Wokeness ended our military.

Largest and most highly funded military in the world defeated by blue hair baristas and the pajama boy brigade

What's pyjama boy brigade, it sounds comfy cute
- Mr. Obama sir, I think you’ll appreciate this: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/413079861922508800
- Me with chronic depression sitting at the computer in sweats and an old T-shirt for 3 days straight.

While we're on the subject of vets, I hate how homelessness always gets tied up with veterans. Like it's socially acceptable to advocate for homeless veterans because "they gave their all" but your average homeless person is just SOL because fuck you get a job.

Don’t worry. It’s just nominal advocacy. They get thrown to the wolves like every other homeless person. They just get the benefit of having politicians shed a tear for a few seconds
They're a useful example to use when convincing reactionaries to support more support for the homeless in general. Just be like, "Don't you care about the homeless veterans?" to get them to support a universal policy.

Liberals: “in order to maintain American hegemony, raw resources, and global capitalism, we must encourage the diverse American population to kill for us by showing that they are nominally accepted and part of our society.”

Conservatives: “NOOO!!!!! THE WEST HAS FALLEN!!! ALL THE SOLDIERS HAVE TURNED TO SAILORS!!”

That’s the stupid thing though, it’s not even about overall diversity, military has that already, it’s about diversity in the leadership. Which means fuck all to some random high school dropout from West Bumblefuck considering recruitment who’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of moving that far up the ladder regardless.

Another unaddressed problem: being in an age where everyone knows the government and media lied to get an illegal war and then nothing happened to the liars who orchestrated it all. Hard to remain a gung-ho idealist.

Uncritical support for wokeness

I don't this is an either/or situation. You have listed very legitimate issues that have had a negative impact on recruitment.
But the hippies

I don’t care what’s killing it, I’m just glad it’s happening. We can sit around and talk for hours. It’s a huge combination of things that starts and ends with a “for profit” motive being the worst fucking thing possible to structure your military around.

It certainly isn’t due to “woke” ideology, but I find it very funny that even my lib friends have noticed that the empires military ain't doing so hot.

It won't stay that way for long. Eventually they'll institute mandatory service to keep their defense contracts pumping out money.
- It’s completely disconnected in that way though. Take for instance the Gerald Ford, the newest class aircraft carrier.
  https://www.forbes.com/sites/craighooper/2023/12/12/facing-a-navy-wide-sailor-shortage-uss-ford-sheds-500-600-crew/?sh=31a982e051c0
  Through organic cuts, not a predetermined plan, manning has been reduced to an all time low; 2380 when it was projected to have 2716.
  “Most of the cuts appear to be organic, occurring while the USS Ford was on an active deployment, as the carrier operates on the fringes of a major conflict.” These are sailors that are leaving the boat, to another command or out of the Navy entirely and just not being replaced. The issue with using a draft to replenish those numbers is that our equipment isn’t designed to be quickly and intuitively learned and operated. It’s designed to need outside training and repair from people employed by these defense contractors.
  Much like McDonalds realized they could shed expensive crew and still operate at profit, the Navy has learned the same lesson. “The Navy desperately wants to position the Ford carrier program for success, and, given that the extended deployment will delay key, high-profile testing events, shedding crew offers an immediate boost to the platform’s lifetime operational and maintenance savings, making the platform’s ragged business case far more viable.”
  “But, rather than break down, the carrier is breaking performance records. In fact, the ship recently spent ten weeks away from port, in what appears to be the vessel’s longest uninterrupted period at sea since it was launched.”
  Despite the crunch in crew, the gears are still turning, and neoliberalism is famously reactive instead of proactive. Since the war machine on paper appears as good as ever, these cracks will keep being bandaged over until there’s a sudden massive failure as the ripped apart seams can’t be held together any longer. A draft isn’t near enough to fix what is rotten here.
- That's how you bring back fragging