Who Signs Up to Fight? Makeup of U.S. Recruits Shows Glaring Disparity

[Zorro]

The sergeant in charge of one of the busiest Army recruiting centers in Colorado, Sergeant First Class Dustin Comes, joined the Army, in part, because his father served. Now two of his four children say they want to serve, too. And he will not be surprised if the other two make the same decision once they are a little older.

“Hey, if that’s what your calling is, I encourage it, absolutely,” said Sergeant Comes, who wore a dagger-shaped patch on his camouflage uniform, signifying that he had been in combat.

Enlisting, he said, enabled him to build a good life where, despite yearlong deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, he felt proud of his work, got generous benefits, never worried about being laid off, and earned enough that his wife could stay home to raise their children.

“Show me a better deal for the common person,” he said.

Soldiers like him are increasingly making the United States military a family business. The men and women who sign up overwhelmingly come from counties in the South and a scattering of communities at the gates of military bases like Colorado Springs, which sits next to Fort Carson and several Air Force installations, and where the tradition of military service is deeply ingrained.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/us/military-enlistment.html

[Adsos Letter]

1. I think that about three-quarters of my squadron in Germany were from the South.

Heavy on the Deep South.

[Aristus]

2. Mine, too.

What a bunch of yahoos. Every time they went swaggering about town in their cowboy gear (always spotless and well-pressed, looking like they'd never ridden a horse or gotten dusty in their lives) I cringed a little, sure that the Germans thought this was "American culture."

This was the late 80's & early 90's. While the rest of we red-blooded American young men were understandably going ga-ga over Whitney Houston and Jodie Whately, the rednecks were tut-tutting and wagging their fingers at white guys who admired 'n****r' women.

They polluted the air of the barracks with their incessant, lame-brained country music, and polluted every flat surface with their chewing tobacco spit-cans.

One of them roomed with my best friend from tanker school, who is Filipino, and he put up Confederate flags all over the place. My friend was hurt and irritated by this, until I started sneaking into the room when Rebel-head was gone, and leaving anti-confederate messages on Post-It notes stuck to his flags. My friend thanked me for this, and we are still friends and in touch to this day.

The Southern boys (I was born and raised in the South, but never felt any kind of kinship with the blockheads I've just described...) were always beating their chests about how 'patriotic' they were, blissfully unaware that the region they championed so incessantly took up arms against the very nation they claimed to love.

The military is the perfect environment for such empty-headed aggression, anti-intellectualism, and provincialism.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

3. "Show me a better deal for the common person," he said.

I grew up in a small town where if you didn't go to college and your dad didn't own a local business then the military was your only option.

Oh and it also was a town with a Navy base so the may have had a bit to do with people selecting the military option.

[shadowmayor]

4. Recruiting is up

This is due in part to student loan debts.