I don't want to give too many details so as to avoid doxing myself. I never left the US and wouldn't have done so if asked, but fundamentally, I don't think that really matters. It's all part of the same machine. It was well before I became anything that could be described as communist, but all that means is that it hit that much harder when I had to come to terms with what I'd been a part of.
Maybe that's the sort of thing you can't ever make up for, but I'll spend the rest of my life trying anyway. If anyone on this site never wants anything to do with me again after having read this, I understand.
Thanks for the response. I'd like to hear about some of the stuff you've seen, if you don't mind.
Gonna be honest, it's too long of a story and I don't really want to get doxxed. But here's the cliff notes.
Insane amounts of money going to even the most basic things. Like contractors can just slurp up mountains of cash just to build a plywood shack.
Intel on various oppositional country's governments where various industrial parts that have multitudes of uses are reported as "possibly nefarious". This then gets leaked to the media to say "they're building wmd's".
Really gross abuse of rank and file service members.
Extreme alcoholism and sexual assault.
Learned how the whole apparatus has its tentacles in every country around the globe.