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.
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. 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. But it was free and I got paid around $3k a month 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.