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Yeah well according to most people on this site there is no material conditions the military gives you that would benefit you and people only sign up because they want to murder people. As if there is no class analysis or incentives to join.
My take is that there are material conditions and incentives, but they are outweighed by the wealth of evidence showing that serving the US military is bad. Especially voluntarily. People definitely had more of an excuse back in the days when there was conscription, and rich people could legally hire substitutes, but even then, a confederate deserter is worth 10,000 confederate conscripts. “Just following orders” or “had to join to pay for college” ring hollow when you’re fundamentally serving an evil cause that increases social inequality.
Also, a large number of soldiers aren't joining up because they're poor, but for patriotic/propaganda reasons. If we're going to talk about material incentives and extreme poverty, let's be honest and say that for many that's not the issue.
Also, a large number of soldiers aren’t joining up because they’re poor, but for patriotic/propaganda reasons. If we’re going to talk about material incentives and extreme poverty, let’s be honest and say that for many that’s not the issue.
This is one of the points I’ve been trying to get across. Many are just misguided by propaganda, and many join because the material conditions the military provides. Not extreme poverty, but enough to make people think they would be better off joining. And I know I’m not the best at articulating a lot of what I’m trying to say, and I have personal experience in the military that will have others doubt my intentions.
Not extreme poverty, but enough to make people think they would be better off joining.
I think a lot of the people you're arguing with know and understand that. They just don't consider it to be a sufficient reason. It's known to everyone joining that war is about killing people.
While many soldiers are reachable, it's important to keep in mind what they did. I'm sure the ones that regret it certainly have it in mind at all times.
All this moral discussion isn't all that useful anyway. The central issue is that soldiers in America act as counter-revolutionary enforcers of empire, and it's natural to be suspicious of any who don't regret it.
All valid points that I can’t argue with.
Just upsets me when it feels as if no one is at least attempting to understand the point of view I have and am attempting to communicate. Maybe I am too hopeful that other veterans will see what I have seen or understand the lessons I have learned.
I just fills me with doomerism I guess. But I know we have had good faith discussion on other posts about this topic, and I appreciate you being able to clarify my points and give a fair critique of my argument comrade.
:solidarity: I think this is a difficult, emotionally charged topic for most people here, and that makes discussion of it often messy - and I don't exclude myself from that. I also think that many here actually agree on a lot of the core points, once the rhetoric dies down.
In any case, the fact that you participate in a party that has the goal of overthrowing the American state is, IMO, testament that you're discussing these points in good faith.
I know someone just saying it over the internet doesn’t mean much, but I promise these are all good faith arguments even if my wording is poor and my point doesn’t come across blatantly.
I’m not pro military (unless it’s the red army) and I’m certainly anti-imperialist. These topics as you said are emotionally charged for many, myself included, and it can always get messy.
I’m not pro military (unless it’s the red army)
:stalin-shining: hell yeah
I think in the end, there was some productive discussion, and I understand where you're coming from with this. Hope you're doing OK.
Almost like trying to analyze something as complex as imperialism and coercion with the lens of moralism is bound to give contradictory results :thinkin-lenin:
You can condemn the military and keep an anti-imperialist stance while still reaching out to veterans who are willing to listen and become sympathetic with the left and communism.
And that's an approach I agree with. However, let's not incorrectly paint the whole military as being made up of poor and desperate people.
Not every single person is. But the majority of them are. I don’t refer to special forces or seals or stuff when I talk about this. I mean your regular lower enlisted Joe
Look, part of the reason peolle have such a problem with this is that you're saying the majority of soldiers are abjectly poor, but you aren't actually presenting non-anecdotal evidence.
If that's your case, and you clearly regret doing it and are organizing against the government, then good. But projecting your own motivations along with the fact that recruiters are lying assholes into an assessment of all soldiers inevitably comes off as apologia, and people are going to take it that way, even if it's not what you mean.
I’m saying the majority is working class. I’m using my own experiences from the military to try and educate others on what I saw personally and what I went through.
