The first guest essay in the Crisis Masculinity series is by Jason Myles, host of the cult show THIS IS REVOLUTION, a channel with over 19,000 followers. His roots go as deep into experimental metal and rap as they do into politics, philosophy and culture, as frontman of the band La Fin Absolute Du Monde and Bitter Lake, and a regular contributor to Damage Magazine and other places. You can support Jason’s work on Patreon.
18 and Life
The military was supposed to be the easiest way to a career. He enlisted before the events of 9/11 so there was no way he could’ve predicted that 16 years into a military career he’d be in a tear filled rage, drunk in his car, pulled off the side of the road next to a drop zone. But here he was. The gun in his hand, and ready to pull the trigger — the traumas of a life of war had worn on the 33 year-old soldier. As Mike would go on to tell me, war — killing with precision — was what he excelled at. What future did he have in the civilian world? His drinking attempted to silence his internal contradictions of being one of the world’s superpowers’ mercenaries and a self proclaimed communist; but on this particular night, the reality of being a stormtrooper for the empire had finally gotten the best of him.
It would be an MP that would find him and prevent him from ending his life, but the next day — once again intoxicated — he would punch someone at his battalion commander’s home. Divorced, with two ACL replacements and consistent pain in his back and legs, he was looking for the pain to go away — for it all to end, and his self-destructive actions, following a combat-inspired two-week notice.
Chewing on the business end of his service revolver wasn’t part of the plan when he graduated high school early in 1999 with a drive to enlist, but Mike’s story isn’t that unique. There was no draft; his desire to join the Army wasn’t born from love of country but out of a depressing economic reality. Mike grew up in what is known in the United States as the “Rust Belt” — living among the ruins of capitalism’s glory days. Shuttered factories haunted the dilapidated Warren, Ohio skyline — if Mike was to get out of his “rust belt rut” it would be through military service.
Mike’s family never experienced the union wages and pension life of factory jobs. His mother still is an administrative assistant, and after the funding ran out for the group home Mike’s dad worked at, he took menial security jobs.
By the time he was heading into his senior year of high school, most of the factories had shut down or weren’t hiring. Some of his classmates would eventually get work at the Lordstown GM plant — but they would forfeit their jobs as the plant closed its doors in 2019, causing over 4,300 people to lose their employment (GM closed the plant after receiving millions in tax breaks).
The military was a surefire way out of the inevitable reality of hand-to-mouth living. His enlistment was about a year and a half before the tragic events of 9/11, so the military was just another job — one that offered healthcare, a pathway to a free education, and, if Mike were to make himself a career military man, a pension.
When I asked Mike what the moment was when he knew the military wasn’t for him, he told me it was his first deployment. It happened “as soon as I got there,” he told me. “After my first two years in, I realized I would do nothing that could be perceived as a net positive while in the Army. I stayed because I was good at it. I owed it to the kids that joined to try and keep them alive… I hate that one of the few things I’m good at is war.”
He would go on to have four deployments: nine months in Bosnia and three tours in Afghanistan — 15, 12, and his final posting, which lasted nine months.
A Weekend at Bernie’s
I asked Mike when his leftist awakening took place and he told me it was Bernie Sanders in 2004. I was shocked by the year and the name as usually, for most people it would be either the #OccupyWallStreet movement of the 2010s, or Bernie’s 2016 presidential run — but it wasn’t that, it was a speech he saw Bernie give on CSPAN in 2004. Bernie was speaking about the assault on American civil liberties through the Patriot Act. This legislation went against the freedoms that Mike was allegedly defending; Sanders would become for Mike a window on to left theorists. He’d go on to discover Marx, Chomsky, and start him down a path to leftism.
