Millennial Men Are Going Weak on the USA

There is some truth to that, but there are acceptable reasons for the decline in physical strength. First off I do not and most likely never will work as hard as my father did and I know I never came close to how hard my grandfather worked.

The truth is I never wanted to physically work as hard as my Grandpa Edgar did. He was a dirt poor share cropper in north Missouri who lost his entire crop in 1934 and 1936.

There were no tractors to do the heavy farm work with. He expended hours each day dealing with the horses before and after a hard day of work in the fields. There was no electricity so what labor saving devices that might have been on the market in 1935 were something Edgar could not use anyway. He could not have afforded to buy any of these devices. It was not Grapes of Wrath bad, but it was darn close for the grandparents.

When my grandparents moved to Iowa before WWII Edgar stopped farming, but my dad hired himself out as a day laborer all through his teenage years on local farms. $2 a day for a ten hour work day was good money for my dad. I know I never wanted to work that hard.

In 1949 my father Basil, the now retired US Navy Master Chief, road the train to Chicago from Iowa to attend basic training at Great lakes Naval base forty miles north of Chicago. This was twelve weeks of easy work for the future Master Chief. He got to sleep late and only had to get out of bed at 6:00 a.m. They had electricity and running water in his barracks and indoor plumbing. He had never had that until the US Navy came into his life. For him the physical work of Navy training was a lot easier than farming.

He still laughs about the big city boys in his training battalion who complained all through basic training about how hard it was. So were the big city boys of 1949 their generation’s weak men? I will bet you they did not think so.

The Master Chief did his last assignment in the Navy back at Great Lakes Naval base and for the first time in my life I lived close to Iowa and my extended family. There were lots of male cousins who for the most part thought I was odd. I had lived the first 16 years of my life traveling around the nation and living outside the US. Going across the Mississippi river to Illinois was a big deal in their life. I was well traveled but I did not have the strength of my farm kid cousins and they let me know about it.

One cousin talked me into baling hay with him. I had helped on his farm before but those were sixty pound hay bales. He did not bother to tell me we would be slinging one hundred pound bales all day. I brought no gloves, no hat and no water and I did not know any better. When I could not hack the job and my cousin had to pick up my slack he was mad and he never let me forget my weakness.

Now I went on to go to college, became an Air Force officer, got a masters degree and taught high school and worked in indoor heated and air conditioned offices most of my life. My cousin sort of finished high school and to this day still depends on his physical strength (his is over 60 now) to make a living. We do not talk much except at family funerals and I do not envy his life. Of course he never joined the military either.

When I joined the Air Force all we did at Officer Training School for physical training was running. We did no other physical training. I spent six months at the Army, Infantry Officer Basic Course and I more than made up for the less physically active Air Force training.

Infantry school was hard (real hard), but if you wanted to graduate you worked harder than you did in your last civilian or military job. You adapted, you improvised your overcame. Weaker people can rise to the occasion if they want or need to or they get run over.

My cousins and the guys I went to high school with were sweating bullets about getting drafted and sent to Vietnam. When the draft ended in 1973 and there was no longer a threat of mandatory conscription they simply put thoughts of the Army out of their heads for three generations. So my generation did not volunteer to join the military and neither did their sons or grandsons. Oh, a few went into the service, but the draw of the G.I. Bill to go to college on, or just having a job was more of a factor than getting in great physical shape to serve and defend the nation.

Always remember, we still have a draft and it can be activated anytime the nation is in dire peril. Your 18 year old relative even if he is a weak, fifty pounds over-weight, and an out of shape video gamer, can be drafted.

Do not worry we had motivational training platoons back during Vietnam to deal with the weak ones. The weak ones would show up to basic training and two months later they still had not started their first class of actual instruction. However they would be up everyday a 5:00 am doing physical training for 12 hours a day.

The weak were not let off, to slink home to mamma because they could not meet minimum standards. In today’s volunteer military recruiting world only approximately one out of four young Americans can meet the minimums. Remember those standards that excluded three out of four will fall by the wayside when bombs start exploding inside US soil. We always drop our standards and basic requirements in time of war. The weak and less capable of our society who plan to stay out of the game due to their inferior qualifications, the Department of Defense will get you anyway. You would be surprised how low the standards can drop in time of all out war.

