Commentators on American society often speak of the “two Americas.” America is divided, they say, between, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, blue staters and red staters, rich and poor, black and white, etc. But there is another division in the United States that is rarely, if ever, talked about—the division between those teenagers who go to college and those who join America’s armed forces.
“In words that I take no pleasure in writing or saying, what I mostly saw that day was a motley crew of seeming “dead enders” who had joined the Army because they had no option other than prison or rehab or nowheresville.”
It stands as irksome that in the second America you describe, many of these young people either had nowhere else to go, or nothing else to do, and that therefore they may as well do the one thing they can do: join the military, in hopes to increase their prospects in life. Their direct purpose isn’t to fight for one’s country out of patriotic conviction, heroic ambition, or love of the good. Instead, the purpose is for the sake of all the materials benefits one can get - like any other job. What’s troublesome is not the desire to want to improve one’s lot in life, nor wanting to do so in the context of one’s own material benefit. What is troubling is how these young people could seemingly care less about the military; the growth and personal glory it can bring to an individual. It is treated like any other ‘dirty job,’ or any other paycheck/benefits program - essentially welfarism, one signed up for begrudgingly, with one’s life. Moreover, I often hear from young people in the military that they don’t even think the military is worth it, but at the same time, a mentality of, ‘What else is there?’ ensnares upon their spirits, one you captured poignantly.
You established that the military is a place thousands of young Americans - many poor and working class - go into not for any direct care or valuing of the military itself, but for non-military based reasons of material benefit, an umbrella of what government welfarism can offer (like full college tuition for example). And yet, *hundreds* of thousands of young Americans in the first America you describe who go to college have the same mentality as well, just in a different concrete form.
I am very confident in saying that almost all young Americans who go to college go because of the conformity effect, (“Well, this is what everyone else my age does,” “What other option is there/What else is there?”) or for the sake of a well paying job. Like before, the issue isn’t to want to progress in life for the latter motivation. The issue is that these young people are in college not for colleges’ sake, but for what a piece of paper begotten after four years can afford them. Like the young military enlistees, young college enlistees are in college for indirect purposes; both sets of young people in their respective next four years not for what they can get *from* their institutions, but what they can get *out* of them. They could care less about what the *military* or *college* can bring to them - the institutional experience, the wisdom, the knowledge, the growth. Instead, what they want is either full paid tuition for college, military benefits; or, a piece of paper (the “signal” to employers) and wasteful fraternizing, like one big long four-year vacation, respectively. The only difference, again, is how this mentality of, “What else is there?” concretely takes shape, (and the fact I think that young people in the military are more honest and transparent about their mentality.)
It goes without saying, that our young people in this country are being let down by the adults in their society, in proportions that future generations will look down upon and see as one of the worst unspoken tragedies in man’s history: wasted human potential, ability, and lives on mass scales.
Take heart about your son. I was in his position almost 30 years ago. I had just graduated from a well known east coast school, with a degree in accounting, headed towards law school. I had what I call a midlife crisis at 21. I enlisted in the Infantry with a Ranger contract. After six years service, I got out and decided to go to medical school. Accepted to medical school at 30 years old, I have been practicing medicine for almost 20 years.
To this day I am more proud of my time in service than any other accomplishment. I learned how to appreciate the essentials; e.g. a warm, dry place to lay down at night, any food, and the ability to laugh during miserable conditions.
You will be amazed at the things your son will learn in the Army, lessons that are not taught in undergrad. The United States Army has over 240 years teaching young men and women how to be self reliant, self disciplined, goal oriented individuals. I believe you and your wife will be pleasantly surprised at the ways he will change and grow.
God Bless, and please tell your son, “Thank you for your service,” from someone that is now relying on the security he and his comrades provide.
While I appreciate the eventual message of your article, one critical point stuck me as profoundly short-sighted and gives short-shrift to today's enlisted military class,, so I paid the $5 monthly fee to post this comment. You wrote;
"Furthermore, these young men and women were almost certainly not the best and brightest in high school. This was the group of kids who graduated in the bottom 25% of their class, if they graduated at all. Some of them no doubt had criminal records, or they were encouraged to join the Army to avoid a criminal record."
I don't know how you've arrived at this, but this isn't the draft Army of the Vietnam era. Criminal convictions and failure to complete one's high school education almost certainly disqualify one from military service. The demands of military service in today's all volunteer force require more educational achievement, trainability, and technical understanding that at any time in history. Fully 75% of America's military aged males are unqualified to serve, due to physical, educational, or legal disqualification. Yeah, and even trigger pullers need brains in today's military.
It's true that military service is often the last good option for many young men, that they chose a path of service should indicate that the failure is not in what you describe as their dead-end existence but in the ways that the American political and corporate elite have sold these men and women's futures to the highest bidder. Many of the men you describe come from small towns that have been devastated by globalization and its resultant unemployment, substance abuse, and poverty. So yeah, brand new vehicles and business casual attire may not be anything they'd ever think necessary to prove their worth, but they do their chores, graduate, stay out of trouble, respect their parents, and worst of all, sometimes even go to church. They aren't rabble, they are the soul of the American heartland, and to describe them in the way you did - with no attempt to understand beyond what you concluded in those moments before you said your goodbye to your son - is an insult to all of them.
And so they serve. And die, and come home maimed and broken in ways we cannot immediately see. They may not have graduated from a competitive prep school, or intend to seek a life of study in "moral philosophy", but they're far better people than a lot I've met in academia, corporate America, or in all of the other places where men are afraid to get dirt under their fingernails. Go out and meet some of them before you again condemn them with such casual distain and dismissal as some kind of untermengen who, but for the military, would have had no hope for a life of fulfillment.
