I had a bit of an existential crisis in ~2018 when I went back to my majority black high school for a friend's kid's event and saw so. Many. ROTC kids there. It's a very poor, very minority district and it was extremely to see kids who have been systematically impoverished and disenfranchised by the American empire sign up to fight, kill, and die for the same empire as a way out of that very poverty and disenfranchisement. It hit me like a punch in the face, and then a GOP candidate for local office walked up to me while I was still freaking out, and all I could manage was a completely incoherent response. Friends, I was not winning hearts and minds that day.