I think the weak leadership in the White House is a big problem. They're orchestrating WWIII and deploying arms at great speed. But a strong leader who can establish peace would be a game changer. I believe many more people would enlist to defend the US. But the money laundering and corruption and endless foreign wars are not selling anymore. Everyone knows too much.
Thanks! Still waiting for the Colonels Group (the dark smoke-filled room somewhere in the Pentagon Puzzle Palace where Col careers are decided) to actually approve it, but the big day should be 1 Aug 25.
well, I'm not sure where you're located, but there are 2 sets of recruiting offices (brick and mortar) within ten miles of where I sit right now. (before you ask, yes I'm a vet, in fact I retired from the navy before you enlisted for the first time.)
Are we going about recruiting properly? No, in my not so humble opinion.
Is Social Media a useful tool for recruiting? Yeah but only once you fix the message.
The military was ordered to work hard on recruiting that one percent or so of the population that is the alphabet people, you know the LGBTQRMOUSE types. So, being required to follow the orders of the chain of command, they did so.
In the doing, they alienated their core recruiting sources. We've seen this all over, from Sports Illustrated trying to suck the cocks of the Alphabet folks, and the 'anti body shaming' (read that as "Don't you dare tell me I'm a fat ass") and then suddenly going broke, to arguably the most famous failure to understand your core competency in history: BUD LITE. All of this started, I believe, with the Ditzy Tricks (Dixie Chicks) managing to piss off their core audience overseas back during the Bush jr Administration.
Until the military ceases to pander to the 1% at the cost of alienating their main source demographic, they're going to be sucking from a dry well. As long as you have veteran families, with three, four, or more generations of service telling their sons and daughters "I wouldn't enlist now on a fucking bet" we are in trouble.
The fix is easy, but it's against the will of the perfumed princes of the pentagon, who got their gigs by felching political goo from all the 'right' folks up on the hill. They made their bones by pandering, and if the military quits pandering, they'll lose their 'phony baloney jobs.' Don't expect them to just 'fade away' like Macarthur described. They're going to have to be fired (like Macarthur) by a president with the balls to do so, and the will to go against that very vocal, and very visible 1%.
Largely agree but I’d like to offer one correction. The military as an enterprise is, in fact, chasing the alphabet 1%—in the process alienating their core constituency. I’m fully on board with that. As a recently graduated commander of a recruiting unit, I’ll say that the frontline recruiters are smarter than that: they still try to go where the fishing is (or at least historically has been). Unfortunately, they are fighting an uphill battle, because the historically productive target population is, as you noted, alienated.
Now, the GO/FOs in charge of recruiting and military personnel in general HAVE tried to steer the recruiter force “to fish in other waters”, in other words, to try and bring in more recruits from non-traditional populations (I.e., the snowflakes, the fatties, the druggies, the alphabets, etc.). But those who are on the front lines smile and nod, salute smartly, and then go back to try and salvage what we can from the populations we actually WANT in our military.
I am wondering if there will be an involuntary recall of separated and retired veterans, especially those with critical skills. I recently saw an ad recruiting retired and prior service veterans seniors offering up to $75,000 sign up bonus. Im thinking no TikTok dance experience required 😵💫 my husband & I are retired AF in critical skills. We are 2nd generation vets. We have a 17
Yr old son and 18 Yr old daughter so they will both be placed in the involuntary draft bucket in 2025. We have not tried to inspire them to enlist in the military due to the woke practices they have implemented. I have encouraged them to look into the Air Force or the Coast Guard if the draft is activated. Otherwise they are starting college, 1 full time the other dual enrolled. They are as disturbed as we are about the woke practices that have been implemented. None of us want to see the violence and wars breaking out. The snow flakes in now will not be able to cope if things go bad. We are very concerned.
Dear S & S, I just joined. This is my first read. I'm a novelist. Also a Marine - E-4 1967-69. One of my early books was about my experience in the USMC. It was not a "shoot-'em-up." It was all stateside and about use of power - sometimes brilliant, sometime tyranical. The title, "Non Semper Fidelis" - that's not "Never Faithful"; that's "Not Always Faithful" says a lot about the story. I'd love to gift the author of this interesting post a copy. Send me a mailing address and I will. Sam Foster, Cpl USMC
I used to think that the US ought to create our own version of the French Foreign Legion for the same reason the French have one; you can send in a force to make shit happen without endangering the lives of your citizens. As time passed and I started reading about recruiting challenges, I figured the foreign legion idea might serve that purpose too. Today, I would be concerned with a Democrat leader using a foreign legion against Americans.
