How do you feel about the reality gap between military and civilian families?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nI’d been trying to figure out where to address this prompt for a while. I understand what the writer was getting at with it; it’s a question about the difference between the increasingly-small fraction of the US population who have any understanding of the military, and the reality of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t know if it’s in the latest gigantic, unread bill passed by Congress, bur there was a recent discussion of expanding selective service to women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t know how many people today have any idea of what it’s like. Maybe there’s something stretching back home with the extensive use of the National Guard in various foreign adventures, but most people just have no idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Expanding the draft is really a non-issue, I think. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So you’re going to draft millions of people. Great. How many of them can pass a PFT (Physical Fitness Test in the Army….not sure what the other branches call it)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s just not something that’ll affect most people. Maybe someone they know, but probably not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is there a way to narrow that “gap?” Maybe, but it’d require lowering standards so that more people can be included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Does something need to be done to narrow it? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could write on this for hours, but, instead, I’m going to go get started on my normal Fall\/Winter Sunday activity — watching football.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just got off the phone with my mother, who is the last in a string of early-November birthdays. Valentine’s Day. Sorry. It’s habit, now. We have some, ummm, not-so-fun things to deal with her financial and health situation. I would imagine that there’ll be a lot more things coming out of politicians in the next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-journal-writers-month"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/control-h.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}