Study: 77% of young Americans too fat, mentally ill, on drugs to join military
americanmilitarynews.com
americanmilitarynews.com
2. Basically any diagnosis of a mental health condition, like ADHD, will block military service. This is true even if symptoms are well managed without medication. The rise of diagnosis of these conditions combined with digital records means a lot of people are prohibited to join due to mental health that would have been overlooked in previous decades.
3. This serves as the official excuse for why recruitment numbers are down. IMO recruitment numbers are down because Iraq/Afghanistan was such a shitshow.
What I want to know is do people “without adhd” also feel the sense of peace and calm with a cessation of the need to constantly fidget and move?
Alcohol: It includes a level of alcohol abuse, but I'm not sure how they draw the line.
Yeah, I think you'd find that to be a problem.
If you admit to ever using LSD or psychedelics, even one time, you will be automatically disqualified from serving in the military or law enforcement (go figure).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziqpwkhqTRs
( Likely also true for other countries, eg: USofA, etc )
Why shouldn’t they be marching the soldiers?
If nothing else, the double edged sword application of chemical weapons was well known at this point.
Making an incapacitated enemy dead: Easy.
Making a dead civilian/ally un-dead: Necromancy.
Is this documented anywhere? I have gone on a psilocybin retreat and have considered a career in the air force in the distant future.
I'd be curious about some documentation too, but I suspect it's one of those things where a person who enjoys the odd psychedelic now and again is a poor cultural fit for the military, though the Air Force is by all accounts the least militant branch of the military from what I can tell. Certainly my grandfather had a good career there and he was about the least disciplinarian or serious person (personality speaking I mean; he did a good job as an officer and electrical engineer by any account) you'd ever meet. He certainly spoke highly of the Air Force and said on a few occasions that it helped him to meet one of his major life goals; to make more money retired than working.
GPT5 or 6 can just get this data with a simple question in the near future.
Well how many hits do you need to understand that everything we do could be construed as a game?
So many people I knew had waivers for random things I think it’s kind of a joke they’re saying they have to “lower” standards now or whatever.
Also, China doesn’t consider mental illness a thing (depression, bipolar disorder and so on)
And they are not transparent
The military is a shitshow. The messaging alienated it's core recruitment base, namely white and black teenagers and young men. It alienates young American men in general, but those demographics in particular are historically the core of America's fighting force. Having to balance domestic recruitment PR to be politically correct while also wanting to reach tough young men and entice them is an impossible task.
It's a giant jobs program. People in the military can tell you, it's devolved from just being rules/procedures based chain of command, to being a full blown Brazil-esque (the movie) busybody bureaucracy.
Can you explain what you mean by this? I feel like you're referring to something obliquely but I don't have the context.
I wouldn't say racist (?? Black and white men fighting together are racist?) mysoginists, but tough men that aren't posterboys for your designated driver would probably be a good description.
If you want a competent fighting force, you have to appeal to tough young men. You don't do that by putting a dude in a dress on your promo material, to put it crassly. Men don't want to go into an environment supposedly to "get shit done" only to have to file paperwork and tippytoe on eggshells with everything they do or say. You don't have to like it but these are the facts. The military gets weaker when you alienate the most able bodied in your society, it's pretty straightforward.
What you describe is what Russia wants and needs. Look how well that is working out for them.
The military gets stronger by having a disciplined, smart fighting force. Not some frat-house where being "manly" is the only requirement.
If anything, alcohol is far worse than cannibas. Time will tell what effects it has on the wider population, but keep in mind cannibas use has been pretty wide spread for centuries and has been legal in many places in the US for over a decade.
For cannabis specifically it's worth also mentioning in many places you can consume it without interacting with criminals or being at risk of negative law enforcement interactions. This makes it socially softer than the illegal drugs.
He stated that military recruitment is highly sensitive to unemployment rates. Unemployment is very low now, especially for entry level and service roles that would hire an unskilled 18 year old.
However, if you think the country's leaders are going to send you off to get killed in poorly thought-out and reckless adventures for dubious reasons, then giving up those rights starts looking less and less attractive. Given that's what happened in Afghanistan (which was somewhat justifiable, but could have been a six-month operation, rather than a 20-year one) and Iraq (completely unjustifiable, an epic disaster), it's not surprising that economic desperation is now the main motivator for military recruiting, nor is it surprising that applicants coming from that background aren't in the best mental or physical health.
Step one in regaining trust would involve purging the government and military leadership of the architects of the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, although that seems unlikely at present - these are the same neocon ideologues who are vigorously opposing a negotiated settlement in eastern Ukraine while also pushing for military confrontation with China.
I mean sure, less Americans died but the gulf war reportedly caused 180k permanently disabled US soldiers, mostly PTSD I believe.
And the Vietnam war was pretty notorious for being bad for the US.
It seems to me every generation got a reckless and dubious war, tho the war on terror was insanely bad.
I don’t fully understand what you mean with ‘negotiated settlement’.
All I know is these ‘negotiating’ strategies don’t work with tyrannical regimes. Germany tried and failed. Trying to bring in China into the world economy also didn’t seem to make them give up their hunger to swallow Taiwan.