Working class is a large group, and many working class people are not living in misery. I'd say it's a stretch to assume most of the military are abjectly poor and that it drives them to join up.
It’s not the ruling class or bourgeoisie that are joining though. Yes not all the working class is living in misery, but those who are or may have no other options will join if they become convinced to for whatever reason.
It’s not the ruling class or bourgeoisie that are joining though.
Of course not, they're all officers if they do join.
This still doesn't mean anything. Yeah, some people who join the military do it because they believe it's their only option for a more comfortable life. A lot of much poorer people also don't join the military.
You have to understand why this kind of thing bothers people. It can easily come off as justifying or relativizing.
I’m just trying to have people understand that it’s more complicated than “I want to kill people” and “they know what they signed up for.”
To also understand that there can be comrades who come from the military, and not just right them off because of their past. If I was able to self criticize and change to the point of joining an actual communist party, then others can too. And we need troops on the left. They have seen the machinery of imperialism and are some of the best tools to help dismantle the machine. And hopefully prevent as many as we can from moving to the hard right.
[W]e approximated the recruits' household incomes by assigning each recruit the median household income of the census tract in which they lived. This approximates their parents' economic status.
"We assumed recruits had the median income for their area, and guess what, we found there weren't a lot of poor recruits!"
The average enlisted recruit in 2007 had a household income of $54,768. This is modestly above the national average of $50,428.
Even using methodology that virtually guarantees the conclusion they're seeking, they find a pretty minor difference between the figure they come up with for recruits and the figure they come up with for the nation as a whole. A family of 3-5 living on $54K doesn't look a whole lot different from one living on $50K. Neither is wealthy enough to put their kids through college without debt or guarantee their kid a lucrative job in a family business. Then there's the slippage from median incomes to average incomes. At best, that's sloppy; at worst, using the average when they list the actual incomes is designed to make those incomes as high as possible. Don't want to inadvertently highlight how precarious most people's finances are!
All in all, another stellar effort from the Heritage Foundation.
The report may have flaws (honestly, it's the Heritage Foundation so hardly surprising), but the fact remains that writing the whole military off as desperate and hungry is not only reductive, but incorrect.
Not to mention that talking about "class incentive" to join ignores all the extremely poor people that did not sign up to go murder even poorer people in the middle-east.
Step one of the "troops are redeemable" discourse should be to have everyone agree that what they did was wrong, not look for excuses.
The report is beyond flawed -- it's basically useless. We really don't have to hand anything to the Heritage Foundation.
That said, sure, there are plenty of people who didn't join the military for financial reasons, and sure, being poor and joining for lack of options doesn't conpletely absolve anyone of responsibility. But there are a lot of troops who joined for economic reasons, and that at least mitigates how blameworthy they are (especially when you consider how propagandized the military is and the fact that recruiters prey on children).
Step one of the “troops are redeemable” discourse should be to have everyone agree that what they did was wrong
I think everyone here is well past that step.
Cops can quit at any time with no penalty; troops can't. And simply by virtue of living in a country where cops operate, cop recruits have a much better idea of what they're getting into. Very few cops join up as minors, too.
and sure, being poor and joining for lack of options doesn’t conpletely absolve anyone of responsibility. But there are a lot of troops who joined for economic reasons, and that at least mitigates how blameworthy they are
On the first point, we are agreed. On the second, it doesn't matter unless they regret it and want to work to overthrow the system they helped enforce.
it doesn’t matter unless they regret it and want to work to overthrow the system they helped enforce
:100-com:
I don't give a fuck if they signed up to pay for college and neither do the parents of the children they kill. The troops are all war criminals and can eat shit and die.
I’ll do that.
Cw: suicide
spoiler
Guess I should have killed myself all those years ago
Not veterans though apparently. As we saw in the Russian revolution, they didn’t help at all.
