Ok first off I’m not in the military and never have been, everything I know I’ve heard second hand. The people I know who have been in recently the money was all they cared about, no one ever said they were attracted to it.
It seems that in the past the military might be attractive for a certain personality at least while no major war was going on, travel around with your friends to exotic locales and plenty of booze and sex to be had.
Everything I hear about the modern military makes it seem like a very restrictive job, with few perks. Supposedly off base recreation is frowned on, fraternization or sex and relationships with foreign civilians is against the rules, drinking is frowned on.
Sex or relationships with any of your fellow soldiers is against the rules, and supposedly is taken every serious now. Several things a civilian could do without fear of arrest(like infidelity) the military will actually punish you for.
Drug tests are pervasive and you can get violated for even non-illegal substances.
It sounds like a lot of the things that were fun about the job are now a thing of the past, and yes I do know that some of that is the nature of the current conflicts.
Is it as uptight and harsh as it sounds or am I off base(heh) here?
For the people around my age (18-24) I know that joined the military (two plus one who couldn’t get in because of his record) it was attractive to them because it was basically a sure thing. There wasn’t any uncertainty: The idea that you just do what you’re told and you’ll be fine. Do that for twenty years and then you can collect pension.
My son just joined the USAF, and I would agree with this to a certain extent. Hallboy’s options were pretty limited–especially in the current economy. His choices were a full time job (maybe), but with a high school education and little job skills, he’s still looking a suck pay and living with his mom; college on his own dime (I don’t have the bucks to shell out for college for him), but he wasn’t certain what he wanted to do, and neither of us felt comfortable with him taking on that level of debt; or the military, which as long as he behaves himself, follows orders and works hard, means he has a way to make a living, learns job skills, can go to college on the military’s dime, and has a decent retirement package option in 20 years.
It helps that his brother-in-law (my son-in-law) is currently in the USAF and we have family members who were in. This was something for which he planned for YEARS and has given a lot of thought. Ultimately, it was what appears to have been the best decision for him, especially when the other options were less appealing.
It depends on where you are irt off base movement. If you’re in Las Vegas and aren’t in trouble for anything, on your off-time no one really cares what you do as long as it isn’t illegal. If you’re in Balad the odds are you aren’t going to be allowed to explore on your own, for obvious reasons.
That’s not true. I knew plenty of people who fraternized with others, ifyouknowwhatImean. Seriously though, if they aren’t in your chain of command no one really cares. Two of my friends are married and they started dating while serving together.
It’s always been like that. If you don’t show up to your job in the civilian world you may just get fired. In the military you can get shot (the odds are that isn’t going to happen). Just make sure you go to work. OTOH, the military isn’t going to get rid of you for no reason whatsoever. At your civilian job you can get let go for any reason whatsoever. That won’t happen in the military.
There are a lot of reasons why people still join the military:
Romanticism
“Fun and Adventure”
You get to play with some really cool shit that you’d never be able to.
And so on.
And there are sometimes when you don’t really have any other options. I didn’t do well in high school. If I didn’t go into the military I would have had to go to stay in Bakersfield, a horrid, horrid place, for a few years.
Where else will I be able to get three years of college completely paid for, a generous monthly housing stipend, and 1000/year for books?
I teach high school and see a few of my students every year go off to serve, usually Army or Navy. There is a definite personality type. These kids come from a blue collar background; from families that really value hard work. All of them work at part time jobs during the school year, and often at full time jobs during the summer. They also work hard in school, but they aren’t intellectually oriented or scholastic.
The reasons they give for serving have almost everything to do with job assurance and security. They just can’t imagine not working full time as soon as they are out of high school. The idea of working the fast food/retail circuit, or of putting off work until after some ill defined term at college makes them extremely uncomfortable.
In other words the personality type is one that is very hard-work oriented, and Army gives them a good full-time job that they can be sure of keeping and be proud of doing. They almost never mention things like excitement, travel, or desire to see combat as a reason for joining up. It is all about fulfilling a sense of duty to work full time at a respectable job.
I don’t know where you’re getting all this information. Off base recreation isn’t really frowned upon in most areas nor is drinking or fraternizing with the locals. Of course being stationed in Germany is a lot different than being stationed in Iraq. In Iraq you’re not going to be doing a whole lot of drinking and probably aren’t going to be dating any of the locals.
It’s true. If you don’t show up for work for a few days you might find a thick necked SP knocking at your door wondering what’s up.
