Today especially has been pretty brutal. I see my dad for the first time in months and he dominates the conversation about his vitriolic hatred of Trump and anyone who supports him, calling them idiots. My girlfriend is sweet and nice but even knowing how I lean she can't help but say that she wants to go rip up Trump signs in front of people's houses and kill "transphobes". I've tried to curate my Twitter to be exclusively about my favorite game and content creators, but even after muting about two dozen political words and phrases it's just a bloody shouting match. It feels like the only time I'm not walking in a minefield is when I'm talking to a subsection of a group of friends who just like playing games. I went to cognitive behavioral therapy a few weeks ago, and it was really helpful, but even the positive thinking strategies that were effective just a few days ago aren't helping anymore. I don't feel suicidal, but I don't feel like living anymore. The two options of where I can live in the near future is chock full of people who have an open disdain/hatred for my thinking. Am I such a wretched human being for thinking that Trump's policies would be more economically sound and fair than Biden's? I apologize if this isn't the place to rant like this but how do I get past something like this?
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Have you considered joining the military? particularly the Marine Corps?
Even before the Left-wing craziness that envelops the country today, I had to deal with a lot of shit being a Bush supporter. It was similar to now where the media basically just shat on him 24/7 and society just demonized anyone who supported him. Not as extreme as now, but similar.
So I decided to put my money where my mouth was and enlisted. Since I supported a President that got us into a war. It was only fair I fight in that war.
Turns out the Marine Corps is based as fuck, and around 2014-2015 when there were talks of Trump running for President until I got out in 2017. It was basically one massive MAGA rally.
Once I was out, dealing with the negativity was pretty easy. I was so much more mentally resilient from the Marine Corps that it's just funny watching people rage at you for expressing your opinion. Especially knowing too that if they decided to swing at you, you could probably demolish them with ease.
I respect our veterans and I sincerely thank you for your service to our nation.
However, sadly the wars that America fights these days are not to protect our nation's interests.
Why should anyone of us risk fighting unnecessary wars in the Middle East for Israel's benefit?
The Military Industrial Complex is who benefits from our soldiers fighting these wars.
I love our veterans and the enlisted who sign up to fight but I feel they are being exploited by corrupt generals and the MIC.
See here's the thing, the military is a job. If you're gonna take a job for ideological reasons then that's on you. But the biggest reason for me joining was financial, in addition to me wanting to own up to my beliefs.
Realistically, I wasn't in danger all that often. In all the years I was in. The times I was in real danger I could probably condense to a few days tops, probably even just hours really. The majority of my time in the military I spent mainly working out, playing video games, or cleaning. Training surprisingly takes up a pretty short amount of your time and deployments are just really long stretches of boredom and paranoia, with brief moments of chaos.
This was back in the early 2000s too when the war was in full swing. Now deployments even for infantry units are mainly booze cruises(MEU'S) across the Pacific, Mediterranean/Red Sea or a Black Sea rotation. If you're really unlucky you get sent on a UDP to Okinawa and you basically pretend you're in Nam for 6 months. Shit sucks.
But overall, the military was a great gig especially if you come from a poorer background. You get money for college and other life long skills and benefits. You form lifelong friendships that transcend even familial relationships. Yes, obviously there's the risk of dying or getting injured. But you know that going in, so if you're willing to risk it for the biscuit. Then it's not a bad deal. This is also assuming you're even a combat arms MOS, to begin with. I went infantry so this applied to me. The vast majority of the military never sees combat, heck a lot of people never even leave the US, to begin with. To those guys, it's basically a civilian job in uniform. They get the same exact pay and benefits as we grunts did, minus the combat pay now though. That one I think changed under Obama, if you're not actually in combat, you don't get that extra pay bump.
When it was all said and done and I got out. I got my GI Bill and free healthcare from the VA(this VA is trash but at least I didn't have to worry about healthcare emergencies) & preferential hiring due to my veteran status. The Post 911 GI Bill is straight-up unfairly good. If you're actually serious about your education, you can basically get to go to any university not only for free but actually, get paid for it. I had friends that ended up going to Berkely and other really prestigious state universities and in addition to their GI Bill benefits, were getting tens of thousands in state and federal education grants. I had a bunch of C's when I took some college courses prior to enlisting so I only got accepted to the lower tier state universities, so the state and federal grants I got were also peasant tier. I think a friend of mine who went to UCI was getting like $18k in grants annually while I only got $6k. But it was free and I got paid around $3k a month from my regular GI Bill just to be a student. So I didn't have to worry about student loans while I was getting my degree and had a pretty decent amount of drinking/party money.
But yeah, if you look at it from an ideological perspective. Then sure MIC or whatever might be a turn-off. But looking at it from a self-improvement and upward mobility opportunity standpoint. Hands down the best decision I made.
I am glad to hear that it worked out well for you personally!
I completely agree with you that it can be potentially good from a self-improvement and upward mobility opportunity standpoint.
What gets to me is that I have read too many stories of soldiers losing their lives in these wars or coming back severely wounded or coming back with PTSD.
I think that after reading Major General Smedley Butler's War is a Racket, my mind is set on only being pro-veteran and pro-enlisted but anti-war and definitely against the current generals and MIC who seek to create more and more war for their profit and to benefit Israel.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure I got my money’s worth from Israel. My last deployment we stopped by Israel for some urban warfare training. So we were there for several weeks. The USD to Sheckel(Shmeckles as we called it) was pretty good.
Also did you know their military is has a lot of women in it? Really attractive women. That we got to know pretty well. Honestly wouldn’t be surprised if I had some half goyim running around in Tel Aviv.
Join the woke corps (compete with females and SHART training) to get killed on the inevitable war that is coming?
I would advise against that. Find a hobby, travel if you can but dint sell yourself to the state. Not to mention the job prospects after are poor. Marines literally staff gas stations.
I was in an infantry unit so wokeness was next to non existent for me. Maybe in super POG fields like admin that’s a thing but I never saw it. Is SHART the no rape training in other branches? We called it SAPR and it was basically these hilarious videos of what would happen if you picked the messed up option in those dating sim games.
I mean if you’re stupid going in, you’re gonna be stupid coming out. So it’s not like those people wouldn’t have been anything different even without enlisting