The mindset of these dictators is different… see Bill Browder’s writings on this subject.
Can we imagine such a scenario applied to a Western nation? Imagine if the US Civil War ended up with a "stub Confederacy"-- a few counties in Virginia still answering to Jefferson Davis. Or if one German state decided to carry on as the DDR after 1990. Now reinforce this by having major world powers declare an effectively limitless economic and military backstop to preserve this remnant-- pretty explicitly as a counter to the "victorious" nation's increasing power and importance.
It would be a festering political issue for decades if not longer, no matter how many political and economic favours were splashed to "make up" for it.
> it can be read as the slow-motion failure to finish the prosecution of a very "internal" political process.
This is just propaganda to lay support for irredentism. The Chinese civil war ended long ago and this process is certainly not "internal" by any means. That is just made up to make the PRC's current push to annex the ROC more palatable. It's easier to sell it that way than explaining to the mainland populace the truth that its simply an unnecessary war of conquest.
I will admit to having only a highly cursory knowledge of the history, but I was under the impression the PRC/ROC split was directly connected to the ascendance of the Communists; they drove the Nationalists to the sea but were unable to achieve a complete surrender because their enemies remained holed up in Taiwan.
How can you say "an independent Taiwan must be preserved" without making it sound to both the Chinese state and people like "You can never finish the job your grandparents started?" or worse yet "you sold out our national pride and honour for shiny economic baubles?"
> I will admit to having only a highly cursory knowledge of the history, but I was under the impression the PRC/ROC split was directly connected to the ascendance of the Communists; they drove the Nationalists to the sea but were unable to achieve a complete surrender because their enemies remained holed up in Taiwan.
> How can you say "an independent Taiwan must be preserved" without making it sound to both the Chinese state and people like "You can never finish the job your grandparents started?" or worse yet "you sold out our national pride and honour for shiny economic baubles?"
My post was pretty short and (I'd claim) quite clear. When did I say "an independent Taiwan must be preserved"?
He may be thinking of the agreement that Putin and Zelensky almost came to in the 2nd week of the war. The Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, initiated contact between the leaders and thinks they were nearly at a settlement when Washington/London intervened to block it. (From about time 2:20:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK9tLDeWBzs)
Especially when this game was already played before in 2014.
> "The Mexican-American War was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its territory..." (wiki)
Of course it's equally clear Ukrainian-speaking western Ukraine wants nothing to do with Moscow, so this points to where a negotiated settlement could draw a new geopolitical boundary.
Meanwhile, the USA has military forces in Syria supporting the Kurdish population, which doesn't seem to want to be ruled by Assad. How is that really any different (the geopolitical economics in that case appears mostly about not allowing Syria and Iran to cooperate economically and militarily, incidentally).
Let's try to have an adult-level understanding of these conflicts, not the propaganda-for-gullible-children version of events and motivations.
Ok but to complete the scenario, the US would have needed to annex all of Mexico to be comparable right? That's what Russia is trying to do.
> the propaganda-for-gullible-children version
The adult version should include the extensive sowing of dissent, military support, and ethnic cleansing that occurs prior to asking those which country they want to belong to.
Please stop pushing absurd Russian propaganda talking points about US "preventing" Russia from signing peace agreement in Ukraine. If you are incapable of finding continuous statements of Russian officials that goals of "special military operation" remains the same (including "demilitarization" and "denazification" of Ukraine), then I can provide you with plenty of them. Also, you can verify on the map that Russian appetites in Ukraine are increased for much more than the east. And no, they said multiple times that they are not prepared to relinquish they claims on southern parts and of course Crimea.
The reality is that if Putin had taken the deal offered in 2003 (Exxon buying >50% of Russian oil production) or had even signed onto petrodollar recycling, then the US media and Congress and the White House would be no more interested in a Russian land grab in eastern Ukraine (with the support of the Russian-speaking population) then in Yemen, they might even call it 'a justified intervention against neo-Nazi militias' or something like that.
The solution for Europe is of course to take neither Russian nor US gas, but instead eliminate fossil fuel dependency by massive investment in renewable energy (which is possible if more difficult than many realize). I don't think that's a "Russian propaganda talking point" though, and the US propaganda machine doesn't want this outcome either.
A lot depends on what the local population wants, I think. The Vietnamese population didn't want to be ruled by a puppet government controlled by France the USA, hence the active armed resistance to the French and US miltary occupation (1950s-1970s). The Afghan population didn't want to be ruled by the Soviet Union, or by the United States, hence the active resistance to Russian control in the 1980s and to American control in the first two decades of this century.
Now, you could say the Americans in Vietnam tried to rape and beat the population into submission to imperial rule, and that the Soviets tried to do that in Afghanistan, and that's called wartime propaganda. The actual goals of both of those occupations were fundamentally economic in nature, but that's a taboo subject (starting a war for economic gain being a Class A War Crime in terms of international legal precedents).
It does seem pretty clear however that the Russian-speaking eastern Ukrainian/Crimean population doesn't want to be ruled by Kyiv, doesn't it? So just draw a new border and end the conflict.
