Being an American soldier is like being the Daddy to all the world's adorable children!

   The commercials are more moving and stunningly tender than any ad campaign I've ever seen. First, there's the music:  a radiant, expansive, heart-rending hymn of somber violins that sounds worthy of a beloved president's funeral. The visuals are of noble young Americans: Beautiful, brave, principled, determined, competent and strong -- an idealized profile of what this country is supposed to be about.

    The few. The proud. The Marines. I have seen this series of ads over and over again the past two years.. Even though I despise war, and believe that our military-industrial complex is the world's biggest, most dangerous source of corruption and suffering, I never tire of watching them. They stop me in my tracks every time. They pour forth with the poignant  power of superb human beings doing what they believe is truly righteous. There is grace and magnetism in the way these clean-cut kids hurl themselves out of planes, surge through forbidding terrain and leap with awesome fortitude over one barricade after another.The ads use sophisticated psychology to lure today's peace-loving young adults into our "humanitarian" military. Watch out!

 

 

    You fall in love with their faces. One man's modest, exhausted smile after his long crawl through the mud makes you want to give him a bath, wrap him in a cozy robe, and serve him dinner. And then adopt him:

     "For Honor. For Courage. For Country." The music enfolds you in a warm bath of love and pride. It concerns me deeply that our Department of Defense is producing such BRILLIANT PROPAGANDA. It probably always has, but this is the first campaign that has gotten me in its grips and roused me, completely against my will.

 

/ See -- it's just a test. What could be wrong with that?

At last -- a place for a beautiful black man to "be all you can be."

     There is a reason for this that has everything to do with truly scary Mind Control that is carefully calibrated  in response to public opinion. The military uses some of the best experts in neuropsychiatry and conscious/subconscious attitudes to analyze the brains of recruitment-age Americans. Then, it merely tailors its marketing to their dreams and values. The emotional wallop of these ads keeps the rest of the American public on board with the whole enterprise as well.

    Even though I was aware of all that, I was impressed -- and deeply unsettled -- by the manipulative and deceptive genius that had gone into the I liked so much.

    Military recruitment ads, even from the recent past, were all about heroic battle, true grit, adrenaline-producing, shock-and-awe obliteration of people and places. It was "hear me roar!" and so much more. It was the essence of Manhood.

    But this multimillion-dollar "Towards the Sound of Chaos" campaign to keep "fresh troops" pouring into Afghanistan and Iraq (and Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia...it goes on) wasn't working very well. 

 

 

   The inconvenient truth is that today's young people really don't want to blow people apart, whether it's a heated, gory, face-to-face encounter in a distant wasteland, or whether it's done from a nice climate controlled cubicle stateside, where they can press buttons and watch as drones turn human beings into mist.

    Today's kids, bless their hearts, don't see the point. They have better things to do. They are, for the most part, a "can't we just get along?" generation.

 

     The military is using slick ads and video games designed by the

same marketing firms that create commercials for major corporations, such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Nintendo. These ads and video games "do not accurately portray the lives of soldiers and do not mention the dangers of war," according to a Rutgers Law School investigation.

 

    Advertising costs among all the services was nearly $700 million in 2012, and overall recruiting costs reached $30 billion last year, up from $4 billion in 2006, according to a report by Rutgers Law School's Constitutional Law Clinic. 

  The harder it is to recruit teenagers to enlist, the more tax dollars are spent on recruitment advertising and the ever-more-invasive brain research to help design it. The budget has increased tenfold since 9/11, according to Defense Policy Analytics. 

    Last year, despite some opposition by deficit-conscious members, Congress voted to continue spending $72.3 million yearly to sponsor sports. Dale Earnhardt Jr., NASCAR's most popular driver, as well as IndyCar Series driver JR Hildebrand, are major beneficiaries. So are the National Hot Rod Association,  the Ultimate Fighting Championship and (get this: ) bass fishing.

Money well spent, no doubt.

     ( Less than a year ago, Marine Corps recruiting commercials that aired during Ultimate Fighting Championship events were discontinued. The service ended its three-year partnership with the organization following months of pressure from a labor union, women’s groups and members of Congress who objected to the "hate and brutality" that were inherent in the sport. Isn't that kind of like war, though?)

     America's minority kids are particularly vulnerable to military advertising, because many of them have so few options for education, careers, and lives in which self-esteem can be achieved.

The Army has the dubious distinction of contracting with four separate firms to create recruiting ads that target different ethnic groups, using cultural indicators to customize the ads, according to Rutger's University's excellent investigative commitment to this subject. IW Group, Inc., based in California, creates the Army‘s recruitment ads for Asian-Americans. The Army contracts with Images USA, of Atlanta, to produce recruitment ads for

African-Americans. It contracts with Casanova Pendrill, based in California, to create recruitment ads for Latinos. Find these kids weaknesses, tease out their psychological needs, and HIT THEM HARD. The ranks are too thin. Do what it takes!

 

    Uunder 10 U.S.C.A. § 503, the “Secretary of Defense is required by law to enhance the effectiveness of DOD’s recruitment programs through an aggressive program of advertising and market research targeted at prospective recruits and those who may influence them.”  

    One result is that "through Channel One in-school programming,

    It is disturbing that vulnerable young people are captive audiences to this propaganda by an order of Congress.