Not scared of dying, tired of dying for nothing
And it doesn't take much
"I used to be a cop so actually the cops aren't that bad" is a fucking galaxy brain take lmao
You’ve clearly missed every single point I’ve been making about troops. :very-intelligent:
Yeah I have no idea what you're trying to say but I don't give a fuck, you're a troop defender, stfu
You’re out of your fucking mind if thats what you took from all of this. Do some real leftist work instead of arguing online like this is Reddit.
spoiler
Immediately trying to guilt me about your suicidal thoughts and then lecturing me on how to argue ahahahahah
You said that troops should die. I said okay that includes me too then. I don’t give a fuck if you feel guilty or that I’m trying to guilt you. I’m just responding to your sentiment.
What do you think Marx meant when he said "any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated by force"? Like do you think the context for that statement was like a bunch of people owning personal firearms or farmers with hunting rifles?
I don think he meant they should become cops who oppress workers on the other side of the world you lib
No, but his context was still militaristic. The Paris Commune was formed by deserting soldiers helping to arm the workers. Nearly every successful revolution since then has relied in some form of another on the military.
We're fucked then because the us military is unsalvageably reactionary. If there's going to be a revolution here (lol) it will happen without them
People aren’t joining the military in a vacuum though. There is a massive propaganda effort and institutions in place that leave many thinking they have no choice but to join the military.
There's a remarkably vast propaganda effort in place to keep people from realizing what the military actually does. A lot of people have no idea what they're signing up for.
A lot of it isn't bloodthirsty at all. Tons of commercials focus on helping your community (for the National Guard) or doing humanitarian stuff abroad. Other propaganda doesn't get into details at all -- it's about "service" and "honor" and the good patriotic feelings people get from flag waving and doing flyovers.
Where violence is shown at all -- mostly movies and video games -- it's often a tack-on to an otherwise glamorous story (Top Gun) or presented as a justified response to cartoonishly evil antagonists. There's also a whole swath of PG-13 military cheerleading (all the Transformers movies).
It's not ignorance so much as it's every person in a position of power telling kids that the military is cool and good. It's propaganda, and propaganda works.
or presented as a justified response to cartoonishly evil antagonists.
Yes, that's the bloodthirsty terrifying part. They tell you that you're signing up to go slaughter hordes of evil brown demons with no souls who want nothing more than to kill you first.
Who's saying it's an excuse? It's a mitigating factor, and it's important to understand why people do things if you want to change what they do, but no one's saying this sort of thing absolves someone of all responsibility for their actions.
People treat troops and cops differently because they're different. Both are bad, but they aren't the same.
- Troop: Recruiter is in their high school, they sign up when they're years away from being able to drink or rent a car (sometimes when they're minors), they have no experience with the reality of the job because we don't send the military to occupy American towns, and when they do get face to face with the reality of the job they're halfway around the world and will get thrown in prison if they try to quit.
- Cop: Generally not recruited at all, most join a few big years later than troops (and often with a degree that makes them more employable), they have some idea of what cops do because they've been in places cops police growing up, and they can quit whenever they want with no consequences.
In short, cops go into the job more intentionally, with more information and maturity, and they have nothing holding them there but money once they're in. And this still isn't excusing troops for participating in the imperial death machine. I've never seen anyone on here suggest that.
Literally the only reason anyone here treats cops and troops differently is because there is a fractional chance that the police might negatively affect them, while the Troops only harass those dumb subhuman foreigners.
There is literally nothing else to it.
Other than those material differences I listed, you mean.
There's a pretty big difference between "this person can just drive home and quit with no consequences" and "this person will get thrown in prison in a foreign country if they try to quit," for starters.
Right no former cops have ever faced any danger from their former colleagues.
Every American soldier is executed on the spot if they say they want to stop killing children.
Do you think this is a productive way to have a conversation with other leftists?
I don't think any of you would be amenable to any examination of your hypocrisy even in the most hand-holding of tone.
Assuming everyone else is wrong and being an asshole to them is wrecker shit.
There's no assumption going on here. If you maintain that All Cops Are Bastards and There May Have Been Mitigating Circumstances For Some Of The Troops, it's because you're able to draw an insanely arbitrary line on what's acceptable that just happens to mean that killing foreign subhumans doesn't matter as much as killing human Americans. Literally any reasoning you concoct will be a post-hoc justification so you don't have to examine your biases.
