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the military begins recruiting ‘soldiers’ before they grow out of their booster seat

four year olds have toy guns and green army men

by grade school you’ve memorized the star spangled banner and the pledge of allegiance

in middle school you’re old enough to play first person shooters set in war times. you and your friends brag about how many kills you have, what guns are your favorite

in high school, rotc comes to visit. you get letters in the mail detailing scholarship and housing opportunities you could have

and if you’re poor or unsure of your future or in love with the idea of ‘protecting your country’ like the men in call of duty

every branch of the military has a sponsored blog on here because they want everyone 13 and up to know that soldiers are heroes and they should join them

To those of you who were wondering, this is a very US-specific post. What gets done to you guys is terrifying, and it’s really unfair.

Ah yes I remember how the different military branches visited my high school at multiple times throughout the year and set up their little pull up bars and had little competitions and the strong little ones got lanyards so the recruiters could pick them out

I dont even know if you’re joking or not

We’re not

We’re really not. What’s super terrifying, that I learned in my kinetic imaging major, is that our military actually hires game designers to design video games promoting our military, and markets them to kids as young as ten or twelve. Our government made friggin reality TV shows out of taking high schoolers and teaching them about the “awesome shit” that they could do for the military.
We watched one of the episodes in my Critical Media class, and it made me so physically ill that I actually had to leave the classroom and heave over the toilet while sobbing my eyes out.

This level of propaganda can and does lead to violence even amongst said children. Ask any Puerto Rican child that’s ever refused to say the “pledge of allegiance” (that’s the real name for what most kids are asked to recite every day before school starts) what happens to them exclusively via the other children who consider this blasphemy.

I took the ASVAB (an intelligence test that the military uses to see which branch you would do best in) as a joke in 10th grade to see who would score higher, myself or my boyfriend. He scored a 91, I scored a 93. The next thing I knew, I had recruiters calling my house and visiting my school. I was pulled out of class to talk to recruiters who came to my school specifically to see me. One recruiter from the Marines showed up at my house after school. When I told him that my mother wasn’t home and I wouldn’t allow him inside he tried to push open the door and said “That’s okay, she doesn’t have to be here for us to talk.” I had to tell him numerous times that I would not talk to anyone without my mother present. Then he sat in his car and waited for her to come home. Keep in mind that I am an overweight female and these recruiters were still trying to get me to sign. They were talking about special diets and training programs that would get me in shape in time for my 18th birthday so I could join. It was ridiculous. My mom said that she had never seen anything like it, and she had scored a 92 during college when she had taken it. (Then again, she had joined the Air Force almost immediately after taking the test, because that was her dream.) Shit is scary.

Oh god yes this brings back memories. I took the ASVAB on a lark to skip classes. I scored a 92 and my GOD the effort they put in to try and recruit me… This was pre 9/11 when I did it, but afterwards (post 9/11) they got WORSE. They told me whatever I wanted to do for a career they could help me but they were so PUSHY they freaked me out. I hid whenever I saw the recruiting staff on campus

I started getting a recruiter contacting me when I was 26 goddamn years old, while married to a PTSD’d out twice deployed vet. 

Eventually I responded to an email with “I’m fat, asthmatic and married to a human y’all ruined so leave me the fuck alone” and he did. 

At the same time he started sending my then husband letters about how they were going to call him back to service if he didn’t re-up in the National Guard (who also get deployed to the Middle East), which is actually a lie. nevertheless, my ex was terrified he’d get brought back in and burned all the letters so there’d be no record of him receiving them. 

Turns out that recruiter won a bunch of awards in the state for his recruitment statistics. Interesting ways he went about it, huh?

the marines kept calling my house and mailing things to me and my little sister (who is 12) trying to get us to sign up and my mom finally had to talk on the phone to the dude and tell him that i was a chronically ill trans kid and i would not nor would i ever be joining the us military and they finally quit calling

ive also been singled out and yelled at by multiple teachers in school for refusing to stand and say the pledge of allegiance over the years, told things like i was disrespectful and was a traitor to my country and whatnot. its especially bad and military-centric in the south (i currently live in NC). If you dont live in the us, look up the words to the pledge of allegiance. its vaguely reminiscent of Nazi propaganda, and they start children saying it every day from age 5. how many 5 year olds know what they are saying and agreeing to? none of them, thats how many.  

My high school required us to take the asvab. For two years afterwards I received near daily calls from the air force.

jeez. i went to school in ny and had a really liberal teacher in 5th grade who would drop little comments about discrimination against illegal immigrants, maybe we shouldn’t say “God” in the pledge, etc. and if he hadn’t made those comments i wouldn’t have thought twice about these things even though i wasn’t religious and was reciting a pledge involving “God” every day. by hs, everyone just stood and listened to the pledge without reciting it, and we never had crazy military recruitment. did get the west point letters in the mail though

I went to school in NY too and that’s where I took the ASVAB my senior year of high school and got letters from all the branches because I did so well. Specifically, the Air Force Academy wanted me real bad lol. You get the stuff about the military all the time in school. But I was an Army brat so I got it double you know? 

At both New York Comic Cons I’ve been to, the Armed Forces have a big booth set up with a bunch of video games that Con-goers can try out – and a recruiter conveniently sitting right there in case anyone wants to sign up.

In my after-school class, one of my students is now an official recruit and has already missed class twice to attend his army events. 

I got several calls from the Marines when I was in High School. It was like they were boys trying to ask me put on a date, just chatting with me about myself and what I was interested in. Thankfully I still had my deathly fear of intimacy with men so I eventually emphasized my asthma to get them to leave me alone.
But now in the cold light of 10 years later, that was some grooming shit. Making me feel like a special kid. Preying on a 16 year old girl. Fuck that.

This is fucking terrifying. No wonder conservative American governments are so furiously opposed to free/affordable college, housing and healthcare – if poor kids had access to all that stuff as a matter of routine, then what the fuck would the army have left to bribe them with?

I scored really high on the ASVAB tests to! They were REQUIRED in my school as a graduation standard! Without taking them, you weren’t allowed to get your diploma!

I ended up almost going into the Marine’s because I was in a really abusive home place, and the only reason I didn’t is because my birth defect showed up during a physical!

It’s really terrifying!

I go to a Montessori school so thankfully no recruiters ever go there, but all three times I’ve gone to a local high school for standardized testing there have been little sections asking if I’d like to learn more about the opprotunities available to me in the army. Plus, when I went to sign up for the PSAT I was given a whole magazine thing telling me about all the “great creative things!” I could do if I signed up. It was geared towards everyone from athletes to kids who liked photography and I remember being just kind of amused by it at the time, but looking back…it’s actually really creepy.

This is horrifying.