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Won't Someone Think of the Storm Troopers! (lemmy.ca)
submitted 2 months ago by to c/FuckTheUSA@lemmy.ca
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[–] 2 points 2 months ago (6 children)

the military has always been made up of impressionable kids whose poverty and desperation make them highly exploitable

^yeah I guess I worded that as an absolute, which isn't accurate. My bad - I didn't mean to imply that those are all of or even most of the military, just a large enough chunk that it calls for considering the human angle on their end too. There are other shady factors that have nothing to do with class, either: the US military and the culture surrounding it are an insane propaganda machine, which does an amazing job of committing evil acts and slapping a veneer of some justification like service, defense, or patriotism.

Even when I was growing up, I was hell-bent on enlisting into the Marine Corps because it was (as I understood it at the time) a way to give back to my own country/community. Altruistic, honorable... it was the epitome of traits I looked up to. Murdering brown people for their oil? That wasn't even a factor in the thought process, cuz that's not what the military does, right? ...right? .......thank fucking god I started paying attention to current events closely enough to the whole story, global politics, etc before hitting 18. Realizing that the starry-eyed ideal I held about the military was absolute bullshit was legit heartbreaking.

Not everyone gets that "are we the baddies?" moment. Hell, if I had a different circle of friends in highschool, there's a solid chance that shit would have stayed over my head right up until signing that dotted line.

Would I have been right had I gone that route? Fuck no. Would the aforementioned brown people have been totally justified in blowing my brains out for invading their country? Absolutely. But I don't fault the thought process leading up to that, cuz teens are fucking idiots - people with good intentions can be tricked into doing evil things. They fucked up. IMO the best approach from there is to encourage them to make it right, and their oath makes a fantastic starting point for that: *point to my first post here*. They're sitting on a lot of potential.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago* (5 children)

    If I have to listen to some guy talk about how we should play nice with Nazis because they can easily imagine themselves as a Nazi, I'm gonna lose it. We do not have an infinite amount of time, these people signed up to be the enemies of literally all life on this planet, I could not care less about whether or not they are "actually" bad people for doing this, I need them to stop. For people like you, the biggest concern is not being in danger, but putting someone like you in danger. Could you understand why someone might care less about the danger for you than for people who are actually victimized by these literal genocide footsoldiers?

    I cannot tolerate these people, not because I was not socialized around them, but because I was. I know how they think, I understand that there may be ignorance, they're doing bad things anyway and it's too fucking bad, but their victims matter more than they do exactly because they have signed up to do these things. It was "heartbreaking," to learn that the fucking Nazis aren't cool? Imagine what it would feel like to have those Nazis bomb your entire fucking world away and then come home to laugh and smile and talk about how sad they are about doing something "dishonourable."

    You're not being empathetic to people or advocating for a more compassionate understanding of them, you're arguing that we should be doing that specifically for groups of people whose material security is directly tied to keeping the genocide machine running. Why, of all places, would that be where we consider empathizing with the actions of others? I can't imagine myself as a Nazi, because I've always known they'd kill me if given the chance. FFS.

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  • [–] -1 points 2 months ago* (4 children)

    ...I think you missed the gist of my posts, as you seem to be arguing against points that were never made in the first place.

    If my anecdote isn't resonating, then fuck it, that's not important: but if you think you're above being manipulated like that, then I got bad news for you. And it doesn't just have to be military - look at political candidates like Jill Stein: great on paper, but only ever functions to redirect sincerely moral voters into electing another R. The purpose of a system is what it does. That doesn't make Stein voters evil, it makes them taken advantage of by evil. Even though a Stein voter and a Trump voter serve the same purpose, I can still look to the former as a potential ally that sincerely wants to do good.

    So back to troops. 'The military' as a whole, especially under the influence of the Trump regime, is inarguably a force of great evil, whose atrocities are constant and inexcusable. An individual soldier though, there's a lot of reasons that person might have joined up - many of which are that same flavor of evil, and frankly those individuals can go suck-start a 12 gauge. Fuck em. But that isn't all of them: many were duped, thinking they're accomplishing something good while effectively supporting something evil, much like the Stein voters... but also like the Stein voters, their good intent makes them a potential ally.

    These are the ones who actually believe in their oath, the first sentence of which compels them explicitly to defend us from "enemies of the constitution, foreign and domestic". That type of language is a major source of conflict when people like Trump (domestic enemy of the US Constitution) and Musk (foreign enemy of the US Constitution) suck eachother off in the Oval Office while steamrolling US rights and liberties.

    We have a group made up of a couple million people trained to use deadly force and oath-bound to protect 'we the people' from enemies like Donald Trump. Their inaction so far is an absolutely insane dereliction of their duty, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to spur them into action.

    I'm not asking you to like them, I'm pointing out that their duty as established by the oath of enlistment / commissioned officers, actually aligns with our interests as humans who want things like civil liberties. An ally doesn't necessarily need to be a friend.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 months ago* (3 children)

    My guy, the US is not even remotely aligned with my fucking interests, in fact, it is the single most threatening entity in my life and always has been. I haven't gone a day without it reminding me that it wants to eradicate me and every person like me from this Earth for the benefit of some fucking white men and their bootlickers (et toi). I do not give a fuck about some privileged asshole mansplaining the AI summary they just read, I know you don't understand what the hell you're talking about. If you did, you'd actually know the historical reasons why you don't work with libs because they are always more inclined toward fascism than they are deconstruction for exactly this kind of bullshit. You are not in a position to fucking talk for people.

    If you can't understanding how the imperial military is fundamentally incompatible with the politics of anti-imperialists, just smoke some skunk weed and whine about PlayStation discs or something like the other whiney uncs. Fuck's sake.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    Mi amigo, you are still responding to something I never said, and are completely missing the point.

    "The US", "the military". Those are groups.

    "Andrew the sheet metal tech", "Tina the line cook". Those are individuals.

    You're responding about groups to my post about individuals.

    If Andrew and Tina are a tech/cook in the Army, then they both swore an oath that obligates them to defend against enemies like Donald Trump. It doesn't matter that you disapprove of Tina's employer. If Tina is ever assigned to cook for Air Force One, then she'll be uniquely suited to become a global hero by taking that oath seriously. It doesn't matter what you think of the oath, it matters what Tina does.

    Do you see the difference? The Army (group) is not your ally. Tina (individual) can be. We can encourage Tina to do what's right even if we know her employer never will.

    Why are you so opposed to that? Or rather, what do you seek to accomplish by opposing that? Would you have Tina shy away from her oath if she's presented with the opportunity to act on it? That doesn't serve you. It does serve Trump. Extra fuck's sake.

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