Your Recruiter LIED to you so you Left (You’re Right!) Classic Basic Training marching cadence chant.
You’re all supposed to be “in step” because if you have a single person planting his left foot forward while everybody else is planting the Right, a Column Left or a To the rear, March! command or any other won’t work out correctly.
If The Military is such a good career move, why would the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo and others have to donate the proceeds to “Military Charities”?
Go on Craigslist and in Barter and Free classifications, and Rants & Raves you find military families, especially right before payday, begging for FOOD. Food which is subsidized at the Commissary, the Post Exchange and the Base Exchange.
And, these families, they’re not kidding. They actually ARE hurting.
But the Recruiters still Lie through their teeth. Daily.
They even have special programs TARGET-ing poorer kids, Minorities…
In Hispanic and Black neighborhoods the recruiter drives around in a “tricked-out” Hummer with a sound system blaring Hip-hop, the recruiter himself is going to be Ethnically Matched to the neighborhood or barrio, and a younger guy, and even with that will be TRAINED in Street Talk as though it were a foreign dialect.
Are they foolin’ the 18 year olds (17 and dropped out of school if yo’ Momma signs you in)? Apparently not. They give out their pamphlets to pre-teens.
Recruiting Children for a Later Date With Death.
For the 17 and 18 year olds, they break out the Economic Opportunity and the closely related Educational Opportunity bullshit.
But then, the U.S.O., Red Cross, Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo… they come right along and spoil the lie. Because those organizations have to scramble to raise funds, beg a little less obviously…
But the Recruiter Lies are spoiled only if the kids see or hear or read something like this.
All y’all young dudes who want to sign up, try this first… when you turn 16 and can legally do it, volunteer at the VA hospital.
Hang back a little, don’t crowd, let the Human Misery speak for itself. And the humans who are suffering that misery. Go around emptying the wastebaskets and dry-mopping the floor in the waiting rooms, listen to the guys and ladies talking to each other, listen to their stories about how the VA is screwing them.
Volunteer at the U.S.O. and there are others, fill out forms for the guys and Ladies.
See people and talk to them and try your best to help them when the VA screws them.
When a guy is dying from a service related cancer like you get with Agent Orange or from the Uranium Poisoning, that the VA officially denies even exists, try to help him get his basic medical needs tended to.
Volunteer to read or sing to the guys in a Persistent Vegetative Coma. Or the guys who can’t communicate, can’t see, but are conscious under the bandages.
Keep in mind when you’re doing it that some of these guys are laying there with half their body mass taken off by American fire.
Then when you see the Recruiter rolling through the ‘hood jamming some tunes…
See all the young kids flocking around eager to be part of the next Children’s Crusade…
Eager to be lied to, eager to be seduced into the Glorious War.
Listen to the commercials again, watch with fresh eyes as they Army/Navy/Air Force/Marines tell the parents of kids too young to legally join on their own to go ahead and sign the papers for their sons and daughters.
Telling young guys who are dropping out of High School that somehow the Army is going to pull off a magic trick that will get them into College and a highly paid profession.
Because you KNOW, don’t you, that if Yo Momma is signing you in, that means you’re not 18 and there’s very little chance that you completed High School.
And that those commercials are aimed at the guys who are having trouble in school and about to drop out anyway.
When the Recruiter rolls through the ‘hood blasting the jams, walk up to him and tell him, in front of his intended victims, that he’s a damned liar. Print this up and make your OWN pamphlets.
I’m not saying commit acts of violence against him, or vandalism.
That perpetuates the Hate cycle and nothing more.
Even though it would be entertaining to watch one get dragged out of his tricked out Liar-Mobile and having a case of Advanced Whoopage liberally applied, don’t do it.
Confront Hate with Hate and everybody loses. Confront the Hate and the Lies with truth.
It’s our only weapon, and it’s more effective than all their bombs, and guns, and Air-shows, and “see how many chinups you can do” demonstrations, all their pamphlets and commercials and their Tricked Out Humvee can ever be.
You know how I can tell? Because they’re having so much trouble trying to recruit people that they’re going after the young kids now.
The kids are getting smarter and asking more questions. The Army loses. Too bad, so sad. They shouldn’t be trying to convince Kids to go and kill for the “super-patriots” so the “super-patriots” can make money off their lives, and deaths, and the lives and deaths of those people whose countries are being stolen for their resources.
The “super-patriots” who like Bush and Cheney and Wolfowicz and Limbaugh and O’Reilly, aren’t going to enlist and when they had to do so, they had their parents buy their way out of the Draft.
They expect YOU to die for THEIR comfort and riches. And pay you so little for it that your families will literally have to Beg in order to survive.
Hopefully one day the tricked out Hummer rolling through poor neighborhoods will be about as welcome as the creepy ice cream truck is in affluent areas. Predator, go home. We don’t want what you’re selling.
Very well said. I recognize the necessity for having a standing military for DEFENDING OUR COUNTRY, but when we start defending “our interests” overseas, and not “our people” at home, I draw a line. I completely agree with encouraging young people to get as much information as possible before (sometimes literally) signing their life away. I also agree with encouraging peaceful protest, and giving the kids as much information as possible so that they can make an intelligent decision. If they still want to join, then at least they know what they are getting into.