I also see some well deserved condemnation of the military’s efforts to recruit the alphabet people. If an American President addressed us and said, “Folks, we are under attack every single day by the Chinese, the Russians, North Korea, and some of the Middle East thugocracies. It’s not a shooting war as we know it, but a cyber war that is just as dangerous. We can not afford to let anyone ready, willing, and able to fight this cyber war be shunted to the sidelines”. If a tranny has some unique cyber skills and want to join the fight, I might not like it, but I appreciate his utility. But to focus any effort at all in recruiting the alphabet people because of DEI is bullshit.
well said, also i've always had a fascination with the French Foreign Legion. Theres a lot of ex special forces from the US who join just because of its reputation. And yes, ultimately, if we ever had a all hands on deck scenario. It doesn't matter what you look like or believe in, you're being sent to the front.
I read your article and enjoyed reading it. I am not sure what the answer is for recruitment but one thing is for sure. The number of people reaching the age to come into the military is much smaller than it was 20 years ago. I also often wonder if young people have the patriotism that the military in the past had. There have been numerous changes through the years and in my mind not all for the better. The military is not a perfect life and never was. Still, I think there is more good here than evil. It helped me go to college and earn a masters degree but college is not for everyone either.
Good article, congratulations. I agree with Deb Nance and others here that we need a leadership change, a thorough scrubbing out of anything that does not promote the Merit-Excellence-Intelligence paradigm and a more focused recruiting message (you cannot be all things to all people). More importantly, we have to combat the ongoing fragmentation and atomization of US society. If enough people do not identify as US citizens, but look only to their neighborhood, city or association group, or worse yet sees themselves as unattached to any group, you will never get enough volunteers. This is work that might take a generation to fix as our educational “system” has poisoned the minds of so many young people.
In 2023 80% of military had a history of family members serving and 25% had a parent in the military. That the American military, “the family business.” *
Or was.
You can’t keep pissing on the same families for generations and expect them to keep stepping up, shake your ass on TikTok all you want. The government has lost those people, including me and mine.
Maybe the government can stop being themselves? Nah.
The Recruitment Crisis has to start with domestic political decay before it can boost numbers. The Globo-homo hegemony is tearing our people apart spiritually and it's manifesting in physical malaise and mental health crisis.
We deny internal per-determined behaviors in regards to biology, and affirm them post-hoc in regards to behavior. It sounds complicated, because it is complicated. It's an inversion of the pre WW2 era that states illness has nothing to do with what you are, but what your consciousness is. They separate the two and thus the treatment makes it worse. A, "disease," vs, "disorder," where we deny the native western mans being and affirm his denial of it as mental health.
While there is a materialistic issue with the military, young people don't want the military for other reasons. You dog on the pay, but the reality is, that is amazing pay when you don't have to pay the usual bills. The real reason is that our liberalized, radically individualistic society makes military service seem like slavery. Maybe in one sense it is, but that military strength is what creates slaves through the soldiers conquest. The most free man still serves something, after all.
Social media is both a symptom of all this and causation for it's worsening impacts. The best way to recruit would be social media, but what would the United States do when there's no one to recruit left? Put a six figure price tag on a junior enlisted pay and it may solve this, "crisis," but the turnout wouldn't be nearly what you'd expect, because this sacrifice is an enigma in the youths psyche. They'd truly rather own nothing and be happy...
i'm already seeing massive bonuses for signing up, in the $50k plus range. The US will end up paying huge bonuses just to fill their ranks, but again, will this result in quality or quantity?
I think the weak leadership in the White House is a big problem. They're orchestrating WWIII and deploying arms at great speed. But a strong leader who can establish peace would be a game changer. I believe many more people would enlist to defend the US. But the money laundering and corruption and endless foreign wars are not selling anymore. Everyone knows too much.
you hit the nail on the head Deb. Civilians will join if they have faith in their leadership.
I know many who are staying put to protect and defend their own.
I’m retiring in less than a year, precisely BECAUSE I no longer trust my leaders. At all levels: local unit O-6s, HQ O-7+, or NCA.
congrats on your retirement
Thanks! Still waiting for the Colonels Group (the dark smoke-filled room somewhere in the Pentagon Puzzle Palace where Col careers are decided) to actually approve it, but the big day should be 1 Aug 25.
