I wanted to join the military, and you should know

Year was 2004. I was freshly graduated from a private East Coast of the USA university. A tuition I'd only much, much later learned that my dad had paid off.

And I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life or my future. What I did know was that I was fairly unhappy and angry and sad a lot. In a post-9/11 US world, I didn't really know where the jobs were going to be anymore. So I started looking into joining the military. Both Army and Marines. Had I actually joined Army I probably would've figured out how to do Army Special Forces.

My reasons were:

-Guaranteed job after 9/11

-Opportunity to learn Arabic, especially Iraqi and/or Gulf Arabic, which would've been useful for business skills later (at least, this was my rationale)

- I was kinda dudebro metal so it fit my personality

-I'll be vague about this one for reasons, but if you do some digging into why AFAB people join the military specifically, it was adjacent to that.

And I have to say, this was so weird. I don't come from a military or particularly pro-war family. As you might've gathered from above, I'll keep this Prozac Nation-y enough to let you conclude that at least one of my parents has a job in the "professional" class, to the point where they could've paid off undergrad.

And yet I was kinda directionless, like AJ in "The Sopranos." I thought that jumping into something like the military would give me a purpose, actually tangible job skills and cooler languages than I spent time learning in undergrad.

The time after graduation is a vulnerable time for a person. I've always felt like it was less infinite horizons and more like the walls of adulthood closing in on you. Life feeling more urgent. Dustin Hoffman's character floating on the bottom of the pool in "The Graduate."

I didn't end up joining. I did end up drifting, kind of aimless. I was able to move out of my mom's, which was a huge priority. I eventually went to grad school, pursuing advancement of work I'd started in undergrad. I never got into US intelligence. I never bombed the distant cousins of someone I ended up becoming friends with later.

I'm mostly happy I didn't join, but sadly part of me thinks I would've been really good at it. One of my strengths has always been knowing the cruelty and lack of humanity I am capable of. After all, my family are survivors, and you don't get that way by being nice. I was taught that one doesn't get anywhere by being nice. I have had to unlearn this survivor's mentality in adulthood, or at least have tried to. I don't know how much it's worked.

I carry this weight around a lot, especially because everyone I know is antiwar. Also now in my life (as well as when I was a teen) I know many SWANA people and this is obviously violent towards them. As I said, I could've taken out someone's cousin. Hell, I also could've gotten kicked out for doing gay stuff before Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed (should I run for US federal office now? Tense laughter.)

---

It's Memorial Day today. The day specifically for people in the US military who didn't make it home. I heard of a person or two like that. Moreso I met veterans, and I'm really upset at the ongoing cuts that the VA constantly seems to experience. I'm furious at how women and trans/GNC veterans are treated.

I don't like war, but it also seems like a thing that big/rich countries just do. It's one of those Medieval things that still happens in the world that confuses me. I remember learning about nukes when I was 9, and I was really upset, and didn't understand why anyone would want a weapon like that, anywhere. But I also don't know whether it's reasonable to hope that we stop any of this in our lifetimes. On the plus side, I think we might be losing our taste for violence. At the same time, social media normalizes it. We watch genocides and consume rage bait on tiny screens like how housewives used to pop pills back in the day.

Also at the same time, AI is worsening the process of how we receive conflict as individuals, and is suggesting that frictionless interactions with others on the day-to-day are the only good ones. And I think that's actually really bad. Inability to lean into quotidian conflict is probably making wars more likely on the macro, somehow.

As we refuse to do much about climate change on the global level, water wars and resource wars will become pretty much the underlying motive for all global conflicts. I often hear my very Left-leaning anti-genocide crowd bang the drum of how one group systemically dehumanizes others and that's what leads to genocides. Sure. But I think what's even deeper underneath that is access to stuff. More or less everything is a resource war. So is intranational authoritarianism. And I don't really care if that's reductive. The sad part is that we could fix this. All of this. We could probably make something where we didn't have to have this level of global conflict. We could probably do a thing that wasn't like Thucydides trap or abolish or revamp the UN and NATO. I've always been a radical in this regard, but not the cool, mainstream, leftist kind. The kind that just sounds like a wingnut on the edge of society suggesting stuff that will never work, that is not particularly in alignment with any party or school of thought. Or maybe it's accidentally Leftist. I don't really know or care.

---

I'm not really sure what the takeaway of this blog was supposed to be. Nihilism of the self leads to harming others? Oh, probably. Being matter-of-fact about war is a tacit endorsement? Yeah probably.

I guess I just wanted the people in my life to know who I am. I don't know that I'm humane or intelligent anymore. I don't think I'm above what internet culture ruined for everyone. Despite that private university education, I am still some schmuck. Iraqis and Afghanis are dead and now their women are being tortured. Kids are getting killed in Gaza constantly.

Nihilism helps it chug forward. The lottery of the country/region you were born in dictates whether you live or die. Flowers bloom as Sudanese women are raped and trans kids are getting bullied or losing their medical care. It was still a gamble as to whether your friend who joined the military in 2004 would make it back home, or if they did, in any liveable condition.

I've had this sense since the Very Online era, that if we perform our humaneness, our conscientiousness enough, it will win a propaganda battle of convincing. It will be our own better angel. It will model medical masking so we don't worsen a pandemic. It will emanate out in love-waves and really affect something, Age of Aquarius-style.

And maybe somewhere on the cellular level, it is. I don't know. I always have to be humble enough to say "I don't know" rather than "it's just bad and will stay that way." But I still don't know.

---

Part of me didn't mind, at the time, if I'd come home in a box. Tiny drop in a bucket. Nothing compared to genocides and carpet bombings. Nothing compared to seeds or specks of dirt or mycelium. Just a blip.

Honestly, I would've been ok with it. Sometimes, you just have to say you had a good run, and throw in the towel. I feel that way about humanity sometimes. People say this is ecofascistic, anti-Global Majority People, nihilistic. Yeah. I am that. In this moment, I am that. We should all learn to say things like this matter-of-factly.

The best we can hope for is that we had a good run. But not all deaths are Good. To some, your passing will have much, much less value than that of a silly famous person. That still makes me smile, from time to time.

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