Edit: Realized I can edit to link the article. https://www.jpost.com/defense-and-tech/article-906985

This is so cartoonishly evil it's hard to believe it's not a nazi psyop.

Economic enlistment for indebted military-age Americans

The narrative war on the domestic American front has already failed. The Pentagon has not been able to sell this war to the American public because the war has been rhetorically fused with Israel's operations in Gaza, and the American public rejects the fusion.

Recruitment numbers are running below what a ground invasion of Iran would require. Estimates for a successful ground campaign against Iran's 31 provincial commands and its Mosaic Defense Doctrine run between 750 thousand and 1.5 million American troops. The current active US Army stands at roughly 452 thousand. The math does not work, obviously. 

Based on American history, however, there is a path forward. Not conscription or a draft in a world war-era sense, but enlistment through a “debt forgiveness program.”

The average American aged 18 to 34 carries more than $40 thousand in non-mortgage debt across student loans, credit card balances, auto loans, and personal loans, with some estimates go as high as $100 thousand.

This is the cohort the Pentagon needs. A federally administered debt-forgiveness enlistment program that fully discharges student loan, credit card, and loan balances after 24 or 36 months of service, and extends the GI Bill, would produce voluntary enlistment at scale.

This is not theoretical.

It is the American state doing what the American state has always done when it needed staff it could not otherwise generate. World War II offered the GI Bill. Vietnam offered college deferments. The post 9/11 wars offered signing bonuses and citizenship pathways. The Iran war will need to offer debt relief. The economics of the indebted American 20-and 30-something make this the most efficient conversion mechanism available to the Pentagon and the Trump administration.

The moral reading on this is uncomfortable. But states generate the soldiers they need through the incentives that work on the population they have.

I ran into an image upload limit on my previous post about Before/After photos regarding this storm, here are the ones I took which are one-offs of storm damage.

I tried to keep the photographs to public buildings and spaces. When I did photograph houses, I tried to do it from a distance to focus on the scale of the destruction to avoid singling out individual houses.

There was a sign on Third Street (the street you saw on the news) specifically asking people to put the phone down and not take photos. I wanted to respect that as much as possible.

Hopefully making two posts in a row isn't against the rules.

I'm originally from the Fox Cities and only moved to Chicago about 3 months ago. I came back to meet with family after the storm, and tried to retake photos of places I've photographed in the past.

Included at the end are also one off shots that don't have a "before" counterpart. I also created another post with more of these one off shots.

Thankfully most houses aren't damaged to the point of total destruction from what I've seen. The community will be able to rebuild I think, but I wouldn't be surprised if it takes a year or more to fully clean up the mess the tornado left.

It's heartbreaking to see my hometown like this. It hurts not being able to personally help clean up this mess...