So true.
well, I'm not sure where you're located, but there are 2 sets of recruiting offices (brick and mortar) within ten miles of where I sit right now. (before you ask, yes I'm a vet, in fact I retired from the navy before you enlisted for the first time.)
Are we going about recruiting properly? No, in my not so humble opinion.
Is Social Media a useful tool for recruiting? Yeah but only once you fix the message.
The military was ordered to work hard on recruiting that one percent or so of the population that is the alphabet people, you know the LGBTQRMOUSE types. So, being required to follow the orders of the chain of command, they did so.
In the doing, they alienated their core recruiting sources. We've seen this all over, from Sports Illustrated trying to suck the cocks of the Alphabet folks, and the 'anti body shaming' (read that as "Don't you dare tell me I'm a fat ass") and then suddenly going broke, to arguably the most famous failure to understand your core competency in history: BUD LITE. All of this started, I believe, with the Ditzy Tricks (Dixie Chicks) managing to piss off their core audience overseas back during the Bush jr Administration.
Until the military ceases to pander to the 1% at the cost of alienating their main source demographic, they're going to be sucking from a dry well. As long as you have veteran families, with three, four, or more generations of service telling their sons and daughters "I wouldn't enlist now on a fucking bet" we are in trouble.
The fix is easy, but it's against the will of the perfumed princes of the pentagon, who got their gigs by felching political goo from all the 'right' folks up on the hill. They made their bones by pandering, and if the military quits pandering, they'll lose their 'phony baloney jobs.' Don't expect them to just 'fade away' like Macarthur described. They're going to have to be fired (like Macarthur) by a president with the balls to do so, and the will to go against that very vocal, and very visible 1%.
hahah well said, thank you for your input. Yes, i don’t see the military changing their recruiting tactics anytime soon.
Largely agree but I’d like to offer one correction. The military as an enterprise is, in fact, chasing the alphabet 1%—in the process alienating their core constituency. I’m fully on board with that. As a recently graduated commander of a recruiting unit, I’ll say that the frontline recruiters are smarter than that: they still try to go where the fishing is (or at least historically has been). Unfortunately, they are fighting an uphill battle, because the historically productive target population is, as you noted, alienated.
Now, the GO/FOs in charge of recruiting and military personnel in general HAVE tried to steer the recruiter force “to fish in other waters”, in other words, to try and bring in more recruits from non-traditional populations (I.e., the snowflakes, the fatties, the druggies, the alphabets, etc.). But those who are on the front lines smile and nod, salute smartly, and then go back to try and salvage what we can from the populations we actually WANT in our military.
yes i believe the % of recruits that want to serve out of patriotism is becoming smaller everyday.
Umm to clarify. When I said “I’m fully on board with that”, I meant I agree with you. NOT that I am on board with chasing the 1%.
I am wondering if there will be an involuntary recall of separated and retired veterans, especially those with critical skills. I recently saw an ad recruiting retired and prior service veterans seniors offering up to $75,000 sign up bonus. Im thinking no TikTok dance experience required 😵💫 my husband & I are retired AF in critical skills. We are 2nd generation vets. We have a 17
Yr old son and 18 Yr old daughter so they will both be placed in the involuntary draft bucket in 2025. We have not tried to inspire them to enlist in the military due to the woke practices they have implemented. I have encouraged them to look into the Air Force or the Coast Guard if the draft is activated. Otherwise they are starting college, 1 full time the other dual enrolled. They are as disturbed as we are about the woke practices that have been implemented. None of us want to see the violence and wars breaking out. The snow flakes in now will not be able to cope if things go bad. We are very concerned.
I don’t think any forcing of people to fight will happen again in our lifetimes. Technology has made people to aware of what is going on.
Dear S & S, I just joined. This is my first read. I'm a novelist. Also a Marine - E-4 1967-69. One of my early books was about my experience in the USMC. It was not a "shoot-'em-up." It was all stateside and about use of power - sometimes brilliant, sometime tyranical. The title, "Non Semper Fidelis" - that's not "Never Faithful"; that's "Not Always Faithful" says a lot about the story. I'd love to gift the author of this interesting post a copy. Send me a mailing address and I will. Sam Foster, Cpl USMC
i appreciate that Sam, i'll reach out with an address for you.
