The headline reads "as eligible recruits shrink ..." Actually, the number eligible is higher than it has ever been. The headline needs to read, "young people think the military sucks". I would hope that means we have a generation that is actually starting to question the main stream narrative. I would hope that not only would these kids not walk into a recruits office, but would hand out copies of Smedley Buttler's book "War is a Racket" and just ask the candidates to read the book first and then make a decision to sign up. The Pentagon's main objective at this point is to protect, at ANY cost, the dollars' hegemony as the SOLE reserve currency of the planet. I would add, the Europeans have launched (as in it's a done deal) an alternative to SWIFT (search "what is SWIFT" for info"). The BRICS (search BRICS agree to settling in their own currencies) are in the midst of launching their own SWIFT alternative along with trading in currencies other than the dollar. That means the Pentagon doesn't have a recruit problem: They have a funding problem and it means they lost the "war" on maintaining their self licking ice cream cone (the dollars' hegemony allowing unlimited debt issuance. money printing, and economic sanctions). The recruit problem isn't the story - the Pentagon is going to be flat broke in two years or less.

Even with the Pentagram pulling out all the stops in their brainwashing of the masses via stealth marketing (PlayStation and Captain Marvel, anyone?), pretty much anybody with a brain left knows that slaving and dying for the corporate killing machine known as The Military is a sucker bet, and probably the only “recruits” they will get now are those bullied into it by economic deprivation and/or a criminal record hanging over their heads. The Killers Club then has a few options. My guess is they’ll go with hiring more private armies, because they can then avoid liability when these hired goons go on genocidal rampages against “the enemy.” Or they can try to reinstate the Draft, but I don’t see them getting very far with that, unless they (er, I meant “Iran”) blow up California or something to create a fabricated National emergency. Finally, they can spend a zillion dollars creating their long-coveted “Robot Army”, and slaughter innocent civilians from afar, with the simple touch of a button! Gotta love the Pentagram!

While I thought this article was a bit longer than it needed to be, it provided great context to the slowing trend of new recruits entering the military. The author gets full 5 stars because it combined a personal story with the overall trend and highlighted some underlying reasons for that trend from both the citizen and military perspective.

This article sheds even more light on a story that seems to be becoming bigger and bigger for the U.S. military each year. The author could have done more to uncover other reasons why recruitment to the military is down, besides just reporting the Pentagon's figures, but overall the piece is very well sourced and informative.