It's not an arbitrary line at all. I went into detail on the differences, but you've ignored all of that to do wrecker shit instead.
Troops who quit aren't imprisoned in foreign countries as a rule.
There is arguably more copaganda than there is military propaganda. A good half of the ten most popular shows on TV right now are about cops.
The idea that everyone goes into the fucking military not knowing that the point is to murder people while every cop is a hardened money-whore familiar with the realities of policing is some bullshit you made up to justify your national chauvinism.
In fact, I'd argue that far more people enter the police as starry-eyed idealists because it's possible for a human being with a brain to think that policing could be good. Everyone knows that the point of a military is to kill people. Everyone.
The best possible case for someone going into the police is that they think they can do good in their community. The best possible case for someone going into the military is that they think killing people for four years is worth a free college education.
If you're in Iraq and decide to quit the military, the first place you're going is some sort of detention facility in Iraq. It's not even comparable to cops, who can just stop showing up to work one day.
There's lots of copaganda, sure, but Americans are much closer to the reality of American policing than they are to the reality of American imperialism.
The idea that everyone goes into the fucking military not knowing that the point is to murder people while every cop is a hardened money-whore
Did I say that? You're not on reddit anymore.
And while everyone knows the military kills people, killing is sometimes justified. I'm sure you have no problem killing Nazis, right? One big aim of military propaganda is to portray whoever we're fighting as deserving of the same sort of violence.
If you’re in Iraq and decide to quit the military, the first place you’re going is some sort of detention facility in Iraq.
Quitting the military is an involved process that can take a dozen different routes. Most people aren't imprisoned.
There’s lots of copaganda, sure, but Americans are much closer to the reality of American policing than they are to the reality of American imperialism.
Americans didn't figure out that the police are bad until last year and the jury is still out.
And while everyone knows the military kills people, killing is sometimes justified. I’m sure you have no problem killing Nazis, right? One big aim of military propaganda is to portray whoever we’re fighting as deserving of the same sort of violence.
Sounds like the bevy of propaganda about how cops are valiant community-serving guys who sometimes have to make hard decisions in the aforementioned every popular show.
Say you're 17-18 and you join the military because you think we're the good guys and we're only doing carefully targeted violence towards the bad guys. You arrive in Iraq and quickly figure out that's all bullshit -- we're not doing anything good, and much of what we do indiscriminately kills a ton of civilians along the way. You refuse to fight. There's no way out of that situation that doesn't see you behind bars for at least a while. Even if you're detained relatively briefly before you're court martialed and kicked out -- the best case scenario -- you now have the equivalent of a felony conviction on your record, which will fuck with your housing, education, and employment for the rest of your life.
If you're a cop and you want to quit, you can just stay home until they fire you. No detention, no trial, no black mark on your record. There's no comparison.
Americans didn’t figure out that the police are bad until last year
Things boiled over last year, but there's plenty of longstanding hostility towards the police on both the left and the right. It's easier to sell military propaganda than cop propaganda because people actually spend time around police. If I tell a bullshit story about something happening in your backyard and a second bullshit story about something happening 7000 miles away, which is easier to see through?
Yeah none of this is true. There are a ton of ways to be discharged without ruining your record or being imprisoned.
There is 5x as much copaganda in the US as army propaganda. Again, half of the most popular shows are about cops.
If being an American inherently led to an awareness of the realities of American policing, we would not live in the world we live in. BLM would not have had to happen and Joe Biden would not be president. Unfortunately, most American are exactly as ignorant about the realities of policing as they are the realities of soldiering.
Tell me how some 18-year-old who was just deployed to Iraq can quit without at minimum a dishonorable discharge.
On propaganda, the amount isn't as important as how easy it is to see through. If someone bombards you with tons of propaganda about something you have personal experience with, that propaganda isn't going to be that effective. But if you're bombarded with propaganda about something foreign to you, you're more likely to buy it.
