I highly, highly doubt that it was their intention to have all these people, many who are only third person accounts, of what impact the service has. Think about this, really think about it:
In the service you enlist for 4-5 years. In those 4-5 years you get maybe paltry rank/file if you don't fuck it up, but, what is unequivocally exposed, is exactly how and why it's run like it is and who runs it. I mean I imagine you really have to be completely oblivious to what's right in front of you every single day, all around you to not know this after 4 or 5 years. After those years, you get a choice. Like many who 'join the cycle', they initially do so because of what is called the Poverty Draft, or enticing young impressionable adults/children with money/college degree, that is why the overwhelming majority joins, and why the vast majority is lower class/lower - middle class, with a few outlines that are doing it because of parents/tradition, a few to prove themselves (as the Full Metal Jacket put it, the crazy brave) and even fewer who join for neither of those reasons but to literally infiltrate and know the enemy as intimately as possible, how they operate and what they are capable of (real Anarchists and peerless leaders). Yet when they choose to remain, after they have been awash of any and all illusion of what the service is about and for, they either do so once again because they need money, or because they are into the tradition of it, or they are psychopaths, and crave murder and violence, rape especially, or.. because they need to get even deeper into the belly of the beast. Right now another distinction needs to be made. The ones in charge of the enlisted, the officers are almost exclusively college degree, middle upper class /upper class, wannabe politician /wannabe big shots/ wannabe leaders, or a few outliners that I don't think ever get accepted by the vast prep school majority, who were enlisted, smart and thus likely crazy brave/full blown psychopath/or subversive Ancap/Ancoms or Tardition/errm special unique dandelions savant. So the officers don't really have a view of the enlisted or the enlisted of the officers, after all the oldest tradition in the service is to not fraternize (you'd catch that in Inglorious Bastards the bar scene).. Now, as I was saying, people who run it (the service) will slowly be made up of so many different motivations, yet, like I was saying, after that initial term, what logically continues to move up in ranks are those that remain despite what they know. They could be psychopaths that have found their calling in life, they could be special flowers whose families have done the same thing since Gettysburg, they could be some broke ass gambling drunk losers who never held a job and need money, but they all have to contend with one inescapable thing: eventually, no one is signing up for 4 more years, 6 more years, 10, 12 more year (contract) because they're broke, or very very few, and even tradition breaks down after the second or third term, after all there only so much shit you can be oblivious to, so the ones that sing up the second time, they have to come to terms that eventually, the ones with 20+-30+ years who rub shoulders with politicians of the highest order, are either psychopaths that have went super sayan/reached their ultimate form, those who are completely oblivious and in denial because it's traditional(very few), and maybe one or two very smart very sharp, Shitbags as they call em, subversive Ancap/Ancom that stand out both as Likable and Loners but not enough to raise eyebrows of the vastly iq less than 80 peers. The officers, unless they come from the enlisted side, don't really know this, they don't see that those positions are almost hand tailored to fit full blown psychopaths, they are under the illusion of 'these peasant folk and their simple ways, the service betters them". So you see what is happening.. The enlisted, unless they are 13 feet in denial, they know that the ones who stick it out are fucked, roten to the core, devoid of soul, spirit essence, perfect machine of war, who only knows conflict and depravity, the officers are ignorant yet very smart in all the meaningless ways. That's why the cycle they have to break is very noticeable and they have almost zero excuse for not breaking it, and why when you hear any, any enlisted talk about the service it's to praise it, obviously, because the rest, the silent vast majority don't have anything good to say, they might not even ever come to understand what they went through like I broke it down, but they certainly will have all kinds of "in the service" jokes and shit to say, masking what they know nobody wants to hear, but what is almost silently acknowledged by the vast majority : how long did you stay in...
Probably why most of these stories are "my dad", or "a friend of a friend". The officers wouldn't sleep at night if they knew half the stories, or if they bothered to break the sacred tradition of not fratenizing.
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Couldn’t have said it better myself! You really nailed every angle. 👏