 

    Beginning in 2004, the military routinely fell short of its recruiting goals. In response, the military began a multi-billion dollar Madison Avenue-driven marketing campaign to sell military careers to America’s youth. Facilitating this effort is the No Child Left Behind Act (“NCLB”), a federal statute aimed at equalizing the quality of education throughout the nation. 

    A little-known provision of that law aids military recruitment. The NCLB requires public high schools that receive federal funding to give recruiters access to students and student information, including contact information of all juniors and seniors. As a result, children are exposed to aggressive recruitment tactics without parental knowledge or approval.

   In 2011, the Army was particularly desperate to entice new recruits. This state of affairs led it to its first official sponsorship deal with a Hollywood film, “X-Men: First Class.”

    On the Army Facebook page visitors were invited to “view exclusive content from the upcoming movie” as well as watch a trailer for the film and a commercial that promoted the Army by comparing the experience to becoming an X-man. Awesome!

Wow, these are sexy, first-class people all right! Join the Army and become one!

recruiting website. The game has 6.5 million registered users according to the Army’s website. “America’s Army,” which has “become the gold standard for recruitment video games, cost $5.5 million.”

    The Army also uses text messages, helicopter simulators in the back of eighteen wheelers, and visits to sporting and entertainment venues that have been deemed to appeal to the military's desired demographic. 

    They also offer the immersive "Army Strong" experience to publicize how fun and exciting it can be to serve your country. Jumping out of planes is one of the most popular features of this program:

It's not just a job -- it's a cuddle, and almost a kind of 'twerk.'

     Recruiters still hang around payday loan storefronts, inner-city convenience stores and the other time-tested spots for latching onto kids in need of money and stability, but the military has more fun with the flashier stuff, and it matters little how much it costs. Congress can't bring itself to curtail these expenditures, since "The Homeland" is at stake. 

   All glitzty media and events aside, frontline military recruiting remains a job that is fraught with rejection, failure, pressure, changing parameters and seemingly impossible quotas. The desperate tactics and outright lies employed by recruiters have been repeatedly and exhaustively documented in the nation's major media. The Associated Press reported in March 2012  that recruiters make roughly 10,000 contacts through phone calls and canvassing to bring in 104 prospects. That’s winnowed down along the way — some change their minds, others fail to make it through basic training or infantry school — and ultimately 57 Marines emerge from the process out of the original 10,000 contacts.

    As I wrote in the Spring of 2011 (http://kronstantinople.blogspot.com/2013/05/there-i-said-it-i-dont-support-our.html) we wind up not with a team of ardent patriots, but rather a bunch of kids who need a sense of belonging, who want a free college education, who want to escape from the farm or the ghetto, or who have aggression that needs an acceptable outlet. They admit, almost universally, that their goal is to get out alive, not to defend your freedom. There are very few who enlist for patriotic reasons, and most of them come from military families, so they're already thoroughly indoctrinated. 

 

LIFE OF A SALESMAN    

     Recruiters are placed under enormous pressure, and some of them will do anything to moderate that pressure — including cutting corners, big time, according to a Time magazine article in June of last year.

    Here’s author Leonard H. Le Blanc III's Top 10 list of the ways he witnessed — or heard about, and believed happened — to try to get unqualified recruits into the U.S. military. I am quoting this material in its entirety:

 

10. Create a new birth certificate.

Either get a real birth certificate, scan it, erase the name electronically and place the “new” name in place of the old one. Or request a “real” birth certificate for someone who is already dead. Or you can “borrow” a real birth certificate from someone else who is unlikely to enlist.

9. Lie to the doctor about a chronic or disqualifying medical condition at the Military Entrance Processing Station.

Childhood asthma is the usual disqualifier for most people who are not medically qualified. Diabetes is another easily-hidden condition, if it is being kept under control through oral medication, or (temporarily) through insulin injections.

8. Bribe the person running the weigh-in scale at the MEPS.

Works great for overweight applicants if you can get some poorly paid, corrupt medical tech to go along with you.

7. Create a new high-school diploma.

There are many tales of recruiters bribing high-school counselors for blank high-school diplomas, to be filled in when needed by a deserving recruit who failed to graduate.

6. Forge a parent’s signature.

Ideal for someone who wants to enlist, but at under 18 is too young to do so without a parent’s formal OK. (You can enlist at 17 if one of your parents signs for you, but more often than not the parent(s) refuse to sign.)

5. Have a ringer take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test (ASVAB) in place of your prospective recruit.

Taking the test requires a photo ID, but creating a fake driver’s license – or swapping photos on the applicant’s license – are ways around this.

4. Create a college transcript.

You can get a counterfeit one, or buy one at a diploma mill. It makes your applicant eligible for a higher rank upon enlistment.

3. Create a whole new person.

Start with a fresh birth certificate, add a new Social Security card, toss in a new driver’s license, and top off with a new high-school diploma.

2. Provide a false urine sample at the MEPS.

Concerned your drug use might keep you out of uniform? Attach a fake bladder to your belly filled with someones else’s urine, and use a discharge tube to give “your” sample.

1. Steal someone else’s identity.

Just hijack all the relevant data from someone’s who’s never going to enlist.

The old saying — when the cat’s away, the mice will play — still applies. None of these scams could have happened if the next-level supervisors had been doing their jobs and spot-checked the process.

 

This post originally appeared on the Kronstantinople.blogspot.com site. Another post, "Mad Men, Bad Women: A summer in the '60s New York ad world" is relevant to this issue:

http://kronstantinople.blogspot.com/2012/03/mad-men-bad-women-my-summer-in-new-york.html