Uncle Sam Wants Them Young and Dumb! | Thinking Out Loud

In this episode of his "Thinking Out Loud" series, Double D discusses an article from "Military.com" which lays out how the United States military is waiving its High School educational requirement for enlistment.
Double D jumps into the video by asking viewers to look at the young faces in the article's thumbnail, pointing out that they are children of seventeen or eighteen years of age. He goes on to ruminate on Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse Five', noting the novel's secondary title; 'A Children's Crusade.' He asks his audience to remember that while it is essential to take a "zoomed out materialist" perspective on the policy of war, it is just as important to remember that it is children and young people who do the fighting and dying in all wars, be they revolutionary or imperialist in nature.
Jumping in to the article, Double D points out that the disbanding of any educational requirement for enlistment comes in the wake of a serious recruitment crisis for the Defense Department, with the army trailing behind with only 40% of its annual recruitment quotas, he notes also that these numbers already reflect a revision of total force size as the Defense Department had to abandon previous higher recruitment goals.
Double D shows that in addition to requiring no High School diploma, new recruits need only score a 50 on the ASVAB, and that the US military has also abandoned any regulations regarding tattoos or piercings. He touches also on judges waiving or reducing prison sentences for felons who opt to join the service.
Double D dispels the US Military's rational for the recruitment crisis, which they claim is due to a strong labor market, where employers are offering increased wages and benefits even for entry-level positions. He notes that the economy is in a tail spin, with suppressed wages, high real unemployment, and disastrous levels of inflation. He explains that despite this economic desperation, people are still refusing to enlist in the military. He suggests this is a result of societal fatigue from decades of imperialist wars as well a cultural shift coming about as a result of the US government's failure to provide for its veterans as well as a general understanding of the nature of America's overseas adventurism.
Tying off the video, Double D suggests that this recruitment crisis is yet another example of imperial decay, another sign which suggests the slow-motion collapse of the American empire. He notes this military crisis comes alongside severely deteriorated infrastructure, millions of homeless thronging the streets, rebellion in America's Latin American Neo-colonies, a global resistance to the petro-dollar, as well as a decline in US cultural hegemony.
He asks his viewers to consider how the US empire would be weakened if the left seized this cultural moment and weaponized it into a general anti-war, anti-imperial movement; stating that if there is no one to manufacture the machinery of war, or to pick up the weapons of war, there can be no war, and in turn no Empire.