[Tainari88]

@Rich more veterans lose their lives in peace time after they come home and have to deal with their PTSD than during combat missions during a war. They lose their lives to suicide. War is not some easy thing to deal with. You wind up losing your humanity. What kept you sane mentally and emotionally.

The stats do not lie.

War is soul destroying and anti humane.

It has to be glorified because if it was not? How many people would think it is noble to kill women, children, old people and strangers you never met before? You have no real beef with those people. You have to follow orders and live under cortisol stress for months on end....damage the world. Damage the enemy. Then they wind up broken men trying to live with the loss of their human sanity.

They take their lives if they did a lot of bad combat.

So there you go. The good part of the military is the socialist part of it. All men together and fighting for a cause they believe in. Sharing that dream or mission with the rest.

And in the US armed forces? They are not all one race. They are multiracial. They find common ground. The issues is the traumas of war. Killing makes you change for the worse. In every way.

Too many men that have never killed another person think that stain goes away easily. It never does. It marks you forever.

United States military veteran suicide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An illustration created by the U.S. Air Force to represent the number of veteran suicides per day.
An illustration created by the U.S. Air Force to represent the number of veteran suicides per day.
United States military veteran suicide[1][2] is an ongoing phenomenon regarding the high rate of suicide among U.S. military veterans in comparison to the general civilian public.[3] A focus on preventing veteran suicide began in 1958 with the opening of the first suicide prevention center in the United States. During the mid-1990s, a paradigm shift in addressing veteran suicide occurred with the development of a national strategy which included several Congressional Resolutions. More advancements were made in 2007, when the Joshua Omvig Veterans Suicide Prevention Act created a comprehensive program including outreach at each Veterans Affairs Office (VA) and the implementation of a 24-hour crisis hotline (the Veterans Crisis Line). PTSD, depression, and combat-related guilt in veterans are often related to suicide as it can be difficult for veterans to transition to civilian life.

Background information
In 2012 alone, an estimated 7,500 former military personnel died by suicide. More active duty service members, 177, died from suicide that year than were killed in combat, 176. The Army had 52% of the suicides from all branches.[1]

In 2013, the United States Department of Veteran Affairs released a study that covered suicides from 1999 to 2010, which showed that roughly 22 veterans were dying by suicide per day, or one every 65 minutes.[4] Some sources suggest that this rate may be undercounting suicides.[5] An analysis done in 2013 found a suicide rate among veterans of about 30 per 100,000 population per year, compared with the civilian rate of 14 per 100,000.[5][6] However, the comparison was not adjusted for age and sex.

According to a report published by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in 2016, which analyzed 55 million veterans' records from 1979 to 2014, the current analysis indicates that an average of 20 veterans die from suicide per day.[7]

A study released in 2022 found that as many as 44 veterans die on average per day from suicide when accounting overlooked causes of death that are aligned with suicidal and self harm behavior, which is 2.4 times greater than the official estimate.[

[FiveofSwords]

Yes I was using the word fun, loosely , ironically you might even say, as a proxy for something that inspires a life style commitment. Warfare has been through many changes. The introduction of chariots, their replacement by cavalry, the development of cavalry, the introduction of gunpowder, the development of rapid fire and accurate guns, the appearance of armoured vehicles and planes. But through all this militarism, the organisation of a culture around warfare remained viable. The values or ideals of bravery, self sacrifice, strength and toughness were sustained and validated by warfare.

The above shows what real deal militarism is about. That risking one's life in combat was the only source for the highest status. The exchange of strategic nuclear weapons just doesn't provide a fully satisfying vehicle for the expression of militarism.

Wars still happen. And violent crime is blooming, lol. Besides, it is more of a mindset than some particular physical circumstance. The 'last man' cannot comprehend war...and it has nothing to do with whether nukes exist. They are just psychologically incapable of it. This is fundamentally a spiritual illness. One of the only books I actually did feel like I learned something from by Julius evola was 'the metaphysics of war'.

[Rich]

Wars still happen. And violent crime is blooming, lol. Besides, it is more of a mindset than some particular physical circumstance. The 'last man' cannot comprehend war...and it has nothing to do with whether nukes exist. They are just psychologically incapable of it.

Who is incapable of what? War only ever offered a good life, a life style and a life purpose to a minority. Warfare in the nuclear age is inevitably limited, infusing it with a macabre absurdity. We see this with the war in Ukraine. On the one hand we have hyper hysterical moralistic rhetoric, while at the same time both sides are deeply involved in the world market. This is why in the west we see such a focus on empty symbolic gestures like banning Russians from sporting events and music competitions or the idiotic theatrics of the parasites at the International Criminal Court.

This is fundamentally a spiritual illness.

What is? When I look back to even quite recent history in Britain such as the Chartist Movement, I see no long term decline in legitimacy what so ever.

[QatzelOk]

So far, lots of good comments and anecdotes - but no one has yet tried to define what this "Western System" is that, according to the OP article, is slipping into a crisis of legitimacy.

Let me try to explain "the racket" that is Western governance in the modern and post-modern period.

1946-2000

Big Auto $ Bit Oil $ Big Highway $

Governements all over the West sold out their electorates and moved everyone into car-dependent suburbia where they would be forced to consume cars, oil, and highway construction. The unfortunate serfs (most of us) lost their communities, their social capital, and their environmental health in the process, but the g-force thrills of driving and the non-stop lies of commercial media... made it bearable for most.

2020-2034

Big Pharma $ Big Stock Market $ Big Silicon Valley $ Big Arms

Goverments all over the West sold out their electorates and locked everyone in their houses forcing them to take new and experimental chemical products at an outrageously high price. Small and medium sized businesses were shut down so that ONLY businesses on the Stock Market (held by the 1%) could receive any cashflow. Children were kept out of school, traumatized, and forced to take the same chemicals as adults. Once everyone had their injection of possibly toxic substances, the West entered a war against Russia as a sponsor of terror.

There was no light at the end of the tunnel of this, unfortunately, because the West is also bankrupt now. And the lying media has been descredited. So the only way is... down.

soundtrack

[Rancid]

meh, we're always in crsis.

[QatzelOk]

meh, we're always in crsis.

If you look at the timeline above, it's not just about temporary crises.

It's about diminishing the quality of life of the slave classes so that they work harder and consume less.

That's the Western systemTM

It's only objective is oligarch-creation.