latter, as if it isn’t cause for harm, invariably it will drift towards the former, and history has demonstrated it time and again. The United States, especially cannot be trusted; if we wanted a truly professional military force, we would utilize poverty and lack of civilian opportunity to drive our recruitment. To the contrary we’d full transparency that our soldiers are treated well from recruitment to death.
The United States should have let sexual assaults get out of hand. They should have been generous to their wounded the shell shocked and the families of the fallen. There shouldn’t be a running litany of officers who bully the ranks beneath them, sometimes to the extent of extortion and violence.
Not that it will stop the US from restoring the draft once it neuters democracy and becomes a one-party autocracy. But when that happens it will be only months before Fall Weiß.
Go fuck yourself, civil service is socialism. Communist scum.
Shit, I forgot the /s
Yeah, I needed to see one. Some people here seem sincerely… tankie? Is that the term?
Voluntarily discipline style camps sure.
Mandatory would backfires on me. I am happy to help but to command my body around requires my consent and respect for my pacifist boundaries.
It’s not an exclusive thing. Most European countries with forced service allow alternate forms of service as well. My coworkers worked with an emergency medical service instead.
It’s really moe like forced community service, but one of the ways you can serve your community is learning to defend it in a time of war.
I am a huge fan of community service but you’d have to be specific about forced or i regard it the same thing.
I love my real life job but i hate that i need it to earn a wage, because i need a wage to survive and i would deliver better work if i could do it just because it enjoy it (and choose my own workhours)
I admit i am a bit of an edge case, if i broke the law i would gladly serve a sentence if they can convince me with logical argument that i made the wrong choice and can be improved.
If they cant convince me of that i means i am punishment while believing my innocence, it would be the most definitive proof of evil an immorality baked into the social contract and fuel me to use the few rights i would still have in jail to radicalize myself further within anti-centralized-state ideology
