Seriously, they are both former military, my dad was in for like 30 years, how do they like the drunk secretary? I get that he saw combat, but being in combat doesn't automatically make you qualified for... well anything except therapy and medical care.

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[+] 122 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 57 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    What's funny is that nobody alive today was alive and in the military for any major conflict that we were actually victorious in, so what "good old days" are these geezers even pining for? The days where we lost a bunch of soldiers in Vietnam and the ones who survived came back with PTSD and drug addictions?

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    nobody alive today was alive and in the military for any major conflict that we were actually victorious in

    There are still a handful of WWII vets kicking around

    Also depending on how you want to define "major" and "victorious" you could maybe make an argument for Dessert Storm, and possibly the 2003-2011 Iraq War. (Whether we should have been involved in those wars in the first place, and how those wars were fought are separate issues, and I certainly wouldn't call them "unqualified" victories, but I do think there are absolutely certain angles you could look at them from and make the argument that the US was the victor in those conflicts)

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    The wars in the Middle East are tricky, though, because to have a "victory" you would need a clear metric for it, a clear goal. It's not like the US was looking to conquer and annex those countries

    If the goal was to completely fuck up a country with little to no (physical, not financial) damage to our home country, mission accomplished, one helluva victory.

    If the goal was to stop Terrorism... that's like the War on Drugs, there's no winning that.

    If the goal was merely to occupy them in order to (temporarily) prevent them from being a staging ground and financial support for Terrorism... I guess that worked? For awhile?

    Vietnam and Korea were about stopping Communists from taking over the country. Huge failure on Vietnam, and apparently a draw in Korea (considering the North/South divide). But it was a clear enough goal. The Middle East? Who knows what the specific goal was (other than trillions of dollars to the Military Industrial Complex).

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  • [–] 72 points 1 year ago

    Your parents might lack empathy and are cruel, therefore they are looking for other cruel people to confirm their cruel behavior: The cruelty is the point

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago

    I'm guessing they consume a lot of Fox News or similar? Propaganda works.

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I've got a former military buddy who is all about Pete because "he's not gonna let the fatties and the faggots fuck up our military anymore."

    Nevermind that the navy has been called gay since their inception, or that muhreens have zero self discipline outside of a military situation, or that the air force has run more drug than most cartels, it's the "fatties and faggots" that are the problem.

    I always knew my buddy was dumb, but it took that conversation for me to figure out that it went all the way down to the core of who he was as a person.

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    [–] 25 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    Your parents are bad people

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Not bad per se, more very misinformed and very influenced dare I say manipulated, just sad yeah

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago*

    I don’t make a distinction between the two. If you make a mistake, you made a mistake. If you keep making mistakes, and never learn from them, and insist that you don’t make mistakes then you are a bad person.

    These are not children without life experience, they are adults who have seen, and experienced, and learned, and been corrected, and have still chosen evil.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    I feel ya with this, but to paint this as black and white is to miss important nuance.

    They're deluded. As such, it's an error to see them as evil in the same way that it is to see a person that's high on meth and dangerous or schizophrenic and hostile as being evil.

    They're no less dangerous, don't get me wrong, but to see them as bad is, I think, a critical misunderstanding of what's going on here that leads people to think like this.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    I didn't say evil, I said bad people.

    If propaganda can convince you to hate people just because of where they're from, you're not a good person.

    Now, if you realize you were a bad person and work on being a good person, you can become one. If you know what you're doing is bad and have no desire to change, then you're evil.

    And none of those are immutable qualities.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Yeah you're right. I shouldn't have used the word evil.

    I would urge you to examine how propaganda has affected everyone.

    Like other posters have said, probably the best choice OP can make is to actually talk to them and maybe not use lemmy for answers.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    At this point, I'm not seeing much daylight between the two.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Yeah. It's hard. It's been hard for me too.

    I'm teaching my kids as I learn for myself; it's critically important that you not dehumanize people and seek understanding and strive to be compassionate.

    I've also known people that have voted for trump 1st term to be good people for long enough that I see it as valuable to deeply interrogate the process by which they came to be such as they are now. For me, at least, it feels lazy and dishonest to flatly dismiss them as bad. Even trump 2 voters, I can see that they, nearly all, were submerged in a propaganda machine designed to break people.

    Are some of them sociopathic monsters? You bet! Society needs protected from them.

    I see the groupthink on both sides as the most dangerous thing though. The manipulation (of all sides) as the enemy. The dismissal of human life as the root problem. Most especially when profit is placed over people, but also when it's done by either side.

    My concern is that dehumanization plays into their hands and I see the dehumanization as a direct path to violent conflict. They want violence because it would free them to use the insurrection act as a means to their ends.

    So, to bring it full circle, seeing them as bad and evil and unworthy of compassion or even dialogue plays directly into their hands.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's possible.

