Thinking about how veterans and service members fit into class warfare. The military is often a weapon used against it's own society. Sometimes it's obvious, like the Coal Wars, the Bonus Army, Kent State, and now.

Service members mostly come from and return to the working class and poor. It might be interesting to see the average social mobility of veterans, comparing pre- and post-service status. I don't know enough to even guess, but I would not be surprised if it was a downward trend.

But while in service, we have a guarantee against poverty, and in recent decades, enjoy a middle class life. (I'm making a lot of generalizations.)

Are we class traitors? Those of us with the privileges necessary to serve are able-bodied and mostly neurotypical.

But many of us lose such privileges.

This was more obvious under the draft, but with our "all volunteer" military, it's less so. This is where the concept of a "poverty draft" becomes useful. Service is often an escape from poverty.

Hereditary chattel slavery was evil. Wage slavery is also evil.

A draft enforced by the death penalty was evil. A draft enforced by the threat of deprivation is also evil. It makes service not entirely voluntary, and discriminates against the disabled and neuroatypical.

So some subset of the working class and poor leave their class and achieve more privileges for themselves and their families. This is rational.

Some smaller subset then lord it over the rest, and share memes on facebook about how free college is already available, just sign up.

Another subset recognize that these new privileges should be available to all. I'm in this group.

But the military still gets used as a weapon against the poor and working class. Directly, breaking strikes and protests, and indirectly, by consuming resources.

The call to defund the police includes transferring those funds to social services. Defunding the military can mirror this. If we end the Forever War, we can fund universal healthcare, a basic income, low or no cost housing.

Doing so would share the privilege of being free from want with everyone. It would also make our foreign policy more subject to the will of the people, as service would be more voluntary. The boundary between service members and the working class would be blurred.

But still, the military is the weapon of the oligarchs.

I'm not sure where all I was going with this, but I suspect we need some solidarity between the military, veterans, and the working class if we are to have any hope for a better society.