i suddenly realized yesterday that Full Metal Jacket was about hate and how to create a soldier you have to teach him to hate because the average recruit is a nice person, so to teach them to hate you give them a drill sergeant, and in the absence of the enemy the DI becomes the “hate object” for the recruits, and in the sad case of Private Pyle, the sergeant was only too successful at teaching him to hate.
As Nietzche said “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. . . for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
For more on this topic, read this highly enjoyable science fiction series, starting with this:
My husband was a drill sergeant between Korea and Vietnam. He spent over a year in Korea and the other two years at Ft. Benning as a jump instructor, a hand-to-hand combat instructor, and a firearms instructor. It took me a LONG time to break him of the drill sergeant habit.