If you have a chance, watch the PBS documentary “Carrier” about life aboard the USS Nimitz as it makes a tour to the Middle East. Over the series you can see a wide range of reasons for joining and levels of satisfaction with the experience; not all the jobs are exciting or particularly “military,” as the show notes, someone has to stock the vending machines.
The people I’ve known who volunteered (some recently, some 40 years ago) broke down like this:
Officers: respectable job, opportunity to serve / be part of something bigger than themselves, adventure
Enlisted: respectable job, GI Bill (this was a big reason), adventure, opportunity to serve, and for several, it was a ticket to a civilian life they’d never otherwise have. For them, it was kind of like a lower-scale GI bill; they joined to learn skills and trades that they’d never have been able to afford to learn on their own. At least one of them went on to GI Bill it.
Based on that, I’d say that the personalities that join these days are ones that value hard work, don’t have a problem being soldiers, marines, airmen or sailors, and who were relatively patriotic. Some were looking for adventure, some were looking for a steady, secure job, and some were looking to serve their country.
I was going to recommend that as well. There are a few shows like that and they are available on Netflix on demand.
My younger brother went from being a police officer to a Coast Guard officer fairly late (in his late 20’s) by being accepted to Officer Candidate School and going through a few months of pure hell. Other than that, it is a pretty sweet deal. His first tour was in Hawaii and his second is in Virginia. The military has a shit-ton of benefits that most people, even those serving, don’t realize. You get decent pay as an officer but you also get housing and they literally move everything for you when it comes time. All medical and everything like that is obviously covered to. You can get graduate school paid for. They also have great amenities in some places. A large part of the island of Oahu is military bases and only military members or their guests come go on them. We took a 25’ foot sailboat out for the day and it only cost $25. Try that as a private rental sometime.
I have known lots of enlisted people too. For poor kids, it is a straightforward ticket to get them out of wherever they are. You aren’t supposed to like it in the same way that someone may like working at a coffee shop as care-free 20-something but the latter isn’t going to get you very far either whereas the military might. A black women I grew up with is now a Colonel in the Air Force despite being raised in one of the trashiest, most criminal, degenerate families around. I don’t that she could have succeeded without the Air Force. I was in ROTC in college for a while. Sometimes I think my biggest mistake was not sicking with it as a career in the Air Force.
There are awful lot of women in the military these days. Only a few like female fighter pilot officers are officially allowed to serve in official combat duties but that I would consider that more of a bonus. It doesn’t always matter much either because a female maintenance officer serving in Afghanistan will still shoot back if her facility is attacked.
I know a lot of females who have served in the military. Hardly any of are she-men types. Most are just normal women although all the ones I know have brothers and fathers with blue-collar jobs. Most have nothing but good things to say about it outside of the standard complaints that nobody is supposed to like.
And I fail to see what is wrong with patriotism in general. It can be abused but can be a powerful asset as well. You do have to admit that general hatred of patriotism is a core reflexive value of some liberal sects simply because of a Disneyesque view of the world or general hated for their own privileged upbringing. That isn’t universal among liberals however. I don’t think Hilary Clinton would agree.
I just watched two episodes of the show Carrier on Netflix. It shows everyone from the highest to lowest both male and female and why they are there.
Sure, there are unpatriotic liberals out on the fringe - leftover sixties radicals who spell America with a k and out-of-touch intellectuals looking to sell quotes. But there are unpatriotic conservatives out on the fringe as well - guys declaring themselves free men in some Idaho bunker or billionaires bragging about how they cut their taxes by renouncing their citizenship. But there’s a long history of liberal patriotism that goes back through civil rights and the New Deal and women’s suffrage and the abolitionist movement - people who feel part of loving America is making it better.
Maybe that’s the difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives express their patriotism by defending America and liberals express their patriotism by improving America.
No one cares what you do off base as long as you don’t get arrested. Many of the troops live off base. Going off base in a war zone is a good way to get your head chopped off on Liveleak.
Fraternization or sex and relationships with foreign civilians is against not against the rules unless it breaks local laws. Cite: all the German and Korean wives on Army bases.
Drinking is not frowned on. Many young soldiers are under 21 so it is illegal. No different than outside the military. Drinking is prohibited in war zones but no where else. DUI’s are harshly dealt with.
