(1/6) “I joined the army because I wanted to do something that...

(1/6) “I joined the army because I wanted to do something that mattered. I’d only ever worked at jobs like McDonald’s and Party City. I’d just gotten a degree in cinema from Stony Brook, but I wasn’t sure what to do with that. So I enlisted. The training mostly emphasized patriotism and discipline. Basically your job is to kill people, so I think the goal is just train and drill until everything is second nature and doesn’t require any thinking. Not like you have much opportunity to think about it anyway. You get dropped off in a faraway country and there’s no way back.”