On another note, if you want a preview of what a government run health care program will look like, look no further than the VA medical system. Any civilian system will be no better, and will possibly be worse, that that nightmare.
KUDOS Brother Jonah, we don’t always (ever 🙂 ) agree on topics, but I think we do, on the recruiter-lying thing.
copycat
I have to disagree with Brother Jonah some here. Millions of kids do sign up for the military and then do get the benefits of having free medical care, university paid courses and nice and pretty military pensions all delivered to them by civilians who get none of these things.
Most of us in Colorado Springs see these older ex military types all the time, who got out of the military in their 40s and then got privileged into better civilian jobs because of ´their self prostitution to the D.C. War God, and eventually all retired with social security income, a military pension, and a civilian pension in addition! The military was a very paying and good welfare program for many of these louts, and Brother Jonah´s approach to calling all this nothing but ´lies´just won´t, and can´t ever add up right, when so many military DO get privileges and not just kicked into the gutter by playing stupid and doing all the dirty work of the Pentagon and the crooks running the US government.
I really get sick and tired of liberals who want to direct the Antiwar Movement into looking at US vets as victims instead of the nasty victimizers they really are. It simply is not that way at all, and the military see themselves as an elite, and in fact get treated as an elite. Yes it is true, grunts do get less out of it than the military top dogs, and run more personal risks, but let´s not exaggerate all this. They´re going into other people´s houses and countries and rampaging and creating mayhem, and they simply are not a group of sweet and innocent misled kids when they sign up.
Not so much the Vets as being victims. The Career guys, for instance, stayed on because they liked it. They’re recruiting kids, though, like the Children’s Crusade.
Because kids are easier to manipulate.
And the biggest lies are that the Military can turn their lives around. Give them an escape from the Ghetto or the barrio.
Make them “Army Strong” is the new catchphrase.
They have to be trained to do the mayhem. Used to be called “make a man out of your boy, with a little old fashioned Prussian Military Discipline.”
Worked real swell for the Brownshirts, the Klan, and other criminal groups.
The prisons are swollen with people who went through Boot Camp, and the Juvenile Justice version thereof.
Then there’s the families of the soldiers.
As to seeing what a government funded health care program looks like, Mexico and Central America and Cuba have some outstanding programs.
In Mexico, as opposed to right over the border from them like Texas, they didn’t have people dying while waiting two or three days in the Emergency Room.
I haven’t gone back to Mexico since the “Privatization” bullshit pushed down their gullets by the Reaganite “Free” marketeers went into effect. But I bet it went straight to Hell.
Morgan Stanley, one of the Thief Investment Groups who caused the current “economic downturn” (I prefer the Biblical term for it “FAMINE”) is at it again, converting with a stroke of the pen Junk Bonds into “AAA” ratings.
Why? Could it be because even though the People own their IOUs the so-called Libertarians pitched a major league hissie fit over the notion that the People should also own the Private Corporations, since we bought them?
They say it’s illegal for us to have any control over the corporations WE for all other purposes Bought.
These are the same ones who want to turn Social Security, and every other pension plan, over to these Private Contractors.
Also every public utility, every public health organization, even the Police, Firefighters and Military turned over to these So Very Much Smarter Than The Rest Of Us (but not “elitists”, of course) Private Thieves.
Your “privateers” in Blackwater and Halliburton owe US some heavy duty amounts of Bread, that they moved offshore under the auspices of the Iraqi Occupation.
At the very least 5 TRILLION dollars.
But we’re supposed to just GIVE them the rest of our public property, like our Health Care, as an outright gift, and This Time they promise very very profusely that they won’t screw us again.
You know the rap song “Dope Man”?
Dope Man, Dope man,
Gimme a Hit,
Dope Man Dope Man,
YO!
Fuck dat shit!
Your “privatization” scam has been ongoing unchecked for 30 years now.
Oh, that’s right! it’s technically only been 28!! My bad!
You’ve managed to run America into the financial ditch even faster than the three whole decades.
When Jimmy Carter left office the entire deficit was less than a third of a trillion dollars. The entire budget for his entire term was about a Trillion, and that was paying down the VietNam debts, which Ronald Reagan tossed away, and now the OFFICIAL deficit is $5 TRILLION.
That’s not counting the bonds floated in order to finance Ronald Reagan’s Privatization and Tax Cut scheme.
Reaganomics: All we have to do is issue bonds and we don’t have to raise taxes to support the extravagant Military Conquest spending we intend to do, and the Economy will magically expand enough that by the time the bonds are due there will be so much money in the Treasury they’ll be easily paid down”
Well, the bonds are coming due in TWO YEARS.
That 5 trillion deficit is going to seem small by comparison. And you “libertarians’ are going to blame Barack Obama for YOUR extremely wild Borrowing Spree.
Then there’s the 10 year bonds Bush floated to pay for the “Tax Cuts” and still maintain spending increases. They’ll come due at about the same time Reagan’s “Non-Tax” borrowing from future generations do.
Only the Future Generation is OURS.
Real Spectacular economic growth you gave us with your freewheelin’ “free” market privatization scams, copy cat.
But we’re supposed to take your word for it that somehow your policies will make everything all better.
Talk about you basic Paternalistic Attitude.
No, that would be “fraternal” because it’s more of an Elder Sibling, a “Big Brother” doing the doublespeak.