Is it hypocritical for a leftist to join the US millitary?

Spread that class consciousness in there. A job is a job under capitalism.

what do you do in the millitary user?

Learn to shoot guns, throw grenades, read theory and start a sleeper cell.

Hard mode: Don't get caught.

You will not be able to deal with military life. It is difficult to explain to a civilian, but you need some idealistic sense that you are doing something worthwhile when you first go in. If you don't have that, the bullshit will break your will in the first year. Being in the military when you do not believe in what you are doing is soul-crushingly miserable. Tje military is paying for my rent and schooling and health care after just four years of me being in, but I still cannot say that enlisting was the best thing for me.

I would not call what I was like in the service either developed or mature.

The only crushing thing about it for me is I cant just patch myself up with drug use like I can in civilian life.

Literally high school 2.0. Expect to be treated like a retarded child and living in shit-tier dorms for 4 years unless you snag yourself a dependapotamus and can get into base housing (single men get told to go fuck themselves). Your end-goal here is getting off-base housing and living like a welfare queen with your cushy housing allowance, and your work day consists of 90% sitting on your ass and playing with your phone all day in your shop.

Experience the joys of "morale boosting" mandatory fun to try and get your mind off eating a bullet, sexual assault prevention seminars, and drinking yourself into an early grave.

Have fun.

The American military in general is pretty fucking shit when it comes to the social organization. Their equipments and technical training is top-notch, but the rest is really backwards.

Not at all, you can learn a lot and soldiers that get out of combat without going full brainwashed bootlickers are normally very cynical and open to radical ideas. Just be sure you know what youre getting into, you might have to do terrible shit and it genuinely fucks people up

Combat job, googling my namesake should give it to you.

I don't think you fully absorbed what you went through user. First off, never mind your job you need to give yourself some credit. The aspects of the military that you and all of us went through take some kind of individual to endure, and while the lasting effects of enduring it might be different for all of us (as I'll get into) you should give yourself more credit.

Second, you need to recognize that everyone is different and definitely you or I obviously look at it differently. It was definitely soul crushing for a young me, and I'll agree its tough shit. But over 100k of benefits including GI Bill tuition and tuition made it more than worth it for a young me who had no parents and was threatened with a life of dealing to make it by (which would certainly have landed me in jail like some of the people I lived with growing up in the orphanage). Maybe it wasn't the best thing for you, but for everyone reading this I find that the amount of people who get out and still sound absolutely miserable like this fellow seemed to me to be far and inbetween. If anything the military was supposed to (by putting you through hell) toughen you up some so even if you do encounter a thorny trail you come out the other side ready for whatever else is coming, not lamenting what you just encountered.

So obviously I respect your opinion user, but for me who was faced with either poverty or the military I took the best I could out of a situation we view differently but obviously used differently.

You're looking at it all wrong. Of course I wasn't mature, of course my first squad leader who harassed me mercilessly was not mature, of course the endless amount of military fuck fuck games aren't mature. Nothing about my experience was mature besides the actual part where we were in a combat situation. After that its the same endless shit.

But you're looking at what I'm saying wrong. Dealing with all of that made me more mature. Why? Because the military is a first class lesson in a sort of stoicism. The military teaches you HARD that things are rarely in your control, and life will fuck with you left and right. All you can do is deal with it, and go forward. That's the maturity I'm talking about, that's the personal development. Capitalism and civilian life provide the same fucking thing in different ways. Suddenly your tire popped and now you have to shell out 150$ for a new tire when you might not be able to swing it and eat actual food, or you got a pustule in your leg that needs medical attention. This might disrupt someone softer, someone less prepared and throw them for a loop. The military gave me the maturity to shrug that shit off, and deal with life better.

So was the military a mature organization? No. Did it harden me and make me a generally more mature person better equipped to deal with the shit life throws at me without whimpering or fucking up my thought process so I can better formulate solutions without carrying extra stress? Yes. You've got to look at it a different, and positive way fam.

Perhaps that would be a good thing, user. Now for me, drugs are the solution to an obvious problem. I know for me, the problem is capitalism.

But we cannot choose when we were born, and we can't have the option to be popped out at a time when fully automated communism is upon the human race. You are going to have to deal with things later generations won't, and make sacrifices that they can't fathom. But at least in my worldview I suffer so later generations won't. I take the mental scarring and the abuse so that perhaps my actions prevent that for later human beings.

If you did enter, you're right you wouldn't be able to patch yourself with drugs. But you will have an experience as to what its like not to be able to, and perhaps you'll come out harder and not needing to be patched up anymore. Whether that person will be someone you can deal with is a whole other question.

(post was too long, so continued…)

That's damn spot on.

Anyway, ending point being that we all have different opinions especially those of us that have been there. Me, I started from a really hard position in life so perhaps I'm a bit more steely than most and didn't have the problems others did because I was used to watching out for my life at a young age and dealing with terrible things others didn't have to. Don't let me view think that someone from perhaps a household with normal parents and normal circumstances will make it out as well as I did.

All the same, my point stands: if any of you decide to join as a leftist I wouldn't insult or begrudge you trying to just find some job security and a daily three meals. Anyone who does is no true leftist, and tbh the military is an employer like any other. Any leftist who would discount veterans or soldiers has to be touched in the head, and forgets that people like Georgy Zhukov once served Imperial Russia albeit as a conscript.