“In words that I take no pleasure in writing or saying, what I mostly saw that day was a motley crew of seeming “dead enders” who had joined the Army because they had no option other than prison or rehab or nowheresville.”
It stands as irksome that in the second America you describe, many of these young people either had nowhere else to go, or nothing else to do, and that therefore they may as well do the one thing they can do: join the military, in hopes to increase their prospects in life. Their direct purpose isn’t to fight for one’s country out of patriotic conviction, heroic ambition, or love of the good. Instead, the purpose is for the sake of all the materials benefits one can get - like any other job. What’s troublesome is not the desire to want to improve one’s lot in life, nor wanting to do so in the context of one’s own material benefit. What is troubling is how these young people could seemingly care less about the military; the growth and personal glory it can bring to an individual. It is treated like any other ‘dirty job,’ or any other paycheck/benefits program - essentially welfarism, one signed up for begrudgingly, with one’s life. Moreover, I often hear from young people in the military that they don’t even think the military is worth it, but at the same time, a mentality of, ‘What else is there?’ ensnares upon their spirits, one you captured poignantly.
You established that the military is a place thousands of young Americans - many poor and working class - go into not for any direct care or valuing of the military itself, but for non-military based reasons of material benefit, an umbrella of what government welfarism can offer (like full college tuition for example). And yet, *hundreds* of thousands of young Americans in the first America you describe who go to college have the same mentality as well, just in a different concrete form.
I am very confident in saying that almost all young Americans who go to college go because of the conformity effect, (“Well, this is what everyone else my age does,” “What other option is there/What else is there?”) or for the sake of a well paying job. Like before, the issue isn’t to want to progress in life for the latter motivation. The issue is that these young people are in college not for colleges’ sake, but for what a piece of paper begotten after four years can afford them. Like the young military enlistees, young college enlistees are in college for indirect purposes; both sets of young people in their respective next four years not for what they can get *from* their institutions, but what they can get *out* of them. They could care less about what the *military* or *college* can bring to them - the institutional experience, the wisdom, the knowledge, the growth. Instead, what they want is either full paid tuition for college, military benefits; or, a piece of paper (the “signal” to employers) and wasteful fraternizing, like one big long four-year vacation, respectively. The only difference, again, is how this mentality of, “What else is there?” concretely takes shape, (and the fact I think that young people in the military are more honest and transparent about their mentality.)
It goes without saying, that our young people in this country are being let down by the adults in their society, in proportions that future generations will look down upon and see as one of the worst unspoken tragedies in man’s history: wasted human potential, ability, and lives on mass scales.
Take heart about your son. I was in his position almost 30 years ago. I had just graduated from a well known east coast school, with a degree in accounting, headed towards law school. I had what I call a midlife crisis at 21. I enlisted in the Infantry with a Ranger contract. After six years service, I got out and decided to go to medical school. Accepted to medical school at 30 years old, I have been practicing medicine for almost 20 years.
To this day I am more proud of my time in service than any other accomplishment. I learned how to appreciate the essentials; e.g. a warm, dry place to lay down at night, any food, and the ability to laugh during miserable conditions.
You will be amazed at the things your son will learn in the Army, lessons that are not taught in undergrad. The United States Army has over 240 years teaching young men and women how to be self reliant, self disciplined, goal oriented individuals. I believe you and your wife will be pleasantly surprised at the ways he will change and grow.
God Bless, and please tell your son, “Thank you for your service,” from someone that is now relying on the security he and his comrades provide.
While I appreciate the eventual message of your article, one critical point stuck me as profoundly short-sighted and gives short-shrift to today's enlisted military class,, so I paid the $5 monthly fee to post this comment. You wrote;
"Furthermore, these young men and women were almost certainly not the best and brightest in high school. This was the group of kids who graduated in the bottom 25% of their class, if they graduated at all. Some of them no doubt had criminal records, or they were encouraged to join the Army to avoid a criminal record."
I don't know how you've arrived at this, but this isn't the draft Army of the Vietnam era. Criminal convictions and failure to complete one's high school education almost certainly disqualify one from military service. The demands of military service in today's all volunteer force require more educational achievement, trainability, and technical understanding that at any time in history. Fully 75% of America's military aged males are unqualified to serve, due to physical, educational, or legal disqualification. Yeah, and even trigger pullers need brains in today's military.
It's true that military service is often the last good option for many young men, that they chose a path of service should indicate that the failure is not in what you describe as their dead-end existence but in the ways that the American political and corporate elite have sold these men and women's futures to the highest bidder. Many of the men you describe come from small towns that have been devastated by globalization and its resultant unemployment, substance abuse, and poverty. So yeah, brand new vehicles and business casual attire may not be anything they'd ever think necessary to prove their worth, but they do their chores, graduate, stay out of trouble, respect their parents, and worst of all, sometimes even go to church. They aren't rabble, they are the soul of the American heartland, and to describe them in the way you did - with no attempt to understand beyond what you concluded in those moments before you said your goodbye to your son - is an insult to all of them.
And so they serve. And die, and come home maimed and broken in ways we cannot immediately see. They may not have graduated from a competitive prep school, or intend to seek a life of study in "moral philosophy", but they're far better people than a lot I've met in academia, corporate America, or in all of the other places where men are afraid to get dirt under their fingernails. Go out and meet some of them before you again condemn them with such casual distain and dismissal as some kind of untermengen who, but for the military, would have had no hope for a life of fulfillment.