💯

The state will never care about what the people want other than the bare minimum required to keep them from revolting. My whole life they have been sending young men to die in the desert for nothing.

Maybe it would help if we stopped glamorizing military service as if it's something good and noble. No wonder kids want to sign up, with all the movies and video games portraying soldiers as heroes.

If the military was only focused on actual defense, then I would have more respect for it. But everyone knows the US invades countries on a regular basis for BS reasons. As far as I am concerned, if you are willing to murder people on behalf of a corrupt authoritarian state, then you don't really deserve my respect.

Maybe that's why so many veterans struggle with mental illness after returning, because they figured out that all the fucked up shit they experienced wasn't for "protecting freedom" or whatever but it was to help empire building politicians.

The minute regular people stop signing up to be enforcers for the state, the state loses it's power over us.