This one made it into the book. I wrote it in 1999, when Russia was drafting young men and the US military had just quietly lowered its entry requirements. It aged the way old warnings tend to age — not quite right, not quite wrong, and more relevant than you’d hope.
The essay started as a sarcastic notice. A public service announcement for the young men who hadn’t figured out yet what they were being primed for. I’d been in the Marines. I knew what the machine looked like from the inside. Bootcamp during the Gulf War, Phase I through Phase III — sleep deprivation, victim mentality manufactured on schedule, camaraderie built up just enough that you’d die for the guy next to you and not ask too many questions about why.
Here’s what they don’t put in the brochure: the military doesn’t want soldiers. It wants people who’ve stopped asking whether the war is a good idea. By Phase III, they’re shaving your head again, yanking back the small freedoms Phase II dangled in front of you, and running you so hard through physical training that the philosophical question of “what am I actually doing here” becomes secondary to the very immediate question of “can I stay on my feet.”
In 1999 I was watching the pattern repeat. Russia drafting. NATO expanding. The US military dropping its high school diploma requirement. The machinery warming up. I wrote a notice — the kind nobody in official channels would write — describing exactly what a young man could expect if he got swept into the current: PTSD payouts down the road, a few years of bar-haunting veterans trailing his father’s generation, and the dull comfort of having fought for something nobody could quite name anymore.
I didn’t write it to be anti-military. I wrote it because I’d been through the thing and I wanted someone who hadn’t to know what it looked like before they signed the line. World War III had already been named, I noted. At least we’d stopped calling them “wars to end all wars.” Small mercies.
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*This piece was expanded and collected in [Not My America: A Stranger in a Strange Land](https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-America-Stranger-Strange-ebook/dp/B0G3C44X7D/) — essays about America observed from the outside, by someone who left and couldn’t quite believe what he found when he looked back. Available in Kindle and paperback.*
**[Get Not My America on Amazon →](https://www.amazon.com/Not-My-America-Stranger-Strange-ebook/dp/B0G3C44X7D/)**
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**You might also like:** [It’s not a New America – It’s the same it always was](https://www.vagobond.com/its-not-a-new-america-its-the-same-it-always-was/), [Secret of ageing no longer a secret](https://www.vagobond.com/secret-of-ageing-no-longer-a-secret/), [The Newest Thing…Craigslist meets Youtube](https://www.vagobond.com/the-newest-thingcraigslist-meets-youtube/)
*Browse the full CD Damitio catalog at [indignified.com/books](https://indignified.com/books)*
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I called most of this chaos years ago. America is still unraveling — and the next chapters are already written.
If you want to understand what’s really coming (and why), read Not My America: A Stranger in a Strange Land. Available on Amazon.
CD Damitio writes at indignified.substack.com — essays on utopias, dystopias, and the spaces between. Free to read. No algorithm, no sponsored content. His books can be found on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/stores/CD-Damitio/author/B001JP7NWA
CD Damitio writes INDIGNIFIED — utopias and dystopias explored. Free to read.
