The Military Slave

Waking up in the morning is always hard for him. It's especially hard at 0500 hrs when the sun hasn't even woken up yet. But, that is the life of a military man.

"Some military," he mumbled under his voice as he stepped into the shower.

Everyone is just asleep and blindly doing what they're told, He thought as he washed himself. How can I get myself out of this mess.

He didn't always think this way. He used to be proud to be a soldier. Now it was just a joke. A way to trade his time in exchange for money so he could buy some food, pay the rent, and keep his newly born son warm, clothed and fed. His hatred for the military grew after he'd woken up. One day it just clicked and everything started making sense, while at the same time nothing made sense anymore. Why are we fighting these wars overseas? Why are these people dying? Who are we really fighting for? It certainly wasn't for freedom.

He knew the answer to most of the questions. He really wanted others to know the answers but getting through to most people was like trying to teach a cat to play fetch. Especially in the military. If you start speaking out of line, you're going to regret it.

Every day he thought of quitting. There was just so much time invested. It would make it all for nothing. He was half way through his 25 years of service. And the time had flown by rather quickly. It wouldn't be that bad to do another 12 years. That would set him up with a nice pension by the time he was 45 years old. If he quite now, he would not be able to retire that early.

He got out of the shower, shaved, got dressed and went to pour his coffee to start the day.

---

Pulling into the parking lot he took a deep breath, grabbed his coffee and headed into the office. Not sure what exactly his job would be for the day. That was the worst part, not knowing. Sure it's okay to work on the fly if your busy and have many tasks to complete. The problem with his post here was that there might not be any work to do at all. Potentially every day he could end up just sitting at his computer trying to make it look like he was busy while he surfed Facebook or read the news. This job really raised his understanding that he was just trading his time. He was literally just showing up and waiting until it was time to leave. Trading time for money.

What could he do in a situation like this. Sure he could wait for another year and hopefully be moved to a better place. He could also be moved to a worse place. There is always a worse place in the military. Quitting really wasn't an option either because of the debt.

The god damn debt gets you every time.

Every time he would make a little headway on paying down some debt there would be an emergency or something big would break and he'd be right back where he started.

It's like 'they' know exactly how much money I have and purposefully sabotage my life to keep me at the same level of debt.

He knew that debt was slavery. But just because a slave knows he's a slave doesn't mean he can just stop being a slave. The problem he was having was, as a soldier, he was supposed to fight for freedom.

Going through his emails at his computer he had a random thought. If the government makes us slaves and makes all these rules to diminish our freedom, who should we really be fighting?

He had little faith in the government at this point in his life. But at the same time he knew that the military of any country shouldn't really belong to the government. He felt it should be privatized for defense and defense only. This included defending the citizens against the government if they got out of line. Things would be much more efficient. Things wouldn't be all jammed up with governmental rules to get things done. It was these rules that really made him angry with the organization. There were rules to prevent you from doing everything in the name of spending money. And since everything costs money, that pretty much applied to every task. It was good to follow a procedure to spend public money. To be accountable. But eliminating the unnecessary tasks to lower the spending is a much cleaner and effective strategy. If you need to perform a task and you need equipment, why not buy the best you can to perform the job correctly. Instead, with the politicians involved in the rule making, you had to use the cheapest equipment and spend hours of your time proving that it was the cheapest, then go buy more equipment when the initial stuff breaks because it was cheap. On paper it looks like you did the right thing. Any long term thinker knows it always costs more than what the paperwork shows.

Getting past all this symbolism is going to be the real task, he thought as he watched a Colonel walk by his office. These people all think they are important because of this fucking symbolism.

Those high ranking members were so lost in the military world they had completely lost touch with reality. The flags, rank insignia, crests, uniforms, badges, medals, and awards didn't mean anything to a person that could see what they were. But to a military sheep they were the most important thing in the world. There was no difference between a private or a general. They were just people with a different symbol attached to them that didn't mean anything. There was no difference between an American or a German, except the symbolic flag dividing them.

Oh well, he though, taking another sip of coffee and flipping through the news articles on his phone to pass the time. Only 12 more years to go.