this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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You'd be surprised. Like, these conditions in barracks, dorms, and any other military housing format, have been like this since I was first groomed in as a minor ages ago. (Yes, I will call it 'groomed'; I was sixteen getting pressured by my father and a recruiter to sign for Delayed Enlistment.) My first permanent party location out of training was so riddled with black mold that I was only able to live in it for three months before they condemned that whole building and moved the people living in it to others.
Fact of the matter is, your average GI is a monster; and one of variable -pathic suffix at that. No cap, no hyperbole. The vast majority of these crackers are eager and willing regardless of the conditions they gotta live in; and sadly? I've never once met another ex-delayed enlistee who operates the way I do now, either. Most of them stay eager and willing.
that's pretty depressing to hear to be honest
I do consider it necessary for me at least (NOTE: I am not chargin' y'all to do this; I am not that bold) to hold space and grace for former troops who come around to the scientific truth and the understanding of what they've been complicit in, specifically because I came from it too, which means it's not impossible to change... But damn if I don't end up regretting practically every single time I do. I've genuinely started considering it a better use of my time to just try and dissuade my young family, my nieces, my nephews, my cousins, all'em, from ever considering saying shit to a recruiter but "get fucked".
Gotta kill the idea in the cradle; 'cause unless your seed manages to keep the person they were born as on the other side of all of the psychological abuse (tailor-made to "break a person down and rebuild them to be what we need", my old DI's words) they call training? You might never get the decent them back.
Reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography now. He's in prison in apartheid SA in the 60s, in horrible conditions, enduring forced labor, with one prison guard who has a swastika tattooed on his wrist. And he's talking about how the ANC prisoners would treat individual guards differently based on how they treated the prisoners. He mentions a series of conversations with one guard where the guy asks what the ANC is about and is surprised to learn it's not a bunch of terrorists who want to kill all white people.
The contrast between that and the modern online sentiment of "everyone remotely associated with the crimes of capitalism deserves to die" is stark. Not everyone will come around, but a lot can. And even if you don't bring them all the way to good positions, there's a difference between an opponent who genuinely hates you and would die for their cause and an opponent who merely dislikes you, and who would choose to go home and grumble rather than fight to the death.
This is real honestly. This is what I keep trying to remind myself; especially given my particular intersections, like-- it's some people that I genuinely don't feel I owe the time, but at my own collision points, especially at the less-than-savory ones, that's where I owe the most. My time in service shames me, and if any of my blood had any self-awareness, theirs would shame them too because most of them were careerists; and it's because of that service that I feel obligated to at least try and do even a measure of good work to spite the apparatus that my fingerprints are on.
I might tire of trying to hold that space and do that work, but that's not something that I get to quit specifically because of where I've been.
In my opinion, people who have served and come to realize what the US military stands for are one of the most valuable and most powerful voices we have.