I'm a military brat and grew up on a base. My father was career Coast Guard, and the thing you mentioned about good living conditions was the selling point his brother-in-law told him about before he enlisted (paraphrase: you get to ride around in the place you sleep, and they feed you there).
The college crowd (of which I was one) has a tendency to look down on the military, but sometimes I almost wish I'd signed up myself for the college tuition. It can be a hard adjustment to civilian life -- my father's been retired since the 80s and for years when he was more physically able, he'd still talk about he wished he was still in. I think it saved him in many ways, as his father died when he was young. It gave him structure & meaning (he didn't go to college). It helped get him clean when he was an alcoholic. The guys he met there have been his friends for years, there really is a lasting camaraderie unlike any other.
And yeah, it's a lifeline for a lot of people, and I can already see the ways it'll be difficult to replicate the structure it gives on the outside. Glad it worked out so well for your dad.
It’s funny because I was at my sisters graduation a few weeks ago and they usually give a shout out to the students with the top GPA and the college they’ll attend, and then they give a shout out to the kids who are joining the military--and the cheers/awe that the crowd gave to the military kids after each name was called was way louder than the cheers for the people going to Harvard and Yale with 4.8 GPAs. So I think the general public definitely doesn’t look down at the military--it’s just a very specific bubble that people snap out of once they actually meet members of the military.
Great article! What do you think the biggest misconception about the military is? Where I’m from, there’s only two ways to think about the military: heroes who are defending the country and should be treated with the utmost veneration; or they’re terrorists who bomb Middle East countries and drone children for oil. Do you have a different opinion of US foreign policy after joining the military vs before?
1. The prevalence of combat/operational roles. Most people who join the military end up doing administrate work, aircraft maintenance, or the like. In the Air Force, less than 5% are actual aircrew; the rest are in one support position or another.
2. The idea that enlisted pay is low or that it's a struggle to make a living in the military. In terms of the qualifications and the work you perform, you end up very well compensated and can save more-or-less as much of your paycheck as you feel like saving since your basic needs (including things like health care) are guaranteed to be covered. If I go to law school after this and count the tuition savings there as part of my income, the salary would be outrageously good for the work I did and the qualifications I had.
My opinion on US foreign policy hasn't really changed. The 'heroes vs terrorists' dichotomy is common and I've never really bought either side of it. I don't know that I have anything profound to say about it, though. I think Pax Americana is better than the other available options and a large military presence is a necessary precondition of that, but that it's come at a significant and often unnecessary cost. The people in it are people with about the same mix of good and bad as you get anywhere else. I was fortunate to have a position that let me dodge many of the moral ambiguities I see in the military writ large and one I have no substantive ethical questions about, but that was partially the result of simple luck.
There's no room for opinion. The sole reason for the American empire's military to exist is to murder and terrorize any humans who live free of its zionist masters.
The more I think about it the more I realize you’re a kind of foil to Tanner Greer - he couldn’t pass medical review to join the military but stayed LDS, and for you it is the reverse
If I ever reach the stature to rightly be considered a foil to Tanner Greer, I'll be thrilled. I look up to him and his writing a lot; one of the most informed commentators around on China-related issues and an insightful, thoughtful man in general. He does the LDS church proud.
Nice intro, and I'll be looking forward to the rest of the series.
I have no military experience. My paternal grandfather was in the Navy at the tail end of WW2 as an enlisted man. In my junior year of HS I got a letter about Navy ROTC opportunities (probably completely unrelated to my grandfather's service); I talked about it very briefly with my dad who didn't seem too opposed to the idea, but I quickly gave it up. The Air Force had been my dream because I wanted to be a pilot, but I started needing glasses around 14 and figured that was the end of it. (Yes, I realize the Navy has pilots too.) Mainly, I didn't think I could handle the physical fitness requirements (I probably weighed about 275 in high school and couldn't manage to jog a mile at a time), and I also figured my mom would have a conniption fit - she wouldn't even let me play sports in high school because she was so afraid of me getting hurt.
Also, in retrospect, I would have graduated in the spring of 2001, right in time for our 20 year adventure in Afghanistan to begin, so maybe I dodged a bullet, figuratively and perhaps literally (although, again, other than Seals and aviators, not much risk for naval officers in that conflict).
