I got me a free coffee from Starbucks and some free breakfast from Waffle House so I got that goin’ for me.
But with all the “THANKS YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE” and all the “YOU’RE A CHILD KILLING WAR CRIMINAL WHO FOUGHT FOR OIL COMPANIES” it just is a weird fucking thing.
As most of you might be guessing, I got lied to be a recruiter when I was 17. I was graduating high school, about to turn 18, and had 0 idea what to do. My parents weren’t poor, but college without debt was absolutely out of the question for me.
The recruiter sold me on the idea of free college, an easy ass IT job, “Hey kid, most jobs in the military aren’t combat! And plus, you can go on missions which are like paid vacations!”
All that jazz, so I signed up with parental approval and by 18, I was off to basic which I cried myself to sleep every night in lol. AIT was chill tho and I got a CCNA and Sec+ cert which I 100% cheated my way through. If you ain’t cheatin’ you ain’t tryin’.
But even before combat, the work was hardly ever a ‘chill IT job’. I often was in the motorpool working on cars, taking DAYS to dispatch a fucking truck, getting snark from the mechanics, and staying way passed 1700. It was a good day and early out if you got out at 1700.
Missions were often worse. If you’re IT in the Army? You are first in, last out. If you go on a mission, it is fucking over a month as you gotta set up all the IT shit for the combat boys, ensure it works, and then tear down after they left. So while the infantry guys were on training mission for 2 weeks? I was usually there for 45 days and working daily 12 hour shifts.
I think my favorite story to tell people is this one time we got a new piece of IT equipment to field and test out. We could not get any of these shits working. I soon called up the hub and asked what the fuck and they notified us that they weren’t set up to have their satellites communicating with these things. It was an issue on THEIR end.
But our Company First Sergeant, who was a fat as fuck former infantry guy, told us “IN OUR TIME, WE TROUBLESHOT THINGS! KEEP FUCKING TRYING AND STOP WITH YOUR SORRY ASS EXCUSES!” This was a like month and a half time in my life where we would show up to work at 0600 and leave usually around 2100 or 2200. 1SG later came out to let us know it was an issue with the hub and not on us. Thank you first sergeant, very cool.
But then what of combat? I was in Iraq in 2019 around the time COVID was hittin’. We weren’t allowed to leave post and working daily 12 hour shifts except for Sunday where you’d get a half day if you were either religious or lucky. We slept in shipping containers with constant AC going because the government, and I think it was the Iraq government and not the US, said it was cheaper.
My job was literally just going into a closet for 12 hours a day and using a shitty ass laptop to oversee the network and make sure things were good so some general could check their email or something. I don’t know, I just did as I was told. Sometimes we’d get calls from people about their account or printers or shit.
We were only in Iraq because the locals got really fucking pissed at us and we were worried they’d run us out and take over, so we moved over to Kuwait which was fine. Same shit, mostly but I was moved over to an office instead of a closet but my job was about the same. We weren’t shelled that often and it was usually the Embassy that ISIS would attack, but when the holidays rolled around it was every fucking day. I worked night shift, so I’d be asleep during the day and hearing all of it. Earplugs never worked.
I remember coming back and we were told no celebration would be had due to COVID, so we all just got in our cars and drove off. Work was more of the same, but working 12 hours a day, daily for 6 months, evacuating, and then doing it again for another like 3 months? I was worn out.
I was a big fan of Alpharad back in the day, and I heard his song Silver Lining by his band Ace of Hearts and cried. The song is about an abusive relationship and I realized I am in one with the Army.
They ask everything of you, to be better than your absolute best, and if you get hurt or fall apart, you get mocked for it. Asked why YOU let it happen when they grind you into the dust.
And then coming out of it all, again you either get “THANKS FOR YOUR SERVICE” or “YOU WAR CRIMINAL” as if all I am is who I was. A desperate 17/18 year old who wanted to afford college.
And yet, I can’t really vent. Weirdly, as abusive as the Army is it will give you everything you want. I got IT certs for free, I got a degree for free, I always had a place to sleep, I always had food, I always had a paycheck, and I always had work to do. I made some amazing friends in the Army, one of whom nabbed me a pretty good contractor job.
I still play games with some of my friends I made in the Army, and yet I carry a certain weight with me. I want people to just see me, but “SOLDIER FOR LIFE” and it fucking sucks. I’m not very hooah. I’m progressive and I have a transgender girlfriend. And yet even with that, I think of Barry Winchell. A fellow US Army soldier who in 1999 was murdered because he had a transgender girlfriend too.
And then trying to get a new job, every company says they support their veterans, but I have heard, 3 times now, my IT experience in the Army isn’t applicable to what they are looking for. I am far from the only one hearing this. My friend who worked Supply got told by a warehouse his Army experience working in a warehouse didn’t translate. Turns out this happens a lot. They say they support you and stab you in the fucking back.
I dunno, man. It is just weird being a veteran. I am happy for as much I feel guilty for. I hate the virtue signaling praise but hate the scorn more of people calling me a war criminal. I am so grateful for the friends I made while in and detest how people who didn’t serve can’t seem to get it.
