Die For Knowledge, Sucker!

Nothing compares to the voracious recruiting by the Armed Forces on a due-to-graduate high school kid (save for credit card companies, but I'll get to that later). In These Times nails this pre-emptive strike on blue collar children to the fucking wall.

The "lies" mentioned by Bhagwat include the reality that, on average, two-thirds of recruits never receive college funding and only 15 percent graduate with a four-year degree. As for a "secure" career, the unemployment rate for veterans is three times higher than non-veterans.

One one hand, we're telling kids not to use guns and violence to solve problems. But we offer the golden egg of military-financed college education to those who need it most by training them to kill. Hypocrisy. Further, it's an intrinsic part of military training to follow orders without question. Heh, you won't learn a gawddamn thing in college if you don't ask questions.

But it is tempting - a recruiter recently called me, and all but promised to personally pay my way into Cornell and wash my clothes and cook my dinner while there. Hell, she even tried to argue that the Army has valuable experience for an Ecology major, for fuck's sake (yeah, restoring the riparian borders of the Tigris and Euphrates is high priority for the military, I'm sure). For one brief second, I felt the tempting urge to sign up. But then I pulled my head out of my ass.

So what's my point? As anybuddy who has ever been placed on the recruiter's call list (by educational institutions who should fuckin better know better) knows all too well, these folks are as persistent as herpes. I received my last call on the eve of the November election coup. So, if they won't leave you alone, I found that if you politely explain to them that you're something of a Marxist who would rather not write his term papers in the blood of Iraqi children, they won't call back - ever.

Sorry, Josh, that was a little autobiographical, but I think you'll let me slide on this one . . .