this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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Good on them! Joining up is a scam. You get to trade your life for possibly getting a chance to further your education; that is if you don't die during your service. And then, who's freedom do you end up really fighting for because you end up fighting a foreign war? You end up fighting a war to enrich the billionaires more. Once your service is up, if you are unfortunate enough to have real and tangible mental trauma, you're cast aside like someone who's shelf life has expired. Fuck #Amurica.
Thats not entirely fair.
You also get to be used as a political stage prop during election season! /s
And don't forget the damage from the uranium in the bullets blowing through the air and all the other damage that isn't exactly straight up death
And also the long-term risks to your health. The likelihood of chronic back and knee pain as well as hearing loss is fairly obvious. However, there's also exposures to toxic chemicals in both open and closed environments that can put you at risk for cancers (especially lung, bone marrow, kidney and bladder) when you're older. It blows my mind that ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) is unconditionally accepted as a service-connected condition. No one has any idea what exposures might be causing this, but the prevalence of it in former military people as opposed to civilians is so much higher that the VA just accepts it. It's and awful disease, untreatable (except nursing care) and incurable and the VA isn't going to have to cover care for long.
That there might be a causal link between ALS and military service is something that I had no idea of. I had no inkling that it was accepted as a service-related condition. Yes, ALS is a godawful disease that results in a slow, prolonged, and often agonizing death. If I should ever develop it myself, I would just take a hot shot of fentanyl and go to sleep ... permanently. Once ALS takes root, it is irreversible.
I graduated college loan-free, and with 4 years of hard lessons in leadership and self discipline. I credit my time in service for the man I've become and would recommend it heartily to anyone with a sense of adventure and duty, plus the rare capacity to just shut up during the occasional episodes of nonsense.
I recognize that this isn't the popular opinion on here, but I doubt most of you have actually done it. I have. It was worth it, and I'd do it again.
I am truly glad that it worked for you and your opinion does not have to be popular to be valid. I went to college on student loans but when I went, college was significantly cheaper so I had it paid off fairly quickly. I recognize that I came from some privilege. But whatever privilege I came from evaporated once I became disabled after suffering a serious mental health episode. It is in this light that I see individual people's experiences as valid.