Military in the Media

The amount of coverage the military gets in the media is quite disturbing. Turning 18 meant I had to sign up for the "selective service." This is essentially signing up for the draft, in case it were to ever be reinstated. Before that recruiters were barking at my heels to look into "military careers." One of the most popular activities among my high school peers was playing video games. Many of these video games were in fact war themed games, set in historical and present day battle situations. "America's Army" is a game created by the government to recreate soldier training and combat situations. They were tapping into a teen driven market. As we grew older their almost omniscient presence was seen everywhere and continues today. Every day on t.v., and even in the movie theaters, commercials for the armed services play all day. The news is flooded with images, maps, videos, graphs, and recreations of the conflict in the middle east. The war and being a part of the armed services tends to always be presented positive as well. Even if we have feelings against the war, we are almost trained to say, "I oppose the war, but I support the troops," as someone pointed out in class. Also stated in class, we are being turned into virtual citizen-soldiers. They are trying to train us before they actually have us signed up to serve. I personally feel that the military does not really need such a large advertising budget. We all know what the armed services are, if we want to be a part of that then we will. We do not need to be overwhelmed with rhetorical arguments telling us what to do with our lives.