I did talk to one of my professors in college, who had been in the army (Airborne), and he told me in no uncertain terms that somebody like me would have been completely miserable as an enlisted man. So I am curious to know how somebody as intelligent as you handled having to take orders from people you knew you were smarter than; hopefully the rest of the series will address this in some way.
I'll definitely touch on it, or at least adjacent to it. It's a very different dynamic for linguists than it is for most enlisted career fields, honestly—most people in the career field are quite smart and you mostly interact with other linguists. But there were plenty times, particularly during tech school, where we got faced with mostly arbitrary restrictions or punishments that made life less pleasant for no real gain: decrees that everyone would march together to class, negative paperwork for having a flight booked for you before your leave was finalized, so forth.
It comes with the territory. Griping about the higher-ups is the divine right of all enlisted military, and usually we'd just wind up joking about the nonsense after the fact. Ultimately not a huge deal most of the time.
Holy fuck this is a complete surprise. I was thinking you were a permanent substitute teacher. I was looking at your excessive online-ness, your lack of college credentials (speedrunning online courses), education shitposting, and "what would be the most amusing profession for someone trolling Libs-of-TikTok?"
This does raise the question of how LSAT tutoring got involved, but also seems to explain some of your distance from academia (teachers have strong financial incentives to get a Master's, usually paid for by the school, so the ties there are very strong). Also, I think it outs you as being young enough to count as a borderline zoomer.
Nah, I only subbed for a few months. Loved it when I did it, though. Quality-of-life-wise, I'd happily return.
LSAT tutoring got involved because I like tutoring, I love the LSAT, and I'm good at both. Pretty appealing route given that, and not an uncommon route for people with decent LSAT scores.
I'm just above the traditional zoomer cutoff by more-or-less every definition people use. I was born in 1995.
Yeah. That's always sort of the vision I had of it, and with that goal the danger is more present than it was with goals like I had. But the great majority of positions are support ones, not combat ones, and there's a lot the military does outside of active combat environments. Always a need for maintainers, medical, admin, etc. I'm proud of the field I was in and its role, but the military contains a very wide range of experiences and I can't pretend to speak for all or even many of them.
Really interesting & totally unexpected, Trace!
I'm a military brat and grew up on a base. My father was career Coast Guard, and the thing you mentioned about good living conditions was the selling point his brother-in-law told him about before he enlisted (paraphrase: you get to ride around in the place you sleep, and they feed you there).
The college crowd (of which I was one) has a tendency to look down on the military, but sometimes I almost wish I'd signed up myself for the college tuition. It can be a hard adjustment to civilian life -- my father's been retired since the 80s and for years when he was more physically able, he'd still talk about he wished he was still in. I think it saved him in many ways, as his father died when he was young. It gave him structure & meaning (he didn't go to college). It helped get him clean when he was an alcoholic. The guys he met there have been his friends for years, there really is a lasting camaraderie unlike any other.
Good luck as you move onto new things.
I live to surprise.
And yeah, it's a lifeline for a lot of people, and I can already see the ways it'll be difficult to replicate the structure it gives on the outside. Glad it worked out so well for your dad.
It’s funny because I was at my sisters graduation a few weeks ago and they usually give a shout out to the students with the top GPA and the college they’ll attend, and then they give a shout out to the kids who are joining the military--and the cheers/awe that the crowd gave to the military kids after each name was called was way louder than the cheers for the people going to Harvard and Yale with 4.8 GPAs. So I think the general public definitely doesn’t look down at the military--it’s just a very specific bubble that people snap out of once they actually meet members of the military.
Great article! What do you think the biggest misconception about the military is? Where I’m from, there’s only two ways to think about the military: heroes who are defending the country and should be treated with the utmost veneration; or they’re terrorists who bomb Middle East countries and drone children for oil. Do you have a different opinion of US foreign policy after joining the military vs before?
There are two major misconceptions I'd point to:
1. The prevalence of combat/operational roles. Most people who join the military end up doing administrate work, aircraft maintenance, or the like. In the Air Force, less than 5% are actual aircrew; the rest are in one support position or another.
2. The idea that enlisted pay is low or that it's a struggle to make a living in the military. In terms of the qualifications and the work you perform, you end up very well compensated and can save more-or-less as much of your paycheck as you feel like saving since your basic needs (including things like health care) are guaranteed to be covered. If I go to law school after this and count the tuition savings there as part of my income, the salary would be outrageously good for the work I did and the qualifications I had.
