I think it’s a bit of both.
Third possibility: Being from another planet, trying to understand humans is hard. We teach him the ways of our world, in the hope that he takes this info back to his planet, where they will subsequently blow up Earth.
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
I might understand it, but that would require me to conclude that life is one big joke that involves secretly planning to screw people over while preaching a set of morals that you yourself do not follow including to the ones you care about the most, such as your children.
How so?
We can start with examples. Killing is bad, but if you kill a bunch of people in the middle east to enrich the shareholders of Lockheed Martin, it’s totally okay.
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Who subscribes to that?
According to the 2004 election results, about 62 million people.
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Do you think 62 million people in 2004 were bright enough to know what exactly they were voting for? I don’t. I think a good many of them remembered seeing people leaping to their deaths as two huge buildings crumbled, killing thousands, and remember the fear that brought with it and thought that war was a noble pursuit at that time.
But regardless, there are plenty of pro-military folks who would consider themselves to be pro-peace as well.
I think sometimes you see things in maybe too black and white, if that’s possible. Decisions are not always logical, society is not always logical. People form opinions without perfect understanding. People support things they believe to be good without understanding the evil that underlies it. People are driven by fear, or lust, or hormones, or money. Life is messy and complicated.
As far as I can tell, most of the wars we entered had pretty lousy justifications. I believe if we hadn’t done the whole American Revolution thing, we would have ended up like Canada and slavery would have ended when the British Empire ended it.
I myself am anti-war, but I also can’t behind colonialism, as that is its own evil. So I don’t know about that.
code of honor is just a nice phrase for brainwashing. Because why would anyone die for their country unless they were brainwashed? It’s as simple as that.
people like to be told what to do.
and then blow people up afterwards
Huh?
Monthly pay:
Cadet: $1,186
E1: $1,650 for 4 months then $1,785
I think your service as a cadet counts towards the 4 months, so I think you’d move straight to $1,785, but I am admittedly not certain of that.
So an immediate 50% bump in pay but much lower long-term potential.
Source: https://militarybenefits.info/2021-military-pay-charts/
Unless there’s a rank lower than E1 not listed???
Eh, they’re also considered prestigious schools. At least West Point, Naval Academy, and Air Force Academy are. Not sure about the reputations of VMI and Citadel.
Acceptance rate at the Naval Academy is 8%. That’s higher than Harvard (4%) but lower than Ivy League Cornell (11%).
False equivalency.
There are a lot of poor people. Not as many smart people.
25th - 75th percentile SAT scores
1230 - 1450 Naval Academy
1400 - 1540 Cornell
Yeah, Naval Academy is lower, but those are not exactly low SAT scores, and there is considerable overlap.
Okay, and? if you are smart and you are poor, you know you can’t afford ivy leagues, so the #1 reason you’re going to naval academy is because it’s free.
If you had the money, you’d be going to cornell.
There are a lot of scholarships out there for poor people who are smart enough to get into the ivies. Some are full rides; some are only partial and they’d have to take out loans to cover the difference. But it’s doable. The ivies do not want people not going because it’s unaffordable.
It’s probably toughest, financially, for upper middle class: they’re expected to have massive parental contributions towards tuition relative to their parents income. Folks in the $125,000 - $200,000 range. They’ll not qualify for much need-based aid, but they will still struggle to write a $75,000 check every year.
What does that have to do with your disagreeing with my
We’re talking about why people go to the military, not why people do or don’t go to ivy