The youth are also of poor quality these days. It was one thing in 1860 when a given 18 year old was built like an ox from hauling bales of hay or whatever else. Today most 18 year olds are sedentary. We don’t even do the mile run in gym class anymore.
Well, looking into really old draft records, you will find a lot of disqualified recruits with bad health - tuberculosis, parasites, or general bodily problems caused by malnutrition.
But yeah, there also was a lot of physically strong young people to choose from.
Yes, exactly. Some of the federal farm subsidy and low-income nutrition programs we have today came out of findings in WWII that many potential recruits who had grown up during the Great Depression were literally malnourished: too weak and underweight to be combat effective. While the new HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is kind of wacky and has terrible policies in many areas, he at least recognizes the serious state of youth obesity and poor nutrition.
Has there been a single HHS secretary that did not acknowledge the youth obesity problem?
Our expectations are so low that we ignore the real things that qualified people have done, to pretend that an anti-science wacko has some semblance of sanity.
Don't forget school lunch programs were pushed by the military in the 1946 National School Lunch Act (America's Great Age to MAGA) to improve the fitness of potential recruits. Programs the Republicans now attack as 'woke' nonsense.
Gen Z are a lot fitter and drink and smoke less than my Gen x peers afaict. What’s more, the 90th centile Gen zer is a -lot- fitter. Not everyone needs to join up…