My opinion on US foreign policy hasn't really changed. The 'heroes vs terrorists' dichotomy is common and I've never really bought either side of it. I don't know that I have anything profound to say about it, though. I think Pax Americana is better than the other available options and a large military presence is a necessary precondition of that, but that it's come at a significant and often unnecessary cost. The people in it are people with about the same mix of good and bad as you get anywhere else. I was fortunate to have a position that let me dodge many of the moral ambiguities I see in the military writ large and one I have no substantive ethical questions about, but that was partially the result of simple luck.
There's no room for opinion. The sole reason for the American empire's military to exist is to murder and terrorize any humans who live free of its zionist masters.
Hi Trace. Something reminded me of this post today, so I came back and re-read it. I just wanted to say, I'm eagerly awaiting the rest of the series!
Thanks! Hopefully I’ll have it soon—gotta get it through DoD pre-approval after I touch the drafts up.
The more I think about it the more I realize you’re a kind of foil to Tanner Greer - he couldn’t pass medical review to join the military but stayed LDS, and for you it is the reverse
If I ever reach the stature to rightly be considered a foil to Tanner Greer, I'll be thrilled. I look up to him and his writing a lot; one of the most informed commentators around on China-related issues and an insightful, thoughtful man in general. He does the LDS church proud.
Nice intro, and I'll be looking forward to the rest of the series.
I have no military experience. My paternal grandfather was in the Navy at the tail end of WW2 as an enlisted man. In my junior year of HS I got a letter about Navy ROTC opportunities (probably completely unrelated to my grandfather's service); I talked about it very briefly with my dad who didn't seem too opposed to the idea, but I quickly gave it up. The Air Force had been my dream because I wanted to be a pilot, but I started needing glasses around 14 and figured that was the end of it. (Yes, I realize the Navy has pilots too.) Mainly, I didn't think I could handle the physical fitness requirements (I probably weighed about 275 in high school and couldn't manage to jog a mile at a time), and I also figured my mom would have a conniption fit - she wouldn't even let me play sports in high school because she was so afraid of me getting hurt.
Also, in retrospect, I would have graduated in the spring of 2001, right in time for our 20 year adventure in Afghanistan to begin, so maybe I dodged a bullet, figuratively and perhaps literally (although, again, other than Seals and aviators, not much risk for naval officers in that conflict).
I did talk to one of my professors in college, who had been in the army (Airborne), and he told me in no uncertain terms that somebody like me would have been completely miserable as an enlisted man. So I am curious to know how somebody as intelligent as you handled having to take orders from people you knew you were smarter than; hopefully the rest of the series will address this in some way.
I'll definitely touch on it, or at least adjacent to it. It's a very different dynamic for linguists than it is for most enlisted career fields, honestly—most people in the career field are quite smart and you mostly interact with other linguists. But there were plenty times, particularly during tech school, where we got faced with mostly arbitrary restrictions or punishments that made life less pleasant for no real gain: decrees that everyone would march together to class, negative paperwork for having a flight booked for you before your leave was finalized, so forth.
It comes with the territory. Griping about the higher-ups is the divine right of all enlisted military, and usually we'd just wind up joking about the nonsense after the fact. Ultimately not a huge deal most of the time.
Holy fuck this is a complete surprise. I was thinking you were a permanent substitute teacher. I was looking at your excessive online-ness, your lack of college credentials (speedrunning online courses), education shitposting, and "what would be the most amusing profession for someone trolling Libs-of-TikTok?"
This does raise the question of how LSAT tutoring got involved, but also seems to explain some of your distance from academia (teachers have strong financial incentives to get a Master's, usually paid for by the school, so the ties there are very strong). Also, I think it outs you as being young enough to count as a borderline zoomer.
Nah, I only subbed for a few months. Loved it when I did it, though. Quality-of-life-wise, I'd happily return.
LSAT tutoring got involved because I like tutoring, I love the LSAT, and I'm good at both. Pretty appealing route given that, and not an uncommon route for people with decent LSAT scores.
I'm just above the traditional zoomer cutoff by more-or-less every definition people use. I was born in 1995.
Yeah. That's always sort of the vision I had of it, and with that goal the danger is more present than it was with goals like I had. But the great majority of positions are support ones, not combat ones, and there's a lot the military does outside of active combat environments. Always a need for maintainers, medical, admin, etc. I'm proud of the field I was in and its role, but the military contains a very wide range of experiences and I can't pretend to speak for all or even many of them.