People don't have a full awareness of the reality of American policing, they just have more of an awareness of it than they do of what the military does. It's stuff happening in your backyard vs. across the globe.
Tell me how some 18-year-old who was just deployed to Iraq can quit without at minimum a dishonorable discharge.
You start at conscientious objector and go from there. There are about a dozen ways.
So Americans are aware of the reality of policing, which is why they slurp down bucketloads of propaganda in a full half of the top ten shows on TV.
If Americans had 1/100th of the familiarity with policing that you're ascribing, Joe Biden would not be President, Kamala Harris would not be Vice President, Black Lives Matter would not have been defeated, Liberals would not be creaming themselves over that one Capitol Hill cop, and half of the most watched shows in the US would not be copaganda. You are simply wrong and a national chauvinist.
You can't claim conscientious objector status after you volunteer for military service. You're just making stuff up.
As for American familiarity with policing, consider the reaction you'd get for "fuck the troops" vs. "fuck the police." One is far beyond the pale outside of small, politically irrelevant leftist groups because it's met with such universal opposition. The other is a mainstream rap song people still listen to 30 years later.
You can file for conscientious objector status after enlisting, look it up.
And yes, Americans are more aware of policing than the military, but that is extremely localized and to any extent that it's broad, it's recent. Any time prior to maybe five years ago if you said "fuck the police" to a white person they would look like you'd just fucked their mother in front of them.
No, that's incorrect, and you'd still get a dishonorable discharge in any event. And no one gets conscientious objector status if they wake up one day and don't want to fight -- you basically have to be a lifelong committed pacifist to even have a shot at it.
Any time prior to maybe five years ago if you said “fuck the police” to a white person they would look like you’d just fucked their mother in front of them.
This is also incorrect. There are sizeable segments of both the left and the right who've long been hostile to police, and direct (but more careful) criticism of the police has a long history at least among Democrats.
I didn't look it up because I know you're wrong, and you're the one making the assertion anyway. I'm not your research assistant.
By sizeable segments you mean 0.5% of each (white) population
You're totally disconnected from reality. Plenty of people knew there were serious issues with the cops long before five years ago.
You're back to just making shit up -- I'm done here.
Lmao your own source -- had you bothered to even skim it -- shows you're full of shit. But keep calling other leftists Nazis. If you're not a cop, you're doing a cop's job.
you're doing a cop's job
Oh sorry let me go on a tour of the Middle East and murder a few children, I know that's far more acceptable to you "people"
"DEBATE ME DEBAETE ME DEABATE MEEME1!!!1!!!"
You're a wrecker and a miserable piece of shit, so I'm going with
:bugs-no:
Lmao most intellectually honest and curious American.
You've demonstrated every single thing I asserted, you soulless bug.
lol someone just learned the phrase "intellectually curious"
:countdown:
You're so sure of your information and your convictions and yet you can't demonstrate what you're saying. Seems like some kind of soulless bug to me.
Yes sir, Major! I'll get right back to my acceptable duties of scraping dead children off of tank treads!
It’s not “I want free college” it’s more “I want financial stability and higher education without going massively into debt” and then they obscure and hide the actual terrible shit you will do in the military.
It’s not, but that is not how the idea is framed to be people. We all here on this site understand that is what is going to happen. But for so stupid kid in highschool who sees a recruiter everyday, they don’t view it through that lens. And yes, obviously adults still join to, but they also on some level lack the critical understanding of just exactly what it means to get involved in the armed force of empire.
It’s fucking ridiculous how up their own ass some people are about this.
I mean I’m a veteran and I try to come at this point from a materialist perspective. People assume that every single person who enlists is foaming at the mouth for blood. Yes, obviously there are psycho weirdos who join, but most are not like that and are working class.
But they always post that fucking heritage foundation article about troops not actually being in the working class and are wealthy or whatever. If they were, why would they join the military thats main incentive to join is the basic necessities that have been commodified?