I used to think that the US ought to create our own version of the French Foreign Legion for the same reason the French have one; you can send in a force to make shit happen without endangering the lives of your citizens. As time passed and I started reading about recruiting challenges, I figured the foreign legion idea might serve that purpose too. Today, I would be concerned with a Democrat leader using a foreign legion against Americans.
I also see some well deserved condemnation of the military’s efforts to recruit the alphabet people. If an American President addressed us and said, “Folks, we are under attack every single day by the Chinese, the Russians, North Korea, and some of the Middle East thugocracies. It’s not a shooting war as we know it, but a cyber war that is just as dangerous. We can not afford to let anyone ready, willing, and able to fight this cyber war be shunted to the sidelines”. If a tranny has some unique cyber skills and want to join the fight, I might not like it, but I appreciate his utility. But to focus any effort at all in recruiting the alphabet people because of DEI is bullshit.
well said, also i've always had a fascination with the French Foreign Legion. Theres a lot of ex special forces from the US who join just because of its reputation. And yes, ultimately, if we ever had a all hands on deck scenario. It doesn't matter what you look like or believe in, you're being sent to the front.
I read your article and enjoyed reading it. I am not sure what the answer is for recruitment but one thing is for sure. The number of people reaching the age to come into the military is much smaller than it was 20 years ago. I also often wonder if young people have the patriotism that the military in the past had. There have been numerous changes through the years and in my mind not all for the better. The military is not a perfect life and never was. Still, I think there is more good here than evil. It helped me go to college and earn a masters degree but college is not for everyone either.
Here is another view of the sad situation we are experiencing: https://youtu.be/1sLjddnSVi8?si=-S8CF1SGjWsQi_tG
this is great
Good article, congratulations. I agree with Deb Nance and others here that we need a leadership change, a thorough scrubbing out of anything that does not promote the Merit-Excellence-Intelligence paradigm and a more focused recruiting message (you cannot be all things to all people). More importantly, we have to combat the ongoing fragmentation and atomization of US society. If enough people do not identify as US citizens, but look only to their neighborhood, city or association group, or worse yet sees themselves as unattached to any group, you will never get enough volunteers. This is work that might take a generation to fix as our educational “system” has poisoned the minds of so many young people.
thank you! yes leadership is leading the military straight into the ground. As usual, most problems are top-down.
In 2023 80% of military had a history of family members serving and 25% had a parent in the military. That the American military, “the family business.” *
Or was.
You can’t keep pissing on the same families for generations and expect them to keep stepping up, shake your ass on TikTok all you want. The government has lost those people, including me and mine.
Maybe the government can stop being themselves? Nah.
* Family Business
https://recruiting.army.mil/News/Article/2904478/military-recruiting-is-a-family-affair/
I don’t know what to say to the new approach of recruiting.
But your criticism does it for us.
I am but a humble servant
Maybe they could try the Duffel Blog 🤣
Hi!
I saw the article at 10:20 a.m. and saved it for later reading.
The Recruitment Crisis has to start with domestic political decay before it can boost numbers. The Globo-homo hegemony is tearing our people apart spiritually and it's manifesting in physical malaise and mental health crisis.
We deny internal per-determined behaviors in regards to biology, and affirm them post-hoc in regards to behavior. It sounds complicated, because it is complicated. It's an inversion of the pre WW2 era that states illness has nothing to do with what you are, but what your consciousness is. They separate the two and thus the treatment makes it worse. A, "disease," vs, "disorder," where we deny the native western mans being and affirm his denial of it as mental health.
While there is a materialistic issue with the military, young people don't want the military for other reasons. You dog on the pay, but the reality is, that is amazing pay when you don't have to pay the usual bills. The real reason is that our liberalized, radically individualistic society makes military service seem like slavery. Maybe in one sense it is, but that military strength is what creates slaves through the soldiers conquest. The most free man still serves something, after all.
Social media is both a symptom of all this and causation for it's worsening impacts. The best way to recruit would be social media, but what would the United States do when there's no one to recruit left? Put a six figure price tag on a junior enlisted pay and it may solve this, "crisis," but the turnout wouldn't be nearly what you'd expect, because this sacrifice is an enigma in the youths psyche. They'd truly rather own nothing and be happy...
i'm already seeing massive bonuses for signing up, in the $50k plus range. The US will end up paying huge bonuses just to fill their ranks, but again, will this result in quality or quantity?