    I'm more likely to say anyone who writes others off as bad people from a 1 dimensional, 3rd party anecdote is not an exemplar of "good people". But that's just me.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    Well, bad the way Edmund Povensie was bad while under the guile of the White Witch, or the way the Little Mermaid was bad (i.e. poor ) at seeing through the sea hag's hard sell.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (3 children)

    No he's a pretty blatant fascist, and they're goddamn adults, not literal children against a literal witch

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

    My dad's a literal rocket scientist (just recently retired from JPL) and also a devout MAGA disciple and FOX News viewer. Human beings are just not sophisticated enough to deal with a trillion-dollar propaganda machine on their own. I don't know what the solution is, and we don't seem to have one so far, except to FO after the viewership FAs and elects autocrats and billionaire bro oligarchies into power.

    Some of us are able to acquire electoral savvy and vote defensively, but a lot of us are too preoccupied or too exhausted from work and vote on vibes, to dire consequence.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (1 child)
    1. Decades of propaganda

    2. I'm not trying to insult here, but your parents aren't that smart. One of mine fell for it too.

    Bottom line is if you fall for extremely obvious propaganda you are not, and never were, very intelligent.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 year ago

    I don't think they aren't smart in a logical sense, I think its more of a lack of critical thinking and a focus on short term gains (which i would argue aren't even that good lol)

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  • It's easy to win over weak people.

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Your parents are not nice people. It happens, my parents were not nice people.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    My parents care on the micro level, where it applies to people they directly know, but have no ability to show empathy on the macro level and it breaks my heart.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    they're selfish and dumb and choose to be ignorant

    simple as that. they might be nice people in some respects, but the above still holds true

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I mean how does theoreticallyconservative small government folk support a real estate trust fund baby who openly take bribes, is building himself a castle, and floods the streets with masked, unmarked, paramilitary. Oh and constantly breaks the laws of the land put out by the forefathers along with a whole ton of other laws?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I mean they can choose to not believe that but trump has them make viral videos of his goon squad. Sure its edited to make them look tough I guess but its hard to disbelieve they are there and maybe just maybe look at the first person cell phone videos that are all around showing how aweful they are.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I know America thinks being in the military is an amazing thing, but if we tune back to reality, soldiers are not excellent human beings.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    There's a good chance that they're stupid and hateful

    Two character traits that are often celebrated in 'Murica rather than being condemned

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    Party of suckers and losers.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    What do they say about him?

    I can fully understand somebody having no opinion, but actively liking him? There must be positive stories about him on the far right news networks that I am not familiar with.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    Judge someone by the company they keep.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    It takes a certain type of fundamentally fucked-up personality to consider that killing and maiming is an acceptable career. The military then spends vast sums on further brutalising those people until they kill on command without question. Violence and cruelty stalk their lives. He is One of Us, therefore he is better than One of Them.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    they also spend alot on propaganda, in putting it in a positive light, ever notice how movies/shows with us military never are the bad guy, its because they lease out thier equipment on the conditions they must be good PR, not negative, there is some wiggle room though. plus they need the military propaganda for recruiting cannon fodder/ selecting from officer schools/rotc through these movies and shows.

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    [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    They watched him on FOXnews, thought he was "cute", about like a Sajak or a Kardashian. So why not put him in charge of the world's most lethal military?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I think my best guess is the “mere exposure effect”. The guy and his ego strikes me as something that’s probably fairly common in the military (as far as I can tell from the outside). Being exposed to a lot of men like him probably makes him feel comfortably familiar.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    They're dumb and/or terrible people. It happens.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    The comments here are wild. So much judgement about people we literally know one single thing about.

    There should really only be one answer to this question: "I dunno. Why don't you ask them?"

    Just because your parents like some guy that they've never met doesnt mean they are evil, sociopathic, racist monsters. The most likely explaination is that they got walked down the right wing media rabbithole by some network of acquaintences, and now they are trapped in a fairy tale depiction of the world designed to appeal to their baser emotions.

    People believe in bigfoot and the flat earth. Why? Mostly because they feel lonely and powerless, and want to feel like they are part of a group that is united in their knowledge of The Truth.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I think their just trapped in a bubble of bad info and are influenced by racism subconsciously. I KNOW my parents aren't bad people, but they sure as hell arent talking like good people or even well thought-out people.

    I guess I just thought my parents were smarter, that they could see through this admins BS. They seriously claim that Trump is doing much better than Biden, but I talk to everyone I know, and they are all having money problems, food insecurity and housing problems, all being made worse under Trump.

    I think my parents are just selfish. And it breaks my heart that they are betraying everything I thought I learned from them. I guess maybe they didnt influence me as much as I thought.

    It was kind of funny though, because my husband was like, "Now you know how I feel." At least they are a-okay with me and my husband, though, at this rate, I'm worried that wont be the case in a couple years.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I’m getting pretty convinced that as people get older, they get more selfish. The evidence is all anecdotal for me, but perhaps the mentality of “I don’t have much time left, better get mine” creeps in for those who aren’t satisfied with what they have. (Which, of course, is doubly so for those who were already selfish)

    But yeah that propaganda “news” is a powerful bitch.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Recently I have been looking at how ai is likely to impact my job. There are things I would do career-wise, if I were in my twenties, that are not realistic at my age.

    Ageism exists, so does the simple fact that an employee in their twenties can put in much longer hours (at least until they burn out) than I (who was worked to burnout in my 20's/30's).