Umm, my dude, are you sure you are not familiar with typical Russian propaganda talking points as you declared in your previous reply? You seem to regurgitate them all too well to be honest with you!
So, first of all, as a person with half of my family coming from one the towns in eastern Ukraine that has been occupied occupied since 2014: No, it is absolutely not clear that the population of those regions that were there in 2014 "don't want to be ruled by Kyiv". By now, yes, people who didn't like the occupation are either left or dead. You are also seem to be wrong regarding Crimea [0].
Now, with that out of the way we need to discuss some other inconvenient facts regarding where Russians want to "draw a new border". The Russians also tried to occupy parts of northern Ukraine where, as I can assure you, they were _extremely_ not welcome. I don't have close friends or relatives from south, but I also got the impression that people on [1] or [2] or [3] are not too unfriendly towards Kyiv. Go figure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[0] https://www.iri.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/201320October... (slide 17 to be specific).
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60632587
[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/nov/11/russia-uk...
[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/14/ze-len-skiy-kh...
This isn't true. I didn't lose my rights when I was enlisted. There are more rules and responsibilities but the rights weren't removed.
No, you don't have the right of free speech in the military. Though apparently dresses are now ok.
Edit: My experience in the military is of course not complete. It's very possible I'm missing something.
Personally I think it should come down to the role and risk. There's plenty of jobs where you're not seeing combat or dealing with inherently risky or critical tasks, and thus shouldn't be held to the same standard as those doing critical tasks. Just as one obvious example, somebody with a desk job doesn't need legs.
[1] https://www.operationmilitarykids.org/military-medical-waive... [2] https://serialpodcast.org/maps/number-of-waivers-given-to-us... [3] https://www.rand.org/blog/rand-review/2021/10/army-enlistmen...
Recommendation: "To mitigate the higher likelihood of adverse performance-related outcomes, require that waivered recruits and those with a documented history of marijuana or behavioral health issues have Tier 1 education status, have Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores in categories I–IIIA, or be age 22 or older."
"Tier I education status" means high school graduation. AFQT scores of IIIA or above means above the median intelligence for the military.
77% of young Americans who applied ... were rejected for various reasons.
ie: Most young people who want to join the forces don't meet the minimum standards.
Perhaps the vast bulk of people that do meet those standards see no future for themselves in the US forces and don't apply.
And there's no easily teased out figure on the health of young Americans in general here w/out additional info about application rates and demographics.
These are self inflicted wounds, high level. They don’t qualify because of the system we’ve built. Want healthy candidates for soldiers? Optimize for affordable nutrition and universal healthcare/mental health access [1] [2] [3] [4]. Don’t? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Rampant obesity rates and drug use continues.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30908249
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35385503
https://stopsoldiersuicide.org/vet-stats
> Over 40,000 veterans are homeless on any given night
> Veterans are at 57% higher risk of suicide than those who haven't served.
> "Depending on branch, up to 31% of service members develop PTSD after returning from combat." ; "The rate of suicide for veterans in the LGBTQ+ community is up to 7x higher than for non-LGBTQ+ veterans." ; "More than 40% of female veterans report experiencing military sexual harassment or military sexual trauma."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/us/911-suicide-rate-veter...
> "Suicides among post-9/11 veterans are four times as high as combat deaths, a new study finds."
> Since 2001, more than 114,000 veterans have died by suicide (first citation link indicates this is now 125k+)
You would recommend something that leads to these outcomes? To young adults?
You have to put the risks of serving in context. Of course being a part of a military carries more risks than most/all desk jobs, but it's not the worst thing ever and helps a lot of people.
I have an uncle that has a great life because service, and a half-brother that hated it and washed out barely worse for wear. Anecdotes are just as good as random stats without context.
An inability to provide for oneself or to self-motivate are factors that lead to enlistment. You have it backwards.
For the most part — particularly the Army — the service is very expensive daycare for would-be homeless bums.
It's unfortunate you feel that way about young men and women who are looking for direction and a path to a better future. Whether or not it works out for them, most people join the military expecting to work hard and get something in return, which doesn't conjure "bum" to me.
I wonder if this is a factor of more effort spent to keep soldiers alive (e.g. just bomb the shit out of something, kill all the people in the house, instead of taking the risk that one of them is an insurgent). Which then eventually doesn’t matter since they still have to deal with the aftermath, and kill themselves as a result.
I know, oddly specific, and I don’t think I have any solid facts to base it on.
But this comment just seems like a way to force your favorite pet issue to e-fight over into the conversation.
That aside, these stats are not surprising. Anyone from outside the US knows just how bad the education system is within. With red states outright banning books and knowledge, that number may just continue to climb.
People who claim that removing some books from a library is akin to banning or will have any affect on the actual dissemination of knowledge are fools at best and liars almost surely.
Education is like everything else. If you believe it is someone or something else’s responsibility, you won’t have much of it.
Searching 'book banning' on news.google.com still returns a lot of results with towns still doing it.
I think what I was actually thinking of though, was I think Mississippi (I think) deciding to defund all libraries in retaliation for the library suing over book bans.