It's a thousand hours of classes where people tell you about all the ways you can be stabbed and how every single person you see is a threat and how you have to have a "warrior mindset". They get it drilled into their head that they're an occupying force in hostile territory, in part because all of the instructors are former occupiers of Afghanistan, Iraq etc. edit: and of course Israeli occupiers of Palestine.

it's a bunch of fat Israeli serial killers doing krav maga and pepper spraying you and telling you how every single brown person will kill you if you don't kill them first

I knew someone who was in the US military who had PTSD despite never seeing live combat, AFAIK. The conditioning is unbelievable.

That’s why there’s such a big gap between how nonviolent most cops’ day jobs are and how terrified they are at everything. The training is PTSD soup. If you see a dead child, imagine it was your child. If someone enters a room, imagine them killing you.

MAY I HELP YOU SIR i scream at the burning meat, my finger quivering on the trigger