    I have to think carefully about what I am going to be able to do as I get older and weaker, in what I am sure is going to be a more economically constrained time.

    That "I don't have much time left, better get mine" can be driven by fear, or legitimate concern, rather than selfishness, at least in some cases. Yeah others just want to pull up the drawbridge when they get economically secure. Capitalism pits us against each other, join a union, vote for genuine socialists or similar, or read a few books and try and change things.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Right, and those who supported Hitler were just poor misinformed good people.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    I think it depends on what you mean by "supported". But during the Nazi regime, the vast majority of Germans were, in some way or another, working to support the Nazis. But after the Nazis were defeated, the Germans became one of the most progressive people in the world. And these were the same people.

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  • Most reasonable answer. Propaganda is insidious. It is subtle, it can latch onto anything. It could be racism, that's one thing sure. It could be that they wanted lower taxes and over time it slowly convinced them it was all of the others. It could be anything. To assume like this, well, it's exactly why the right has so much just reasoning when saying we're quick to throw the racism card. Because, well just look at this thread.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The most likely explaination is that they got walked down the right wing media rabbithole by some network of acquaintences, and now they are trapped in a fairy tale depiction of the world designed to appeal to their baser emotions.

    So you know, sociopathic racists.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Brain damage?

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    30 years in the military and a shitty person? Man that is so weird, how could it be?

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  • [+] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Thats the thing! They most definitely are not! My dad has a degree in computer science, (never did anything with it) and my mom has a degree in ... well accounting, but she is smart, I promise. I think they are just so incredibly gullible. You know that saying, its easy to trick someone with a lie but impossible to convince someone of the truth, or something like that. I think deep down, they know they are wrong, but they dont want to admit that they part of the problem.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The military and drinking are like peas and carrots

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Because he's ever so pretty?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Probably because he won't raise their taxes or the taxes of our oppressors.

    It's all about the money, and money brings out the worst in people.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    if its been happening for a while, or shows no signs of changing, cut them off. like alot of people on some subs did with thier magatty family members.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    This comment section is comically unhinged and batshit crazy that it's a good reminder that this platform is infested by terminally online idiots who I should interact less with. Welp time to go touch some grass.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It's weird how this is the thread that would you think that.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Nobody here knows anything about OP's parents or why they like Hegseth or to what extent, and then have hoards of idiots calling them cruel, evil, or vile with zero context. Like I said, unhinged. You just don't see it because you're a part of the mob

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Care to provide any specific examples?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    Literally all of the top comments. The real question is how can you not see how unhinged they are?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    Right, so no examples. Got it.

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

    I'm 100% you're a troll who's being pedantic. But here's an example anyway:

    Your parents might lack empathy and are cruel, therefore they are looking for other cruel people to confirm their cruel behavior: The cruelty is the point

    https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/

    That's one of the top comments. All we have is the second hand account of OP who vaguely stated that his parents like Hegseth. We have no idea who they are, what they stand for, why they like Hegseth, or to what extent. Yet people like this commenter took the liberty to just make unhinged baseless assumptions about how they're cruel and evil. That's unhinged. If you can't see it, you're probably unhinged yourself.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    That's not unhinged at all, you need to pull your head out of your ass and pay attention to what is happening.

    If you support what this administration is doing, you are cruel and evil.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago

    Your parents are siblings, right?

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  • [+] -16 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    Wow. At the time of me posting this, the majority of people in this discussion might want to step back a little a do a little self introspection. There is a lot of bigotry and hate in these posts for a couple of people that they don't even know. Which is a little comical as that's what a lot of people are accusing them of. There is lots of name calling that they are morons and bad people. For all you know they could be someone who has saved one of your loved ones say from an accident, or taught a loved one of yours as a teacher. But because they have an opinion, which they are entitled to, and it doesn't match yours, they are automatically morons? That's not how this works. Reminds me of the George Carlin bit where everyone one driving slower than you is an idiot, and everyone driving faster than you is a maniac. OP didn't do much to help this by setting up these kinds of responses with the initial question and comments. Instead of asking a bunch of random people on the internet who are all in an echo chamber how about sitting down with your parents and just having a conversation with them about it. They did raise you so they should at least get a little credit. But what do I know. My kids have no problem discussing anything with me, and we all know that we are never going to agree 100% on things and that's ok. They are entitled to their opinion just like we all are. Just because it doesn't match yours doesn't make them idiots.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    That's a lot of words for a post that doesn't contain a single substantive rebuttal to anything it's complaining about.

    Also, the phrase "entitled to their opinion" has almost never been applied to matters of opinion, and needs to die in a fire yesterday. Apparently that's an opinion I'm entitled to.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago*

    Someone's opinions can absolutely make them a moron. I mean intelligence in general is largely defined by the scope and rationality of someone's thoughts and opinions.

    It seems like you are trying to make a point that having an opinion is not something we should be judging someone for. While people are entitled to opinions they are absolutely not entitled to freedom from judgement or consequence for those opinions.

    I am curious if your take here would change at all if instead of this opinion their opinion was "insert race here doesn't deserve to live" or "age is just a number and sex with any age of person is totally fine"

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