'Sex or relationships with any of your fellow soldiers is against the rules, and supposedly is taken every serious now." False. There are many relationships which happen in the military. Just like any workplace. What is prohibited is relationships within the chain of command or between people of unequal rank. Since those with greater rank have a lot of power over those below them it makes sense. Either the higher rank could be seen as having undue influence on the lower rank or the lower rank will be assumed to be getting favoritism. Its bad for good order and discipline.
“Several things a civilian could do without fear of arrest(like infidelity) the military will actually punish you for.” True. Things like insubordination and adultery will get you punished. It has always been that way.
“Drug tests are pervasive and you can get violated for even non-illegal substances.” Drug tests have been around since the mid 80s. I have no idea what you mean about the non-illegal substances. I’ve seen several people thrown out for drugs. Its all been the illegal kind. There has been recent problems with synthetics like Spice but those have been made illegal and everyone in the military knows they can get in trouble for it. I think its a good thing to not have a high military.
It’s been 20sh years, but the guys I knew who went into the Spanish military as enlisted were what we called “a bad seat for a chair” - quite a few of them might have been diagnosed as mild cases of ADHD nowadays. They had a lot of energy, they liked taking risks, and signing up for the Mountaineers, the Paratroopers or the Legión meant signing up to Travel, See the World and learn to do risky stuff that they wouldn’t learn in civilian jobs, without having to get a degree beforehand (in fact, their MOs would eventually count as equivalent to civilian vocational degrees - for some things, there wasn’t a place where you could get a civilian equivalent!). So long as they were on time, followed orders and procedures and kept their noses clean, it was everything their overly-energetic bums could ask for.
This includes a factory manager I knew who didn’t have a college degree and had a certain “sergeant-like attitude”. Turns out he’d been a Sargento Mayor (I think the US equivalent would be thereabouts of Gunnery Sergeant) in the TEDAX, the guys who get rid of explosives.
The ones I know who became officers were from military families; they had all given serious thought to civilian vs military vs combined options (an example of combined would be a college classmate of mine who was in milicias - summertime officer training) and decided to go for it.
Few perks? The perks are one of the main reasons people join! Decent pay, housing, subsidized food, subsidized shopping, healthcare, travel…it’s not a bad deal. Many soldiers, I suspect, are doing far better than their friends of a similar socioeconomic class back home. I worry for some of them, actually - the young ones who joined right after high school and are doing a couple years then plan to get out, but seem to have no idea how very on your own you are in the civilian world.
I should clarify that I’m not a soldier, but work and live on an Army base and spend much of the day talking to young enlistees. Sometimes I ask them why they join, and the response usually boils down to something like, “I got out of high school, didn’t know what else to do, and the military paid well.” Only one guy (and they remain overwhelmingly guys) mentioned patriotism; several talked about travel opportunities.
I joined largely because I wanted to do something (I was a submarine officer in the US Navy). I studied Physics and Astronomy because it interested me, but in college I really had no idea what I wanted to do except that I was sure I did not want to be an academic (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). I was always interested in ships and travel, and I was pretty sure that I would have way more and way better career options after leaving the Navy than I did before (and I was absolutely right).
I’m glad I joined, and I’m glad to be done with my commitment.
That was my attraction. When I started college I wanted to be a fighter pilot; civilians just don’t have access to the incredible front-line aircraft of the US military. Sure, there are civilian aerobatic planes that can pull 9+ g’s - but they won’t do Mach 2, can’t reach 50,000 feet, and you sure as hell can’t land 'em on a boat.
My dad - a former Navy pilot himself - suggested that a stint as a military pilot was perhaps not the best idea for me, particularly if I wanted to return to civilian life as something other than a pilot afterwards. He did that, becoming a civilian after six years in the Navy, and struggled to find a job with a six-years-rusty engineering degree. Over time I started to agree with his assessment, and I also came to view (rightly or wrongly) the fighter pilot community as a competitive, ego-driven group, something that didn’t suit my personality very well.
So I never did enter the military. No regrets, though I do sometimes wonder what it would have been like to actually be a fighter pilot, instead of just watching documentaries or screwing around with flight simulators.
Likewise, there are plenty of other jobs in the military that involve some really cool shit. somebody has to be captain on each of those ships and submarines, and somebody has to be the general that prosecutes an entire combat operation.
just a minor data point:
I’ve noticed a totally different vocabulary used by people in the military and those with no experience.
People with no knowledge of the military talk about being “in the army”
People who have been there proudly refer to it as being in “the service”.
It’s only one word, but it tells you a lot about the person.