The Strays

A WSJ op-ed made its rounds through my little corner of lefty twitter. I’m not a subscriber, so I did not read it. Take this post with however big a grain of salt you feel appropriate.

The op-ed title and subtitle read: “An Unintended Consequence of Student-Debt Relief - Will young Americans volunteer for the armed forces in adequate numbers?”

I’m pretty disappointed Chrome incognito mode couldn’t bust me into this article. I considered many career paths in and around the US Military to help pay off my student loan debt. I’m curious exactly how common a path this is.

My immediate guess is: pretty common. Americans valorize going into military or police service. College students probably see loan forgiveness on top of additional respect as a win-win. I certainly did. But after working in and around Intel and Law Enforcement, I realized two things.

1. This is a terrible career path for me.
2. I convinced myself to want this career path because of the social benefits and the loan forgiveness.

Number one deserves its own posts - or series, and I’m certainly not the first person to critique the US Military - but two I can get into.

Both my parents are lifelong public servants (my dad a civil engineer and my mom a journalist, teacher, and now principal). I grew up dreaming of serving my community. I did well in language classes through grade school and had an ‘analytical’ mind. Post 9/11, young nerds who loved languages and wanted to serve found a very well lit path to Uncle Sam’s HR department. But there are lots of jobs where you serve your people and don’t involve volunteering to kill or be killed (or support those that do).

Many of those jobs pay shit (read: teaching, social work, nursing…and many many many more). And many don’t carry the glorious weight of having ‘served’, though many damn well should. I’m not bashing individual cops or soldiers. I’ve worked with many and many earnestly try to do good work. But without going into number one, as I said I wouldn’t, both jobs require you be ready to end another person’s life as part of your job. That’s a serious fucking act. And we should not be lamenting this country taking a baby step in creating a more just education system because some kids might not be pushed toward killing in order to finance their schooling.