Trump world reportedly flirts with a return to mandatory military service.
Trump world reportedly flirts with a return to mandatory military service.
www.motherjones.com
Trump world reportedly flirts with a return to mandatory military service.
20 comments
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Can we start with Trump having to finally serve?
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Conservatives love this idea, to the point that they don’t even bother thinking about who is going to pay for it. If you did mandatory service for people 18-20 the armed forces would be roughly 20 times larger than it is now in terms of personnel, 10 times larger if it were mandatory for men only. Military spending is nearly 1/4 of the total budget as-is, where is the funding going to come from if you have 10 or 20 times as many people to arm and train?
And what the fuck are you going to have them all do? They’re just gonna bum around and fuck for two years and then go get free degrees on the GI bill, driving up the cost even further.
Truly, the party of fiscal responsibility.
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tbf a lot of military budget is on R&D and equipment, training is only a tiny fraction of it. Just compare the spending and the personnel with China.
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I don’t think it’s tiny enough that you could multiply it by 20 and still call it tiny.
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Forcing YOUR Children to die so a Billionaire can make more money is called FREEDOM you STUPID LIBRULS!
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Lmao fuckin try it
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We should bring it back in Canada, just in case we need to go burn the white house down once again if Trump is elected.
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I actually kinda support a mandatory civil service? Hear me out.
First, while I think structuring it like the military makes sense from an organizational standpoint, I think the focus would be on civil works projects. Maintaining national parks, infrastructure projects like federal interstate system improvements, etc.
This would serve as a way to get a big influx of money and labor into these large scale infrastructure projects in a way that's bipartisan. The Republicans would like it because it's cheap and they support mandatory military service. The Democrats would like it because it's a big public works project that creates jobs and builds out infrastructure.
I think it would also be a unifier and help build a sense of national identity and break people out of their insular bubbles. They say travel is the antidote to bigotry. This would get people from all parts of this nation travelling around and intermingling. The son of a clansman from Arkansas would be exposed to, and have to work closely with, queer people from SoCal. The young gang member from Detroit would be able to get away for a few years and perhaps reinvent themselves. The son of the billionaire will have to work hand and hand and side by side with the kid raised penniless in the foster system.
It gives people a precious few years after highschool to see the nation and not have to make huge decisions about their future careers at 16 years old. It can expose them to different fields of work, and teach them skill to best prepare them for their futures.
All in all, I think a system like this could do a lot of good, both for the people in it, and for our nations failing public works.
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I disagree. If you compel people to do a thing, that thing will get done poorly, if it gets done at all.
I think we should do the opposite: ban the draft and immediately end the Selective Service. If we get attacked, people will sign up to defend their homes. If it pays well, people won't wait until we're attacked to sign up.
Here's my counter offer: if you volunteer for your local National Guard, you get:
- education assistance consistent with a well-paying job (say, $15-20/hr)
- in-state tuition (if you're coming from out of state)
- health insurance, depending on the hours donated
- housing (on-base, deducted from the education "pay" if needed)
You'd be assigned tasks consistent with your ability, such as cleaning national and state parks, wildfire fighting assistance (not front-line, but supply lines), etc. But everything is on a volunteer basis, and you can quit at any time.
I also think all high school students should be trained on basic firearm safety and use. If they need to fight, they should at least know how guns work on a basic level. But conscription should never be tolerated.
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I mean, I still prefer my pitch to yours, but I wouldn't be sad with your idea either.
I don't think your pitch really combats the "people won't actually want to do the work" issue. I think in either example you'll have a lot of people who are "just here so I don't get fined," as it were.
But I think you're overstating that issue in either case. Will it have that issue, sure. But so does the military writ large. Does it impact efficiency, sure. But making an efficient, well oiled machine isn't exactly the point.
But other than that, reading your proposal again, I kinda think that the only thing that makes your proposal different from mine is the mandatory nature of the service.
The benefits you outlined are commensurate with the lower enlisted ranks in the military, so like, yeah, that's what I'm proposing I guess.
I think the benefits of forcing people to leave their bubbles justifies the forced nature of mandatory service. It a means of helping young people escape cycles of abuse, and exposing them to other cultures. It's also a great equalizer, in that it effects poor and rich alike, where your system ends up just admitting poor people who are desperate (not unlike the military as it stands.)
I'd also be open to having a program option where you can defer up to 5yrs to pursue a college degree if it's in a relevant field (civil engineering, etc) and do your mandatory service afterwards utilizing those skills. The program still pays for that college time but gets relevant use out of you at the end. This prevents people who know what they want to do from having to delay and gives them relevant job experience right out of the gate as a resume builder.
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Counter offer: remove the Selective Service and constitutionally ban the draft.
In the LP National Convention, he claimed to be a libertarian. So prove it.
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Trump finna turn the masses against the military and the military against the state. Fascists are so good at shooting themselves in the foot.
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I don't think the actual act of serving is all that bad, it becomes less serious when everyone has to do it, however it does go against principles of the country and truly being free. The US has one of the best and largest all volunteer military and that should be something to celebrate, not be moan.
That being said we celebrate that all the damn time, probably a little too much, honestly.
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It's not exactly "voluntary" when the socio-economic system is designed to leave a large portion of the population with military enlistment as the only fiscally safe means of obtaining a higher education, which is the only route to gainful employment, which is the only path out of abject poverty.
Make higher education free for everyone and then let's see how many high quality volunteers we get for the armed forces.
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Yeah I mean, I get that, but that's not what I meant. I appreciate the message for those that might not understand our economy isn't ideal.
We pour a ton of money into the military, making it a very viable way to cross economic levels.
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Nah, hell be forced to work for $1/hr in prison
20 comments
Isn't this the guy who called everyone in the military suckers and losers?