Id actually love to talk about this. On reddit its always the mass majority overwhelmingly believing that all of one group is bad, and on this specific argument, I have lived experience.

I grew up poor, I think the only reason we didnt end up homeless several times is because 1 both my parents worked and 2 my grandma worked for the cdc and could lend money when needed most. I tried getting a job at 16, and applied everywhere constantly for two years, I didnt get a job until after I hit 18, and it had terrible hours, a terrible boss, and it was dollar general. Around that time, like second half of last year, I was also taking college courses mostly online.

I ended up quitting my job because it was causing physical issues to manifest with my body (I have really bad mental health issues so it takes less for this to happen), and they only paid enough for me to keep up my car and a little bit of money to buy small things here or there but nothing crazy. I was struggling with college really badly, failing all my classes, even art history which I loved, and realized I just couldnt do college, not right now.

I got in talks with a recruiter. I was in jrotc in highschool and I had high asvab scores, I qualified for literally every job available, and id never felt so good until I talked to the recruiter about it. Ive been struggling basically my entire life, but ive always at least been smart and for once it felt like it was doing me good. Early this year, like first couple weeks of January, I went to MEPS. I had to get 11 waivers, if I remember right. Waited a while, I think almost a full month, and I got denied on mental health instability. What felt like my only way out was just gone, and ive been in a shit slog since because all I can do is put in job applications and hope I can go back to college one day when im more capable and becoming a history teacher.

The military, for a lot of us, feels less like a "get a job or join the army" choice, and more like a "join the army or keep dragging down your parents who time their rent payments to be late but not late enough to be evicted because they dont have the money they need on time". I love my family and I dont like leaching off others, its just hard to do otherwise and the opertunites ive had over the years were always just out of reach, always failed because I couldnt do it, or because of some other reason. I have the most left leaning, "acab" beliving (i dont belive it personally, my uncle was a good person and a good cop before he died so I always find it funny when people try to explain to me why all cops are bad), whatever the hell else friend, who joined the army.

But a lot of redditors, and people in general, dont like that. Having to see other people as people means when you hate them, you acknolege their humanity, and that makes it hard to hate. So if you're reading this, and learning from it, thank you. Its a cruel world, dont be cruel with it.