chat

Not the PLA either...

Made a new account to hopefully minimize self-doxing, but here's some background. I haven't lived with him in 10 years and I left the country 4 years ago. We don't really talk all that often, but he had messaged me with some questions about photography and then brought it up.

I said something like "I'm sure you're aware I don't have a very fond opinion of the military". He said "I'm not too enthused with the idea either, but I need the security and discipline that it will provide while I try to find something to dedicate myself to and I've been in this dead end job for about 2 years and my soul is decaying".

I told him he can come live with me, that it's easy to get a 1 year visa and I'd happily pay for flights and I have a spare room. He said he'd think about it but "needs physical activity and more friends and connection in general". I tried to explain that I go climbing multiple days a week, volunteer for search and rescue, and play board games with friends every week that he'd be able to hang out with.

I get the impression though that he thinks visiting would just be putting his problems on hold for a year; maybe he's right about that, but I think living somewhere other than our shit hometown would give him a lot of perspective on the world and help him maybe realize that what he actually needs is a community of some kind. I don't want him to make a huge fucking mistake because he feels hopeless and gets pressured into it by our conservative step dad or some recruiter or whatever.

I also briefly tried explaining some issues with the US military, but it's a bit hard to undo decades of american "education" in one conversation. He said "my moral code is also not nearly as strong as yours, and I have very little strong feelings toward very much at all outside of just trying to be a good person". I assume he reached out to me because he's having some doubts.

Anyway I tried to make it super clear that if he wanted to come live with me or if he wanted to do a work visa somewhere else I'd pay flights and anything else and help in any way I can; I'm not rich, but I have a small emergency savings.

I think I've heard there are organizations of leftist / anti-imperialist veterans? Maybe one of them has information I could send him. Any advice or ideas would be appreciated.