• AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    I think people vastly overrate how useful your average veteran would be in a revolutionary war. The majority of jobs in the military are just typical civilian jobs. Oh boy, the dude who spend his entire stint in Germany driving trucks and loading boxes onto and off of trucks is going to turn the tide in the revolutionary war, having experience that’s totally not identical to the countless civilian truck drivers and warehouse workers. And for the people who actually saw combat, the majority are either ghouls who get off of war crimes or suffer from PTSD to the point where you don’t want them to be anywhere near a gun.

    Of the five veterans I know who actually went into detail about their enlistment, three of them didn’t see combat and one of them suffers from PTSD and gives me extremely uncomfortable vibes. So that leaves with one dude out of five who actually has useful combat experience. Except he has multiple health issues (he was deployed in Iraq during Desert Storm) ranging from his finger joints constantly feeling numb to these weird bumps on his neck to tinnitus. The two who didn’t see combat also suffer from tinnitus, one of them to the point where you had to half-shout at him or else he couldn’t hear what you said.

    I’m just not seeing what other people are seeing. You’re not going to convince SF to join your cause. They’re literally indoctrinated as part of their training to not defect to the enemy, whether the enemy is within or without. It makes about as much sense as trying to convince a CIA case officer to become a communist.

    The sad truth that I’ve come to realize after rubbing shoulders with enough veterans is that most veterans are broken people. If they’re lucky, only their physical bodies are broken. If they’re not so lucky, well.

    It’s not they can help us civilians but us civilians who need to help them.