If you’re in the US, now is a great time to talk to the young people in your life about the US military:
The recruiter is not your friend. The military employs child psychologists to learn how to make you think the recruiter is your friend.
The recruiter is allowed to lie to you and makes more money if they do.
The recruiter is paid a commission to groom children into cannon fodder.
The recruiter will tell you you’re special and will go into special smart soldier programs instead of combat. They’re lying.
The recruiter may tell you they can tell if someone can get PTSD or not and only recruit people like you, who won’t. They’re lying.
The recruiter may tell you you’ll be too busy attending free college (!!) to go overseas. They’re lying.
The recruiter may ask what countries you want to travel to and promise you bougie placements on military bases in those countries. They’re lying.
Even “It’s just four years!” is a lie - the government is allowed to hold you past your enlistment period with a stop-loss order.
The recruiter actually has zero power to decide anything that happens to you after you enlist and they more importantly don’t care what happens to you.
If you enlist, you will be brainwashed to make you willing to do things to other humans that you would never be willing to do today.
You will be ordered to do things that will kill children. And you’ll do them.
The military is not the only way or even the best way for you to go to college or start a career.
Military brainwashing will actually make you into a terrible university student because it degrades your ability to think critically and question your sources.
Having PTSD and/or a TBI will make it harder to be a student and keep a job.
Veterans’ benefits suck these days.
Being a veteran drastically increases your risk of homelessness, suicide, alcohol and drug dependence, prison time, and becoming an abuser to your loved ones.
The military will expose you to chemicals that will drastically increase your chances of developing cancer.
The military will withhold information about your rights to conscientiously object after enlisting.
thinking about how as an adult I have been able to meet gay children for the first time (there were no out gay children or teenagers in my town when I was growing up that I was aware of) and how i am noticing new types of best friends develop. my favorite is “tween/teenage trans girl and the lesbian/transmasc/nonbinary afab kid who constantly bodyguards her and circles her protectively” i have seen this type of bestfriends many times now and sometimes i tell them and they giggle and go that’s us !! and i tell them, we didn’t used to be able to be together and now we are. and i am so lucky to be able to see it.
I saw the version of this that you were only able to identify after the fact when I was younger but it’s so great that like. kids don’t have to be sublimating that shit for a decade or two now???? blows my fuckin mind
North Korea is an evil country according to CIA reports, unlike mine, the Democratic paradise with five colonies, two public prison death concentration camps which are famous for violating human rights, the poor children kidnapping centers and the $800B military industry of killing civilians abroad :)
