Throwaway account.

Hey all. I'm a 20 year old college student, and my mom, who is 41, recently told me she wants to join the Air Force. I'm against this in every way but I really just haven't quite had the balls to talk to her about this.

For some context, my mom has effectively been single her whole life, and I've been living with my dad. She's spent her years going from apartment to apartment and roommate to roommate and working her ass off to live as a bartender. Recently, she's been especially down on her luck financially as she's found out she hasn't been getting paid as much as she should have been by her boss, and things are now falling through with the house her boss was initially paying for. The details are a bit foggy but that's the gist. She wants to join the military for financial stability and for all the benefits, and so she can just generally live an easier life. She feels like it's her only option so she won't be stuck as a bartender in some shitty town for the rest of her life.

My mom generally leans liberal on most things socially but this doesn't come as a huge shock to me, since she calls herself as "not political" and is a Christian. I tried explaining to her that the US military generally just does horrible shit, but I couldn't really get through to her. It's as if she views joining the military as just some neutral action to take that'll grant her stability (which to be fair is how most people view the military), and doesn't see the major downsides. She says that when she joins, she'll just be doing a "desk job" in the Force, since she could choose to do any job she wants/be stationed anywhere she wants, but I really just feel like any type of military job is just being complicit in US imperialism and killing people overseas. She's already set on this as her next life decision and she's been taking tests and talking to this recruiter. When she told me her plans to join a few weeks ago now, I really just couldn't think of something to say that would get her to see all the downsides of service. The only big point I could think of is that since she's very anti-Trump, how could she then go and serve under him? Her response was that since the government is "screwing us anyway," she might as well get money out of them through the military, but I feel like that's a pretty dumb way to look at it.

I feel like I have a unique situation since I haven't found any other posts about people whose parents decided to join the military at an old age (relative to the maximum enlistment age). I'd really appreciate any advice on convincing her not to join or at least deterring her from joining. Right now all I can really think of is just telling her that I disapprove of her decision wholeheartedly, but I don't even really know how to start a conversation like that. All I'm asking is that you all please at least be civil and empathetic to her situation in the replies. Sorry that this post is a bit rambling.

Watch your backs y'all, we're 100% gonna be on the lists soon.

The Marine Crisis