They will not reactivate the draft without including our young women and that is only fair. So if you are fat and out of shape, and you want to talk about your feelings as to why this should keep you out of the Army, get over yourself young lady. Uncle Sam will want you also and you too can attend a motivational platoon to bring you in line with your fellow male future combatants. If we are going to make your fat brother march to the front line in the next war, there is no reason why we cannot make his fat sister pull her weight out onto the battlefield also. The quickest solution is to get in shape.

I am not trying to sound mean, but if we get nuked and millions of Americans die no one will care if you are a plus-size soldier. We had troops in uniform and on ships to France in WWI and when they arrived with less than six total weeks in the Army they went right to the front. If the Army cannot get you in shape they will simply issue you larger battle dress uniforms, and point you to the sounds of gunfire. Those who volunteered will have no time and little respect for the weak ones who waited to be drafted in hopes of being sent home for physical deficiencies and thereby avoiding the horrors of combat.

Yes we have weak people in our society, we always have. The latest crop of weak young Americans will in fact figure it out if they want to come home from war to mom and their video games.

Weakness can be overcome. Death because of weakness is something you can do something about. You choose and choose wisely.

Deo Vindice

As a Millennial I am ashamed of my generation I long for my fellow Southern brethren to once again, fly the flag of their Ancestors, and just get back to being good ole Scotch-Irish Confederate Christian rednecks with a love for God, Guns, Dixie, Country, and fine Southern Women. Is that too much to ask?

No and no. Most women in the military have no interest in combat arms. Most women are in the service by virtue of reduce height, weight and physical fitness standards. The Israeli situation is the result of a court ruling and they are still not integrated into combat units for the most part: http://www.wnd.com/2001/08/10269/ Finally, if they were really just as capable as men then the obvious place that should be integrated are NCAA sports teams at the service academies. There is no reason to segregate men & women in track & field events, they are perfectly equal...right?

Your dad must have been just a little older than i am, i was 16 before i lived in a house with electricity and running water.

It was kinde of hard for my dad to farm in eastern Colo because the dirt was on the move.

Later Ike became president and every thing got better but i still did my share on picks and shovels.

My son was smaller than this young man. He was a tower climber until he died. His gear alone weighed 135 pounds - almost as much as he did.

Can you lug 135 pounds up 300 feet along with the equipment, then fix a complex electrical system, and climb down in less than 4 hours? Then do it again - and again - in 16 hour shifts for a 7 day work week with 6 weeks on and two off? With a torn ligament in your shoulder, T1 diabetes, and a badly healed broken back?

At 5’6” and 145 pounds, my kid was small, but he wasn’t weak.

If anyone’s curious, I’ll tell you guys about the 18-30 year old kids that my husband served with in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oh, and that kid that you’re mocking?

Yeah, he flips houses and does most of the construction work himself. He’s already got two successful businesses under his belt at 17 and got married to that lovely young lady before he graduated high school. He’s not wasting his future on a worthless college degree. He works with his hands and probably knows more about construction than most of the ‘men’ here.

He’s more successful at 18 than most of the retired people here ever were.

If he were your grandson, you’d be damn proud.

He flips houses and does most of the construction work himself. By 17 he’s already got two successful businesses under his belt and at 18 married that young lady in the photo. (Who’s also got her own business.) He knows everything there is to know about construction, business, and real estate and makes money with labor. He’s 18 and independently wealthy.

Yeah. He’s a real loser. Doesn’t know the first thing about real work. /s

At my last ‘job’ in the Obamaconomy I was slaving on the phones for 10-12 hours a day 6 days a week. They had an autodialer because your eyes would get so strained you literally might not be able to read the tiny-print list. And while the people couldn’t shoot me they could treat me like garbage and I could never expect better or complain to anyone.

Maybe not quite the same but I can sure as hell sympathize...hunched in that tiny cubicle until your back and legs hurt so bad you have to stand up slow or cramps will literally knock you over like a piano dropping on your head. Frankly I’d rather have been working outside.

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