I dunno, just talking generally. Anyone else here someone who served? The free waffles and coffee were nice.
Iʻll pop in because I served. And Iʻve also done a lot of organizing with other left wing veterans. But weʻ aint got a waffle house around here and Iʻm working while responding so only can go for so long.
My service, US Navy, Submarines, Sonar. Did most of my time, then tried to take my own life. Boat kept getting into “incidents” underway. Was pretty confident we weren’t going to make it back if we went out again. Ended up with my honorable discharge, all that. A few weeks/ months later this happened. Really fucked with my head. Was homeless/ insecure for about 5 years after the navy.
Why I joined? Iʻve been thinking about that a lot lately. I didnʻt have the words for it, but yeah, in retrospect, it was that I wanted access to the basic aspects of socialism. I had an irregular path in that I had been doing community college in HS because school would pay for it. I ended up graduating early, and coming from a family where dad didnʻt graduate highschool, no on in family or even extended family had ever been to anything higher than HS, I didnʻt like, I didnʻt know how things worked. It never occurred to me I could just apply to college and get in. All my family had ever done was labor. Like it was considered an accomplishment that I had never had any issues with the police (which was really just me being more clever and not getting caught).
So Iʻm 16, in San Diego, walking down the streets a friend, and literally, two sailors in dress whites rolled up in a car and said “Hey hop in, weʻll buy you tacos”. And so we just did. And they made good in that they bought us both taco plates, and then dropped us off at the ASVAB testing center with our tacos. Recruiter had me take the exam, and offered me a 10 grand signing bonus on the spot after seeing my scores. Gave me two options. Sonar tech or crypto tech.
Thinking back on it, my calculus. There was no place for me at home once I had my HS diploma. That had been well established. We were a 7 person family in a 2 bedroom house. Navy offered me 3 hots and a cot. It offered me a pay check. It offered me a cash bonus that was like, life changing money for a 16/17 yo kid in the year 2001. If I served, Iʻd have guaranteed access to school, medicine, subsidized loans for housing. I donʻt fault the calculus 16 yo me did to arrive at the conclusion they landed at. It made sense, in that the choice was basically to abandon any real hope of college, which, was actually my dream to be a scientist, or go do this thing for a few years, go get paid to do some training, gather some skills, etc, and college will be there when you waiting. The kids math checks out.
We limit access to socialism to force people into military service in the form of a poverty draft. There was no place for me at home once I had my HS diploma. That had been well established. We were a 7 person family in a 2 bedroom house. The US keeps its social safety system in tatters because if not, it would not be able to feed its military industrial complex with fresh blood. This is where the real opposition to social democracy comes from.
I really put aside my veterans identity for a long time. In my time in the streets I rolled with black block, gutter punks, FnBʻs, many many punk houses. Did drugs, helped people, participated in direct action, helped build earth ships. It gave me a chance to re-assess my identify and reconfigure. And when my father finally ended up having a complete mental break down in 2008/2009 (sure fucking sucked to be self-employed in labor back then), I was put back together enough to actually help my sisters get through that. I had reconstituted enough to be there for them. I ended up moving back to my home town, and helped build the anarchist scene that might have helped steer me when I was a kid. Built a FNBʻs chapter, community spaces for punk bands/ reggae bands, DIY. Eventually even got my benefits activated and went back to college. Iʻm even a scientist now.
I think the benefits of entering the military should be available to everyone, as part of the basic function of a society. The things you get access to through services are the things everyone should have access to as a basic form of socialism. The US Military and the US veterans experience is a proof that socialism works in the US and that actually, Americans love socialism. However, I also think service is important. And Iʻve had conversations with people from European social democracies on this (Norway, Sweden, Switzerland). And I think that its important, especially when weʻre young, to put in time serving “something”, because it builds a sense of pride and ownership in that thing. And also, you genuinely donʻt know shit when you are young. Its good to have some time to figure things out. We shouldn’t be pressuring kids at 17 to make hard, committed decisions to career paths.
Iʻve speculated on the idea of like a 2 year service requirement, available once you hit 16, and to be completed before the age of 26. However that is 👉 NOT 👈 military service. Americore should count, and we need to revive/ re-institute the work corp systems we had in the 1920ʻs. Two years of trail building, teaching in low income communities, habitat restoration, teaching ESL, building houses, I mean the list of things kids in that age group could be doing is endless. Two years of service, you get paid (poorly) and housed and fed the whole time. And after that you have full access to ALL of the benefits we currently offer veterans. Now I only say speculating, because I actually donʻt like this idea. I think all of these programs should be FREE and UNIVERSAL, regardless. But I think that we have an issue where we treat the government and the work necessary to keep the country going as something “someone else” does, and not something we as citizens do. I think not enough people think of the state of the government and think, “this is something I have ownership of and that Iʻm responsible for”. And I think if people had the sense that the parks, the government, the things we all depend on were more materially theirs, weʻd take better care of them and therefore each other.
This took to long to write and will probably end up getting buried. But there it is.