SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — Doctors serving the nation’s Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS) issued a scathing indictment today about the quality of today’s recruits, carrying significant implications for a Department of Defense already struggling with recruiting.
“I’ve been at MEPS for 50 years, and these are the most disappointing buttholes I’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Beauregard Evanchuck, president of the Military Entrance Examiners Union. Asked to elaborate, he cited the twin evils of junk food and video games for rectums that appeared lifeless, wan, and lacking in spunk.
“These are not the buttholes that defeated the Nazis,” he said.
Defense officials have been sounding the alarm for years regarding a downward recruitment trend, with the Army alone falling 10,000 recruits short of its 2023 goal. But no one looks more intimately at the recruiting crisis than the doctors who see it up close. Indeed, for many recruits, these professionals are the first military authority figures they meet and superiors whose orders they feel obligated to follow.
“It's well known that Washington lost more men at Valley Forge to hemorrhoids than hunger or disease," said Dr. Farragut H. Fairbanks from his office in a van near the Schenectady MEPS. “But this goes way beyond buttholes. We used to routinely encounter youthful musculature infused with a subtle, graceful virility. Now, the boys’ muscle tone barely springs back from a gentle, medically-necessary caress.”
Choncey “Cho-Mo” Morris, retired naval aviator turned MEPS doctor and author of Turn and Cough: A Retrospective, was even more blunt.
“This is nothing short of existential for the MEPS medical community. Time was, I could assess the moxie of a recruit just by gliding the back of my hand every so lightly down the curve of his spine. Now? Those backs are a minefield of anime tattoos, Spicy Cheeto-fed-acne, and gaming chair sores. These aren’t the boys I want to see dressed smartly in crisp crackerjacks, cap jauntily skewed as if to say, ‘Come and get me, you bad men.’”
Morris later clarified through his lawyer that he was referring to America’s enemies.
Although critics for generations have questioned the utility of gratuitous nakedness, rectal gazing, and abject humiliation as practical medical screening tools, Evanchuck scoffed at naysayers. “If you can’t duckwalk at MEPS, how will you duckwalk at war?”
Handed a copy of the union’s press release in his Pentagon office, Maj. Gen. Burt Rockwell, commander of the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, validated the doctors’ general contentions.
“I’m not familiar with the union’s specific concerns, but there’s no doubt that top talent is an endangered species these days.” He noted a 2020 Pentagon study concluding that 77% of young Americans are unqualified for service.
“We used to get tough guys looking to prove themselves. Now we get overweight, overcaffeinated, wannabe Fortnight LARPers and ironic content creators pandering for clicks. Last month, my Harrisburg battalion only met quota because five kids wandered in chasing Charmander. I mean, how many intel troops do we really need?”
He added that he knew the recent Rand study, Why Are We Still Doing This?, which alleged a pernicious disconnect between medical screening criteria and the operational force's requirements. He agreed with the study’s recommended actions.
“But really, that could be the title of half the reports around here, so don’t hold your breath.”
Moments later, he looked up abruptly from his copy of the union press release.
“Wait, Evanchuck?” he said. “Jesus, he was my MEPS doc. How the hell is he still alive, let alone practicing again? Is he on supervised release or something?”
At press time, Rockwell declined further comment, crawled under a desk, and pulled his knees to his chest.
Mike Charlie Delta is pretty sure the yellowcake is going to turn up.
