you hate usa military because soldiers didn't get enough benefits for being colonizers. i hate usa military soldiers because they're colonizers. we're not the same.
I hate the US military because they trick people into doing Neo Colonialism and endangering people, remember soldiers are the first victims of war, the rich men get poor people to do their dirty work
The first victims of war are actually the people of the invaded country who get killed. The soldiers who signed up to do the killing or run support for the killing are still guilty of the killing, regardless of why they signed up.
Point at the country that sends military propaganda and talking heads to high schools to trick kids, point at the country that creates a wealth disparity so big that some think their only chance to go to college will involve killing people and losing limbs before you reach it.
Your fellow proletariat is not your enemy.
The enemy is the country and the people who run it. The people who cover schools and every little corner in propaganda rather than give resources and shit like Healthcare and transportation to you.
That guy you know going off to join the military is an idiot. Not your enemy
The majority of US recruits are from middle class households and come from military families.
The imperialist soldiers are not the victims, the victims are the people they kill oversea. Killing someone for the empire is not a sacrifice.
The soldiers in Iraq were not idiots, they were willful participants in the crimes committed there, if not those directly committing the crimes.
First and foremost, using the Heritage foundation as a source is a bad idea. They're the same people who wrote Project 2025.
And if you want to believe that they were being fully honest about their results, I have some bad news for you. When conducting this study, they didn't use the family's individual income, no they used the median income for the area that they lived in.
So even if a recruits family from San Diego made 25,000 a year, the heritage foundation declared that the recruits family made 57,380 a year instead because that's the median income in that area.
Basically if you use an area's median income for every single recruit, that's inevitably going to report results that show a middle class leaning.
Onto your screenshot which states that these enlistees come from neighborhoods where the "median income is between $38,345 and $80,912." That range is so wide, and there are so many variables to what makes someone middle class, that you can barely use that as evidence! For a single child living with two adults, the minimum you have to make to qualify as middle class is $60,000, and that's far above the low range of that 60% estimate. And the qualifying income for being middle class just gets higher with more additional family members. So already, that puts a large chunk of that 60% figure in the lower class!
Your other sources just state that those who join the military tend to have family members who did as well. You realize that's because poverty is generational, right? These families likely don't have the generational wealth, resources or knowledge to explore other opportunities.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a whole lot of sources that give more specific information on the income of enlistees, however, if we look at the poverty distribution map and military enlisting map, we can see a pretty telling pattern
The racial demographics of the military also tells a certain story
Of course, neither of these points are necessarily conclusive evidence, as there's not a reliable study that draws a conclusion one way or another, but judging by the fact that a large number of recruits are from lower income areas and are POC, we can infer that the majority of recruits are most likely lower class.
Due to all of these moving factors, to generalize this group of people is frankly, dangerous. Some of these people want to do harm, some of them are victims of a society that failed them and some of them are just normal people who joined regardless of the horrid moral implications.
You can't declare every enlistee is an innocent victim, and you can't declare they're all bloodthirsty imperialists. It's a complex issue that, unfortunately, can't be digested in a palatable "I hate them or adore them" manner. It needs to be judged case by case.
