In my experience we got desensitized on ops and during our ‘free time’ when the leading NCO would pull us aside and we’d watch videos of whichever enemy we were engaged against committing various war crimes on civilians and military members. Some stuff is in the public venue via sites like live leak (RIP) and others were very much in-house either as personal footage from their operations or footage from helmet cams usually used to review how the operation went and what everyone did correctly or incorrectly so we can improve for next time.
In regards to passive desensitization I wouldn’t say it’s overly explicit in the way you’re presenting so much as the humour. The humour we engage in is abhorrently dark and, to those that have survived perilous situations, be it in the military or in civilian life, extremely hilarious. However the level of dark humour, I would say, is what, out of everything, inadvertently promotes desensitization via language as well as passively teaching the troops a positive coping mechanism. The passive influence of language as you describe doesn’t really start to have an effect until several months into the deployment and by that time it’s likely everyone has already been ordered onto body detail and is thusly heavily desensitized by that point. (Body detail is easily one of the most negative aspects of military service and not really something anyone applying thinks about before they’re in the field and they’re ordered to deal with the remains, regardless of state. And I would say the desensitization peaks when observing the sheer number of civilian dead compared to enemy dead, especially in COIN operations (counter insurgency), these are the operations that current forces deal with and out of all the operations have the highest likelihood of doing permanent psychological damage, likely on par with shell shock from ww2. I would posit that many people begin to not only keep the fact the enemy is human at a distance but the civilians as well. Because if you don’t you will break from the amount of dead you see, especially the number of kids.
Now I do want to clarify that not everyone handles this well and everyone has different breaking points. Some people I saw break before the end of basic training quitting or, as two people from my own platoon chose, jumping from the top of the tallest building on the base or slipping a link (remove a 5.56 round from the belt of the training LMG’s) and go to a blue rocket with their service rifle and end their service prematurely. Others would last for years, offering to go out again and again, but I think, for those that have seen the most operations and, from my POV, were the most mentally tough, even they either chose to rotate out or were forced (by the chain of command) to rotate out of deployed duty after about ten years (usually becoming an instructor at this point given their wealth of experience).
I think it’s also important to note that no one I’ve met in the army sees themselves as a ‘good’ person. I think this objectivity of the self helps keep people grounded for a while. A lot of people in the army don’t ‘hate’ the enemy, they just see them as another individual with a job that’s counter to theirs. We could easily drink with or break bread with the people we kill, it’s all just a matter of circumstance and who lives is decided by the amount of training and luck the ‘victor’ has.
I think the military mindset is completely inappropriate for a police officer to have and would go so far as to say former military should only be SWAT or similar specialized officer team. I think, from my experience discussing these topics between military, police and firefighters that it should be a requirement for police officers to have a precinct councilour or psychiatrist in order to be able to have officers that engage in combat to keep themselves from dehumanizing people they don’t know which would make it easier to take life but also make it easier to break mentally.
In regards to media presentation of the facts, I agree with you that they don’t need to be like this, I think they should be taking an objective view entirely from both the officer and the potential criminals standpoint until a verdict has been reached by the courts. We don’t live in judge dredd and humans are completely fallible so I think automatically assuming everyone that dies (especially given some precincts proclivity for covering up the crimes of officers) is a criminal is counterproductive to the general public’ view on the matter as well as their ability to feel safe in their own country. While there is still violence these days, we are in one of the least violent times in human history and I think it’s important that the news reflect that, if not in content then at least in context. For the police presenting reports to the media, for sure they take a more objective view from the officers standpoint, especially these days, where the blue mafia is almost as bad as the green mafia (I wouldn’t say actual mafia more a reference to the influence of brass to have the officers or members essentially take a ‘fraternity over all else’ stance; although there is some organized problematic groups in both services). I feel that the media a lot of the time will jump to frame the individual the officer shot to be ‘as bad as possible’ in order to gain clicks, but this has become an issue as they keep presenting everyone that this happens to as ‘the worst of the worst’ without presenting any real nuance for what ‘bad’ or ‘good’ really is and people that take the news at face value seem to be parting ways with their education and accepting the world as a ‘black’ or ‘white’ world and not the ‘grey’ that it actually is.
You are correct in regards to the not intentionally desensitizing people aspect. Desensitization of the individual in service comes over time, regardless, and going out of your way to desensitize people in combat roles will inevitably end up with a German SS situation, where ‘orders over humanity’ reigns and improper conduct is swept under the rug because ‘the enemy isn’t human’. That’s an oversimplification and a particularly over-the-top example but the only military I can think of that had anything resembling desensitization training was the SS in the 40’s. The WMD bullshit about Iraq has permanently destroyed my trust of mainstream media. The fact journalists that were reporting on it got fired and blacklisted from the industry had me suspicious initially but when I did learn that all the lives we wasted in the end were literally over nothing more than the eurodollar market and oil company profits it marred my belief in the system. It further infuriated me that all investigations into the corporate landlord taking out a multi billion dollar insurance contract just before 9/11 just added more suspicion to anything I see now days, regardless of source. I only take peer reviewed research reports at face value these days and even then I wait until the report has been replicated at least three times by different and wholly unrelated parties before I trust it because even the academic industry has been tainted by constant fraud, willingly overlooked by various institutions in order to have their “prestigious” name on more popular papers.
“oh this kind of sucks I don’t think we’re doing anything good here”
Yes. Very much so. I would say most people that join, myself included, thought a good idea to serve the country was to join the army as an NCO, assuming the systems in place were not necessarily as problematic as some of the people in place. I learned some pretty rough lessons, as did hundreds if not thousands of others, and by a few years in we had all accepted that what we are doing is simply a job and if we don’t do it someone else will. There is an underlying ethos of ‘warrior culture’ that kind of gets ingrained in everyone over time, but it’s not necessarily one which everyone would admit to. I don’t know if anyone seriously see’s themselves as warriors, as much as paid killers, and I think this line of philosophy is what inevitably leads people to go to a higher paying position in a mercenary private security company. (A key chant we end up memorizing even before basic is complete “what makes the grass grow?” BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD)
Most people I know that want a job with a guaranteed pension sign 25+ year contracts. However of the people I know in the military a vast majority of them do not renew their contracts. The first contract, depending on trade, is 3-5 years (unless you went for a specialist trade and had the government pay for your education then you’re likely doing a minimum of ten years plus) the second contract depends on your performance but most people are offered the option between 12-25 year contracts with an increasing amount of days off per year (and significant pay boos) as you increase your rank.
On the note of acronyms I don’t see it so much as fetishistic as much as necessary. The considerable amount of information you are required to learn, even as a simple combat arms trade, is easily on par if not surpassing what I did for my double major. For people that don’t have a particularly sharp mind they need easy ways to remember the information and acronyms make things vastly easier for remembering various plans, ways of cleaning, rules for various situations, etc. Additionally, you can write all the acronyms down in your pad and just have those as your reference for what you need to do instead of listing out each word and using a ton of paper. Additionally if you get killed or captured and someone gets a hold of your notepad they’ll have a hard time figuring out what all the acronyms are, especially since new ones are made every day, especially for plans of attack and various forms of engagement.
Specifically to note the UFO/UAP situation, they did that so that they wouldn’t be associated with the mentally unwell within the UFO community
Also here’s a video for levity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMhhMx-yDQU