The notion that one needs the Army to get ones life together, that without Army Discipline your life goes nowhere… and that the Army prepares you for a Better Career and Better Wages… meaning the Army actively seeks to recruit people who feel they’re lost.
Now, if you watch a daytime TV show (brain rot) the commercials for the colleges look eerily like the Army recruitment lies. And they’re using the people the Army had recruited earlier. “Now that you got out of the Army, here’s a chance to get your life together through Higher Education.
I noticed that one of them is the new reorganization of Lincoln tech, which makes jobs like Grease Monkey and HVAC tech look like attractive jobs.
Which in a way, they are.
Of course showing models wearing clean mechanics uniforms and looking like they’ve never busted a sweat in their lives, no bumps, bruises, mashed fingers or cuts from working with tools in the confines of spaces that are about two hands wide, (if you’re lucky) to remove broken or worn parts… doesn’t happen, you get really really dirty doing it and, the not infrequent injuries suck too.
For handwork jobs it does pay well. HVAC systems mechanics techs er..
You’ll be working either on a rooftop with no shade, or inside a building with no working air conditioning (because, you see, you’re there to fix it.) at a time when the temperature is going to be extreme. Nobody calls you to fix the AC unless they really need it, fast. It’s an adjunct to Murphy’s. Of course things break just when they’re needed, because they’re IN USE.
Here’s the deal, though, every one of those jobs errr “careers” from computer technician, communications tech, mechanical tech, HVAC tech… these are the same career paths the Army training is supposed to pave your way into. Seems really redundant. Of course, the Army training is assigned to you based on what the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Batttery tests show you can actually do, AND, based on what the Army wants you to do. You could be the best and brightest Computer Programmer/Software Designer there is, but if the Army doesn’t happen to be short of CP/SD technicians but IS drastically short of Waste Disposal and Industrial Hygiene Technicians (janitors) you’ll be pushing a mop.
The Army commercials don’t show that. They also show combat troops who aren’t being shot at a lot. Does it border on False Information? No. It crossed the border of False Information and is now a permanent resident of the Land of False Information. Has been for a long time.
Now, for the kicker part. Get a Pell Grant and a Work Study grant and go to college in the first place. Skip the Army bullshit. If you don’t have your life together then the Army won’t put it together for you. They’ll mention that to you in basic training.
“You didn’t join the Nursery Corps, we are not your psychiatrist, nanny, caretaker or Guru, and are not responsible for whether or not your personal life is ‘together’. Also we are not your Mom. Although you’ll all probably going to be calling me “Mother” by this time tomorrow”
The Army Recruiters are selected not from Combat Veterans, not from people who had any job in the Army other than being persuasive and attractive LIARS. They’re actually “recruited” in Basic Training because they look good in the uniform.
They’re paid according to the amount of costume jewelry on their collars or number of stripes on their sleeves, same as anybody else. Plus a bonus based on how many High School athlete chumps they can dupe into joining.
Blood money, really. Very sad, even more really.
They also tell you once you’re in, that those guys in the cockpit of the plane, with “Their” Ground Crews scurrying around to keep that Homo-erotic rocket powered phallic symbol flying… You don’t have college you won’t be that pilot. You’ll be one of “his” crew.
To get into the pilots job you have to have College. Without the college you might be in the impromptu crew assembled each time a jet crashes to pick up pieces of the pilot though.(True story, my father was once assigned to a Search and Rescue party where they were combing the area looking to “rescue” the pilots head. He said he was really glad somebody else found it.)
Also they’ll tell you once your dumb ass is in Basic Training and is now military Property, that if you had a Bachelor’s Degree you would qualify for consideration to Officer Candidate School. That gives you a lot more money for your Soul.
If you’re “dead set” on selling your soul. at least try to get a better deal. Go to school first. Of course the Recruiters won’t want you to do that. Screw the Recruiters, they literally buy souls for the Army. But if you go to college on an ROTC scholarship, guess where your slightly-more-educated dumb ass is gonna be once you graduate?
You’ll be sitting in a barrack (“Dorm” in the Air Force) and somebody will tell you he just saw a plane parked out on the tarmac out back with a sign on it saying “VietNam or Bust”
Your Training Instructor will tell you that you can’t be trusted to Think for Yourself, and will point out as proof that “You signed up for this shit, making your own decisions, right? Case closed”
Skip the Army Party. Enlist in College instead.
