Thoughts on the military I just had...

First of all, I have to start out by saying that I actually served in the Marines for a full 4 years, and some of the thoughts that I have came from personal experience. I realize that some of outcomes to situations or examples and whatnot may not be typical, but it's realistic. Also, most of this is speaking about in garrison (while not overseas, basically) as the time I was deployed was a complete different entity in itself.

Also, there was a thread a few days ago that came up in the box, and that's kind of why I started thinking about this in the first place. If you're thinking "This guy is a douchebag" right about now, that's probably the thread you want to bump.

Kay.

I was just sitting outside smoking a bowl and a newport, just chillin' out for a few minutes. I sat on the bench and stared off into nothing for a few minutes, day(more like midnight)dreaming about the past, getting my nostalgia fix, I guess. My mind wandered to a lot of times, good and bad, and I just kind of realized how much I have changed as an adult and a person in last 7 years sense I was 16, just starting to find out about who I was and what I was all about.

I think that the military's age requirement should be raised to 20 or 21. I believe that there are way too many immature 17 year-olds who graduate high school and join the military. I myself, was 18 when I went to boot camp.

It starts off to where you do nothing that they don't order you to. As time goes on, they gradually integrate independence into the game, once you have re-learned how to do whatever tasks it is that you are expected to preform (from making your bed automatically to using the bathroom, pretty much anything and everything you can think of) the way they want you to. You don't have to have a brain. In fact, not having a brain would help. Then you wouldn't want to punch the guy that you have never seen before in your life, who is now screaming at you to pick up that fucking rake and rake the asphalt. Physically fit zombies could pass boot camp.

So now you have a bunch of "trained" Marines. Trained to do what? Not fucking think critically, I know that. You were just trained to do whatever your superiors say at all times, without hesitation. It's called "instant obedience to orders", or at least that's what your angry superiors spit in your face when you fail to... well, they sometimes just do that to keep you on your toes.

Who are these now trained Marines led by? Why, a nice group of people that rolled in on the exact same boat, only a few years before, and managed not to get discharged/wounded/killed/intelligence or blow their now-zombified brains out.

So why raise the age? We go to school for our entire childhood. When you are a child, you don't know what the color blue is so you have to be taught. Well, what if I started teaching kids that blue was.... say, slightly off blue? purple-blue or something. The kid grows up, still thinking purple-blue is actually blue. Someone tells him otherwise, and of course he will argue it, because he knows that he is right, he can see it, right in front of him, and it's fuckin' blue, just like his creepy 1st grade teacher taught him. Well, sorry Billy, your still fucking wrong, no matter how much you believe it, right?

Raise it because you are a fucking retard at 17 years old. For the younger people on this forum, sorry, but trust me, you will say the same thing when your not 17. You are an impressionable little sponge still, and you will realize it when you are older, as everyone pretty much does. If you are forced to get an actual job and pay your own way for a few years before shipping off to the military, then maybe the homeless in this country wouldn't be reppin' something like 40% of them being vets. Just saying.



Another thought was how organized the military is.

NOT AT FUCKING ALL.

Many people don't see it, because they've not done it on a daily basis for years. I'm sure if a few people that were in the service themselves see this, one of them will undoubtedly say it because my unit was shitty or I was a shitbird, or other like things that they have no idea about.

How long would you work at a place like this?

Your boss, and sometimes multiple bosses, are late for every single meeting you have ever, which is several per day, by at least 5 minutes. If you ever spy on him to find out what he does during those extra minutes that you are standing there in your pretty little, perfectly-aligned formation, with luck in adverse weather, he's usually just chillin' in his office, seeing who's next on the list of people to fuck.

Every Thursday is field day. What is field day? It's where you get your shit fucked up all night long, after you got your shit fucked up all day at work. Basically, you clean. Well, you also scrub, swab, sweep, wipe, arrange, rearrange, re-rearrange, fuck and then unfuck everything around you. Once, I swept a hallway about 100 yards long for 3 straight hours, because there was nothing else to do and I had to attempt to look busy, otherwise catch shit from some hollering douchebag.

You get free medical, dental, housing, and food! Medical alone is worth it! I mean, if you want motrin or a glass of water that is. Oh, if you get the elderly asian dentist that's 7 feet tall on the second floor, I advise you just go home and bang your mouth into some cinder blocks until the problem teeth fall out. It'll be better in the long run. The housing, I said was free, but that was a lie, just like the food. It's automatically deducted from each Marine's base pay, so you never see it, which means it's free enough for us to lie to you about and not feel bad. Side note: The barracks is what they call the housing you get if your not married or have kids (most 17 year old's don't). They call it this so they don't have to call it by it's real name: "dilapidated fallout shelters next to the fancy new sports bar on base with giant tvs". I'm fucking serious. I wonder why I've only ever known like 4 Marines that don't drink.

