i swear this was not paid for by the NROTC

i think it's just too difficult to explain how proud my family and i are of my brother without descending into maudlin crap and making everybody throw up all over their monitors, but suffice to say we are extremely proud. and i, personally, am TOTALLY surprised. my brother had a pacifier until he was five, played trumpet in the high school jazz band, was/is really into emo music, used to tear out clumps of my hair in our legendary world-ending fights, and now - well, he's a navy man. articulate, intelligent, committed and brave, not to mention he is all into weight lifting and stuff. in a word, it is INCREDIBLY WEIRD.

i never fully understood my brother's motivations for joining ROTC and the military - like i said, he was a pansy indie music lover in high school, skinny and bespectacled, passionately liberal, way into science. not exactly your prototype army killer man. and it wasn't like he needed ROTC to pay his tuition, either - it would have been a stretch for my parents to pay for his education at brown or duke, where he was accepted, but he decided to go to state-school-affordable uva partly on the strength of its engineering program, partly on the strength of its ROTC program, and probably partly because a couple of times i got him drunk down there and he thought it was totally awesome.

additionally, it wasn't as if my brother was constantly having the military shoved down his throat as an ideal career or a way to a better place. our father served in the air force, and my mother's father served in the army, but we've never, ever been even close to my idea of a stereotypical military family, talking up the glory and nobility of serving your country or going to army-navy football games or, like, shooting guns and stuff. i wasn't even aware that my dad had served in the airforce until my teens. i'm pretty sure my parents didn't even want him to sign up. but somewhere during his junior and senior years of high school, he decided he wanted to join ROTC. he decided he wanted to be in the navy. he decided he wanted to serve on submarines. and from that time on, that was that. i don't think anybody in my family ever thought it was a particularly good idea (we are a huge bunch of america-hating liberals, after all), but he had made his choice and it was okay with us.

but i have to say, watching his transformation over the past four years - i am pretty fucking impressed. the person my brother has become is, i think, mostly a credit to his inherent character and how my parents raised him. but i do think the navy has had a lot do with his manner and, obviously, his commitment to america. i wish i could put on my usual cynical affectations and say how cheesy i think it is to want to serve your country in a good, dedicated and brave way, but listening to my brother talk about his service and aspirations and beliefs, i really do believe he thinks the ideals of america are noble and worth protecting, and that was part of the reason he decided to go the navy route. and then i get a little tear in my eye.

not to mention the useful applications of joining ROTC. obviously my brother got his tuition paid for; he'll get his tuition next year at the us navy nuclear power school paid for; he got something like a $10,000 bonus this year and he's buying a truck (oh god, a truck, how i hate them, but it makes sense in his case for all the moving he'll be doing); he'll be paid fairly handsomely when he serves four years on subs; he's already traveled a good amount to various locations due to previous submarine cruises and will most likely be based in san diego or hawaii, which isn't a bad deal; and he's practically guaranteed to get a sweet, high-paying job, government or otherwise, when he finishes active duty around age 28. i guess 28 can sound kind of old and far along, but to have that much under your belt by then sounds pretty amazing to me.

which has lately made me wonder - why aren't more people signing up for ROTC? and i'm not talking enlisting straight out of high school for the army or marines - no one wants to be come the next victim of the meat grinder in iraq - but ROTC makes you an officer in whatever branch you choose and provides you with all the opportunities listed above. if you are somebody interested in government, economics, international relations, law, or any engineering science, it can be great for your career (i wouldn't expect anyone who wants to be an artist, novelist or musician, etc, to be interested because in that case the military probably can't offer you anything except abject humiliation). and i'm not talking about why just now more people aren't signing up - obviously having a crazy warmonger in office is not conducive to recruiting, as we are currently witnessing. but even when i was in my first year of college, lo those seven years ago, not a single person i knew even considered doing it. and as i've seen with my brother and all of his ROTC friends, it's been an incredibly positive experience for them thus far. of course, they still have their four years of active duty to serve. opinions could be markedly different after that.

i guess i just wonder why the military is barely even considered as an option, especially by liberals. a lot of the (90% justified, i think) bitching we do about the military and its atmosphere - well, if you want the military to be a better organization and conduct itself in a more ideal manner, a lot of that could be changed by you, if you are a good person, liberal, responsible and moral, joining. it's not a life commitment - both my father and grandfather have gone on to have very successful careers in foreign policy and the government, and i don't doubt my brother (if he does not choose to make a career out of the navy) will go on to be a successful chemical engineer, or whatever he wants to do.

i don't mean this incoherent rambling to be any sort of accusation or statement that liberals are peacenik pussies, etc. i just get sick too often of conservatives claiming the military as their own - the whole hate the war, hate the troops sentiment they always spout off - and i don't believe that for one second, but it can't be denied that the military is a markedly conservative organization with a majority of republicans in it, and since that truth is so apparent, anyone who's halfway liberal gets put off by the idea of serving. i don't ever imagine that the military could become liberal, but i think it could become more moderate and MUCH more useful and better in general if a bigger percentage of the people who were joining were democrats, especially if they went on to maintain leadership positions.

and i understand that there's a good argument in saying that there are more effective ways to use your intelligence and liberalism, maybe by working for the government or nonprofits to effect policy change, etc. and that is often true, but, to be honest - i mean, what good has that done anybody as to our current position in the world? look where we are right now. the people making important policy decisions are often people in past or current military leadership positions. and i do think if we want that to change, the perception of the military has to change. there's no reason for liberals to think of it in a dismissive and condescending manner, or as something they would never do.

anyway i just read this over and want to state that i'm not on drugs, and also that i realize just because my brother has had a positive experience with the military and ROTC does not mean that his experience applies to everything and is the ultimate truth. just that: the military can do some good, could do even more if better people were joining, and it can provide a lot of opportunities. and if more liberals like my brother decided to serve, i think we'd be in a better position. that's all i'm sayin'. please don't throw me off the liberal blogger team.