I am honestly very scared by how many of my male friends and aquaintances are seriously considering joining the military as an option.

There are just so many of my peers (I am 17) that say things like “yeah i’d like to be a film director, but if that does not work out, i’m joining the military” or “yeah i did not pass this school year, i could start working, but i think i’ll just become a soldier”.

And mind you, I am not american. I live in a place with, well, not many nice prospects for the future, but still, quite a rich place. These people mostly not struggling economically.

I am italian. Italy is a beautiful place full of issues, from organized crime to all sorts of corruption and xenophobia and gender inequality. But italians are people who managed to build a useful resistance against fascism, and who then wrote quite a beautiful constitution, which values human rights and equality and peace and honest work above everything else.

What I feel is not patriotism. And what my peers feel when considering a military career isn’t either. It’s all just hoplessness mixed with propaganda that contradicts all principles that this country has tried to base itself on after ww2.

And despite all the problems this wonderful shitty ass place has had, we were never eager to go fight and die in a foreign place, without even fighting for principles we managed to convince ourselves of.

These people don’t want to join out of principle. It’s just an easy way out. A passive suicide. I’m being told what to do so i don’t have to think, i don’t have to care when my actions have consequences. So that when I die it won’t be my fault, and it’s fine because my life does not matter, I’ve already sacrificed my free will after all.

Everyone is destroying their lives. Some take drugs, some sell them, some drown in depression or anxiety, and can’t spend a week sober. Some are just wating to throw their life away after meeting a minor inconvenience.

Some are destroying their mental health by desperately putting so much pressure on themselves for academic results that may or may not get them somewhere, hoping for a future that so many have given up on.

I am so fucking scared. The ship for the future has already sailed. Now we’re all on the same tiny, overfilled, old boat and we’re all gonna drown together. Fucking hell.