There is not much research done on this document. Perhaps one day I will update it with specific articles and data, but for now, this is just a list of things I have learned throughout my years of living in the US and growing up with this information.
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- Discrimination within the military
All the queer bans, discrimination against BIPOC individuals, discrimination against women, etc. Yes, it is better now than it was. There are still criticisms to be made.
Note: Just because something was no longer banned or discriminated against, does not mean that it didn’t happen. Legality does not equal reality.
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- Healthcare “benefits”
You’re told that you will get free healthcare (or cheap healthcare if you’re a part of the private military sectors) as an active duty member. However, medical support is spread thin based on first-hand accounts, and if you get long term injuries or illnesses when you are a veteran that was caused by your time in the military, then you have to prove to them that it was caused by your time in the military.
To give a comparison, you know how it’s difficult to get your apartment complex to do something about your rowdy neighbors? Or if something happened to your apartment that wasn’t your fault, you have to prove it or else they won’t believe you? Think of it like that, but worse (cause it’s the government and they don’t want to spend money on you if they don’t have to).
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- Training
Basic training is about 10 weeks, depending on the branch of military you are going into. Many, many of these new recruits are straight out of high school. I don’t trust most 18 year olds to drive; you bet your ass I don’t trust them to handle things like semi-automatic weapons, no matter if they trained for a *couple months.
*They’ve been training for a couple months total. That time is divided between physical training, basic combat, and weapon training. I recommend checking out the official army website on this: https://www.goarmy.com/army-life/basic-training.
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- Coercion through promises of economic stability
If you go to the army’s official website right now, you will see advertisements for all of this money you could make or all of these financial benefits you will be granted. For many people, the military is the only way they can go to college, and oh does the government abuse that knowledge.
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- Recruitment
I’ve briefly touched on this, but the military actively recruits high school students right after they graduate. When you’ve got soldiers coming to your school telling you that you don’t have to pay for college and they’ll train you in skills you’ll need in life, a lot of kids get coerced into joining without truly understanding what they are signing up for.
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- Pass to kill
If you are a part of the military, a lot of times during wars or military operations, you will face no legal consequences for killing civilians; it’s kinda like how with police officers, they are protected, but with the military it’s even worse.
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- Conscription
In the past, and likely in the future, millions of people have been drafted into the military who likely did not want to be in the military. At the will of the government, people will lose their lives who did not want to put them on the line.
You could, of course, argue that with social contract theory, we have agreed to being drafted. I argue that this is bullshit.
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- Veterans and PTSD (specifically for those in combative positions)
Once soldiers are finished with their service (if they haven’t died, of course), they are tossed back into this society where they are supposed to assimilate perfectly into, without addressing how much of a mindset shift it is. One second you’re fighting for your life, the next you are supposed to be getting a desk job.
If you’ve left the military and were in a combative position, you may have killed someone. There’s a chance you’ve killed more than one person. How do you go back to society? This doesn’t begin to cover things like the cost of therapy and how you likely will have a tendency towards violence (for obvious reasons).
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- Capitalism
The US military doesn’t protect, they enforce. They protect the 1% of US citizens who benefit from capitalism and harm everyone else in the process. They also impose their ideal government onto other countries (even though the US doesn’t have a democracy anymore, it likes to pretend it does; we adore gerrymandering).
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- Propaganda
There is so much propaganda about the US and wars the US has been in. There are, of course, the older and popular iconography of “Rosie the Riveter” and “Uncle Sam.” But, in today’s day and age where we have the entire internet at our fingertips, propaganda is subtly pushed in our social media, movies, and TV shows.
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Special thanks to a friend who has recently entered my life. This wouldn’t have been edited and posted without the spark of motivation I got from realizing that you also write and publish articles. Can’t let you have all the fun, can I?
Until next time,
– Chromatic
*Posted on October 18, 2024.*
Chromatic04.com 
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