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Report: Americans don't want to fight for their country anymore
Have you heard what they teach in schools these days? Have you heard how the higher educational institutions program their students?
How many college age kids and young adults hate America and have a Communist/Marxism filter put on their brains? Today - we see the support for the immoral group of people that is Hamas. That support has to be taught to them.
If they are not redirected at some point - yeah, they see no point in defending America.
In a real war against China/Russia today without using nukes. I don't really think the US can win because we don't have the soldiers and factory capacity to beat China. It's estimated that majority of US soldiers are overweight.
Hmmmm, in my family, Dad said he would pay for our college education but we had to take, at least, the 1st 2 years of ROTC and accept a reserve contract if offered. We didn't have to make the military a career but we had to be ready to answer if the country called.......if we wanted him to pay for college for us.
Regardless of what I think of this current world (my old Captain asked me at the time if I had stayed in and been at Abu Ghraib when told "The Gloves Come Off", what would I have done), blood and family and how I was raised come first.
My Country, for better or worse, is still My Country.
"I've fought in three wars and three more wouldn't be too many to defend my country. I love America and as she has weaknesses or ills, I'll hold her hand."-- Daniel "Chappie" James Jr., first black Air Force full general
Report: Americans don't want to fight for their country anymore
Have you heard what they teach in schools these days? Have you heard how the higher educational institutions program their students?
How many college age kids and young adults hate America and have a Communist/Marxism filter put on their brains? Today - we see the support for the immoral group of people that is Hamas. That support has to be taught to them.
If they are not redirected at some point - yeah, they see no point in defending America.
I think this is the significant issue, and, yes, @WK91, the deflection point was around 2008. That was the point that the American Promise (not the same thing as the "American Dream") was proven to be hollow.
It affect the entire nation. At the time, I was in the headquarters of a certain Fortune 50 company. Up to that year, the company was confident. The leadership bragged, literally, of being "the big dog on the porch." The company was fiercely loyal to its employees (it was commonly said, "You have to be caught stealing to get fired here") and the employees were fiercely loyal to the company. That confidence broke in 2008, even though the Great Recession had almost no effect on that company...if anything, it proved the resilience of the company, and the efficiency of their operations, and the wisdom of their investments. Yet...from that year the company began to run scared. It began to break the promise of loyalty to employees, it became unreliable.
After 2008, there was suddenly no promise in America. Every institution has lost heart, lost faith, lost confidence in America, has become frightened, has become cynical.
That's something different even for black people. Back when Chappie James said the line I quoted earlier, he could say of America, "...as she has weaknesses or ills, I'll hold her hand," because there was a promise that America would get better for black people even then, and black men were willing to fight for that promise.
There is no such promise today.
Getting to that Marxism filter, that is definitely a problem because a central tenet of Karl Marx' dialectics is that the system cannot get better. He was talking about capitalism, but his point was that capitalism cannot be improved or fixed or made tolerable...it must be destroyed and there must be continuous effort, however draconian, to make sure it never begins to grow again.
Radical Feminism, Critical Race Theory, and identity politics across the board has adopted Karl Marx' dialectics and adapted them to their own agendas. When I first heard right wingers saying, "They're Marxist!" I dismissed that as wingnut politics...until I read the seminal writings of those ideologies. In their seminal documents, they don't even obscure it...they say it outright.
Thus, the idea that America might be ill but will get better if we hold her hand is demolished because what is being taught in school is that America must be demolished. So, it's no wonder youth don't want to defend it when they've been taught that it must be demolished.
I would support a Singapore style two years of national service for ALL citizens that would be dedicated to the defense of the homeland.
However, when was the last time that there was an actual threat to the homeland? 1941?
The numbers don't work for the US to attempt universal national service. There are 4 million new 18-year-olds every year. If we put them all into two years of national service, you're talking about increasing the government by 8 million people. Eight million people nearly useless people at that, who will need commensurately more permanent employees just to handle that immense number of trainees.
.......However, when was the last time that there was an actual threat to the homeland? 1941?
Depends on how one sees it, knows their history. But, let's put it this way, to make the story short......would an oil embargo by OPEC constitute a threat to the homeland? Would foreign submarines sitting in International waters off our ports, darting in to lay mines and darting out again, constitute a threat to the homeland?
There are at least two things here, in war fighting, that make the homeland a little bit more than the dirt under one's feet. First, the US is a maritime nation, we import things, and if something is reaching our ports from being reached, it hurts.
Secondly, defensive wars are a fool's errand. Fighting on your own land has your infrastructure destroyed, your lands littered with AP mines, your soils poisoned. I would think that those in the military would know it is better to go and fight on his land and ruin it........and have a place to come home to.
I would support a Singapore style two years of national service for ALL citizens that would be dedicated to the defense of the homeland.
However, when was the last time that there was an actual threat to the homeland? 1941?
Yep. Pearl Harbor. We haven’t actually won a war since then. I used to live in Singapore. Two years active duty and reserve training for a few years thereafter. They also train in Taiwan and Brunei. Singapore is much more authoritarian than the US and there isn’t much opposition to it for fear of prosecution. I can’t imagine another draft here unless something catastrophic happened.
Report: Americans don't want to fight for their country anymore
Have you heard what they teach in schools these days? Have you heard how the higher educational institutions program their students?
How many college age kids and young adults hate America and have a Communist/Marxism filter put on their brains? Today - we see the support for the immoral group of people that is Hamas. That support has to be taught to them.
If they are not redirected at some point - yeah, they see no point in defending America.
You're way off the mark. It has very little to do with school and a lot to do with risk/reward. A lot of people go in enlisted and come out none the better for wear. Injuries are relatively common and the compensation only makes sense if you don't have any education nor a trade.
Even the service aspect has some pretty big flaws these days. Do you want to put your life on the line to protect worsening wealth inequality and a political system where one of the two dominant parties is trying to marginalize the vote and dismantle democracy? The previous president publicly expressed disdain for veterans and their families. A current legislator is holding promotions hostage for political reasons.
By time you get finish your time defending the property and prosperity of the moneyed class you probably won't be able to afford a house yourself.
If one is going to struggle paycheck to paycheck then there are less hazardous ways to do it than to essentially give up your agency.
I'm not knocking anyone who serves, just pointing out that a career in the armed services is a taller order at this juncture given the economic situation and time/lives/money wasted on aggressive wars in the past two decades.
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