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Hegseth’s mysterious meeting with generals will focus on grooming and warrior ethos
(www.politico.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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Yeah...
I can go on very long rants about how much I hate the "support the troops" mindset and how much of that was a manufactured response to how the draftees who raped and murdered their way through Vietnam were vilified at rallies. But people seem to still think the year is 1988 and war is unthinkable and everyone in the military is just there for free college. And while there were still people doing that going into The War On Terror... we had almost two decades of a forever war.
And that shows. While I dislike the ableist connotations of it... the reality is that there are people who are going to get the most out of a college education and there are people who... aren't. And the former? They know that the military is just going to mean they are 2-8 years older than everyone else applying for the same positions and are probably going to be doing so with PTSD from the killing and possibly even rapes that get covered up (fun reminder: The reported rate of sexual assault among female active-duty US military members was 6.8 percent as of 2023. That is what the military admitted to...). That isn't to say there aren't some true geniuses coming out of the military and getting a PhD and so forth but... they are the ones who knew what they were getting into when they enlisted and all that entails.
So increasingly you just have the crowd who joined because everyone in their family "served" and the people who bought in to "the only way you can get out of the generational poverty we have forced you into is to kill some brown kids for us". And you get "I joined the military to learn to work on cars".
So yeah. Very much a recruiting pipeline for cops and other "thug with guns" occupations. And if you exhibit even basic competence at the combat side of things? You have your pick of PMCs looking for deniable killers.
And, just to be clear: The US Military is a WONDERFUL job if you are not the right demographic to be dragged behind a building and raped and you don't mind using force against whoever you are told. In a lot of ways, it is the single best experiment proving the value of UBI and managed economies. But... understand that it is a job about enabling the murder and subjugation of enemies of the state. And that you won't need to get on a 13 hour flight to find said enemies in the very near future.
As an aside: I love the Business (ha!) Insider youtube videos where they do an "authorized account" interview or just look at a "day in the life" of a military adjacent role. And if you want a truly fucking terrifying video, go watch the recent one where they interviewed a former Blackwater mercenary. That shit was even more horrifying than the white supremacist biker who was pretty open about the murders he committed (I want to say he narced to avoid consequences? Been a minute).
I was at those rallies, and I saw people punched and spit on. Those people were demonstrating against the war. I was one.
The story of returning draftees being given a bad reception is projection. Nobody blamed the poor teenagers who got rounded up and sent over. It was well known that it was the fault of the top politicians and the generals. But the only thuggish behavior I ever saw was from the counter-demonstrators who were bused in to harass demonstrators, as if billy clubs, tear gas and false arrest weren't harassment enough.