When Russian and Chinese leadership look at the American government, do they see a formidable, confident threat to their global ambitions? When they see a demented old grifter, a slurring alcoholic grandma, and, further down the chain, an ugly old man in women’s clothing and an ugly young man in fetish gear, how intimidated do you think they are?
When the Russian and Chinese military compare their recruiting campaigns against the American military’s, which one are they going to judge will recruit the most formidable fighting force?
Even the US military, which under the Joe Biden administration has been subjected to a ruthless CRT/Queer Theory re-education campaign, is quietly admitting that they’re in deep doo-doo.
Mainly because of a shortage of fighting-age Americans who are fit, sane and crime-free enough to serve. Less than a quarter of military-age Americans are even capable of serving their country.
These are tough times for military recruiting. Almost across the board, the armed forces are experiencing large shortfalls in enlistments this year — a deficit of thousands of entry-level troops that is on pace to be worse than any since just after the Vietnam War. It threatens to throw a wrench into the military’s machinery, leaving critical jobs unfilled and some platoons with too few people to function.
They can blame Covid or the labour market, but when it comes down to it, the basic problem is that America has raised a generation of flabby, fragile law-breakers.
Less than one-quarter of young American adults are physically fit to enlist and have no disqualifying criminal record, a proportion that has shrunk steadily in recent years. And shifting attitudes toward military service mean that now only about 1 in 10 young people say they would even consider it.
The military is offering cash on the barrel — $50,000 enlistment bonus, plus another $35k if they can show up in 30 days — and is dropping standards. Including, briefly, the requirement for at least a high school diploma.
The Army is the largest of the armed forces, and the recruiting shortfall is hitting it the hardest. As of late June, it had recruited only about 40% of the roughly 57,000 new soldiers it wants to put in boots by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
It’s not just the Army. The Navy, Marine Corps and the Air Force are running short of recruits.
“Bottom line, up front, we are in a week-to-week dogfight,” said Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas Jr., commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service. “We are growing hopeful that we may be able to barely make this year’s mission, but it’s uncertain.”
In the 80s, the Air Force was rumoured to have stationed recruiting booths outside screenings of Top Gun. Running recruiting ads before screenings of Top Gun: Maverick helped a little, but the fundamental problem remains.
Larger, longer-term concerns about the shrinking pool of young Americans who are both able and willing to serve. In recent years, the Pentagon has found that about 76% of adults ages 17-24 are either too obese to qualify or have other medical issues or criminal histories that would make them ineligible to serve without a waiver.
Making it even worse is the behaviour of the US government itself.
And what the military calls propensity — the share of young adults who would consider serving — has fallen steadily for several years. It stood at 13% before the pandemic began, Thomas said, but is now 9%.
Yahoo! News
And after the way the US state — like all Western states— has behaved over the course of the pandemic, can you blame the diminishing pool of fit, young Americans for deciding that it’s not a state worth laying your life on the line for?