Your co-workers are all criminals. Ok, that's overdoing it a bit. I would estimate the crime rate amongst military members compared to civilians from the same age group is a pretty steep increase, at least in my experience. I've had things stolen from me on 3 occasions that I can remember, one of those times being everything of value in my room, which were locked away. My friends experienced the same thing. This is within 4 years, whereas I only ever remember getting one thing stolen from me in the other 19 or so years of my life, and it's not like I have the luxury of living in nice neighborhoods most of the time. It's not only personal stuff that gets taken... Marines usually would rather steal often expensive military equipment when it is lost or damaged, rather than have to fill out paper work and (probably) pay for the overpriced shit. Also, they FUCKING TEACH you to steal. We like to call it "acquiring". I can't count the times that I have been ordered to "acquire" things.

Gunny: CORPORAL COCKRING WHERE IS THE (very important item)!?!?!

Cpl: You told me to pack it in the truck that just left, gunns.

Gunny: YOU BEST FUCKING ACQUIRE ME ONE FROM (xxx location) NOW OR YOUR ASS IS FUCKED SIX WAYS FROM DIXIE (or other nonsense. I've found that the longer you are in the military, the less sense you have to make when you are upset)

Also, by criminal, I guess I mean the legal definition, not "mine". There are many non-violent "criminals" that I do not classify as such in my book, but that's not what I'm talking about here. By these standards, even I was a "criminal" in the military, but it only proves my point further. It's almost shockingly easy to find cocaine and opiate painkillers amongst Marines, as these drugs can be done on long holiday weekends and such and out of your system before you are ever back at work for them to even have a chance to give you a urinalysis. Wizzinators with either clean or synthetic urine (look it up if you don't know) are perfect for passing the drug tests that they administered us anyways (I would know...).

Oh yeah, and speaking of crime and the legal system, the military has a different one. Meet our friend, the UCMJ. Don't have time to read 146 in-depth articles with 12 sub-articles? Let me sum it up for you:

YOU ARE FUCKING WRONG IF YOU DO ANYTHING EVER OR IF SOMEONE OF A HIGHER RANK SAYS SO



Just FYI, I have plenty of nice things to say about the military as well, it just happens to be the not-so-positive side that comes to my mind tonight.

Thoughts please.

 

Not to scream I KNOW, I WAS THERE at you, but you are correct.

I didn't mean to make it seem like the training you get is ALL you have at your disposal, but for the point I was trying to make it was something I needed to point out. I have also seen intelligent 18 year olds, who, I have to say, are way past where I was at that point in my life. Good on them. I'm sure they'll be just fine.

But they seem few and far between. A sad statistic is that out of the hundreds, thousands of military people that I have met in my life, I can count the ones that I have intentionally kept up with on my 10 fingers.

I'm not trying to sound high and mighty, I'm not trying to say that I'm better than anyone else, I'm not. The value of each person is the same in my book, but how we get along and relate varies. Usually to the fuckbag side of the scale.

Also, something I forgot to put in the OP, money, or at least the management of it. I cannot tell you the number of Marines that I know that come back from that first deployment, wad of cash in their hands, and their immediate impulse is to go buy a car they can't afford or something along those lines. Just like the crime thing, I would say the average debt is like woah compared to civilians.

Why? Perhaps something to do with 17 year olds, never having a real sum of money before, go to the desert for a year, make it back, and make it rain 10 dollar bills all over the strip club they couldn't get into before they left, before heading directly to the car dealership and buy a escalade with 24's that they will never pay off because the insurance and gas it costs just drained the last few thousand out of your account.

Hm.

 

Fuck that dude, I'm not taking responsibility for someone else's shit, and I never have. I've told many a boss that I wasn't going to take any shit like this, and if I get fired, good, I wouldn't work for a cocksucker anyway. I refuse to dedicate substantial parts of my life to being subject to bullshit for someone else's convenience. Why punish everyone when you could find out what the problem actually was, address it, explain it, and possible punish the one(s) responsible, instead of making everyone's day shittier? Because when you act like you're better than everyone else because of some "rank" you were assigned for years and years, you look like an idiot when you do something wrong. I have been on the shitty end of the stick from E-1 to E-4. Never have I once blamed something on my "subordinates" that wasn't their fault. What your boss straight up killed someone and then said it was you because your a lower rank? And then everyone else was too caught up in this fake "rank" system to investigate further? It's happened to me, only under different circumstances, but the example I give here is a reality. Strange things happen in foreign lands sometimes.

However I do agree that the training is justified for what you may face at war, I'm just focusing more on the other side of things at the moment.

To those who say they are joining/trying to or whatever, I would say do it if you think it's right for you. There is a lot of good that can come out of the military, these are just some of the negitive aspects that you might come across.