Plan9

Well-well...

There's a lot of "those guys" and "them" in here. The military is a job to a lot of people, not a career.

Between the challenge, college money, patriotism, and adult day care... it's a good place for young people.

Big Duh: It is demanding and requires a significant amount of time and effort to become a proficient "soldier."

There are a lot of fatbodies and dirtbags in the military. It's more of a sign of the times than the institution necessarily.

I forget who said it... but I believe the quote was: "The difference between the military and the prison system is who has the guns."

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Think of the military as a forge. It's designed to take raw materials and transform them into a specialized final product. A human weapon.

If you start out with shitty raw materials, you'll get a shitty end product. Charles Babbage's one-liner and all that. Knuckle-draggers.

No secret that most of the raw materials aren't that great. Throughout history most of the enlisted ranks consist of low SES individuals.

But sometimes the forge scrapes off the imperfections and excesses of the civilian world and leaves a masterpiece of a fighting man.

This is not something that necessarily betters society (or even the individual) but it serves a purpose eventually... that thing called "war."

Often there is a cost for forging young men into weapons. After all, it's easier to turn a plowshare into a sword than vice versa.

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Respecting someone for their job is kinda silly. I admire police, fire fighters, cowboys, pirates, and ninjas... but respect is a little hard.

I respect individuals more than massive, widely diversified institutions. Respecting the military is like respecting religion. It's too broad.

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You don't have to puff up your chest, Jinn. Every grunt wishes he was a Spartan and every Spartan wanted to be Chuck Norris.

Individuals that use their military service as a master status are not the kind of people you want to hang around with anyway.

They have no soul.

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It would probably be a lot easier to respect the US military if the civvies in charge of it for the last decade weren't self-serving assholes.

The hollow pseudopatriotic "Thanks for protecting us." bit that many Americans use regarding military service is horribly ignorant.