People assume that every single person who enlists is foaming at the mouth for blood
That’s often a pretty good tell that someone grew up well-off, honestly. I know a lot of people that enlisted and they weren’t chuds when they went in. A lot of them came out that way, though, unfortunately.
heritage foundation article
What the fuck? I have mod powers in this comm and I will scrub that shit. Let me go find it.
What the fuck? I have mod powers in this comm and I will scrub that shit. Let me go find it.
Unfortunately, I don't think many people other than CIA-ass think tanks care about this.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military
Here's a different article, from CFR (the same people who run FP, so CIA, but like I said - no one else cares). Family income of service members obviously isn't public, so they can only base it on the neighborhoods they come from, but the fact remains it's virtually guaranteed many in the military are not joining up because they're pushed to by their poverty (some are, but that's not my point here).
Most probably aren't enlisting because they're foaming at the mouth, either (though I suspect the number is much higher in the few years after 9/11). Many just enlist because they believe the propaganda, then they go abroad and do horrible things, and often come back still believing it. They whole "poverty" argument always strikes me as obliquely excusing it. I acknowledge that a subset of the military are very poor and that's a motivating factor, but unless they come back full of regret and ready to overthrow the system, I don't think it makes anything that much better.
Those that do come back and organize to oppose the government? Those, I respect. But that doesn't mean we need to start making blanket statements about how all these troops do it because they're poor.
Edited to rephrase a bit, add bit about 9/11.
Fair enough, thanks for the chill reply and providing a different source.
You’re right, It has to be or it wouldn’t be able to continue. The machine saw what started happening during the Vietnam war and got wise.
It’s why the DoD literally has people in Hollywood to make sure the military is in a good light. The pentagon has offices for them and the video game industry. Mainstream media had to get on board too of course.
Hollywood turned on them for about 15 or so years before they got it back. Not good for business.
The mechanisms at play here just seem really obvious to me. The school to military pipeline is very real and it’s structured in a way so that it owns a person once they sign on the dotted line.
No one here is saying that the military actions of any troop is excusable. I’m sure you deal with the guilt of whatever the fuck happened out there, own anything wrong you did, and have hopefully processed it with a therapist.
Living in the imperial core and supporting the businesses that profit from imperialism perpetuates this shit as well. Most of us all have some amount of guilt attached. That’s part of what makes capitalism so fucking monstrous.
It’s late and I need to crash. Hopefully this was coherent. Solidarity comrade, it was good talking with you.
Honestly I struggle everyday. Therapist is few and far between. I try to just bury myself in party work for the Party of Communists and any organizing/education I can do.
Solidarity comrade.
That’s completely understandable and I’m sorry it weighs on you so heavily still. Hopefully we can build a world liberated from imperialism (or at least assist those who are doing the liberating).
I’ve heard the VA’s mental health services are often pretty impacted, but consider seeing if you can get on a waiting list for recurring therapy. It really does help. I’m in a much better headspace since I started seeing one through a local community clinic.
It’s good that you’re finding purpose and working to make things better. Many hands make lighter praxis.
:fidel-salute:
Greed and selfishness for what? I don’t understand how hard it is for people on this site to be slightly empathetic with someone who thinks that their only choice is to enlist because it will improve their lives. You all take the humanity out of the troop individually by generalizing them under a blanket category of baby killers.
My platoon we had 4 guys getting citizenships, another joined from Oakland to avoid gangs, farmers from the Midwest who can’t go to college, and normal people who all hated being there but it was a job and it paid bills and got some people off their feet.
Yes military bad. Imperialism terrible. But there’s no reason in throwing the idea of getting troops or former troops sympathetic with leftist movements. Otherwise they are going to go to the reactionaries and fascist. As if the left doesn’t need people trained in and for combat for whenever an actual class war or revolution happens.
I don’t get the knee-jerk response either. Recruiters are not fucking honest about what they’re signing you up for when they drag kids in.
If someone knew what the beast was when they went in, that’s one thing, but almost everyone who enlists does so as a kid.
I was told it’s very unlikely I would ever deploy and that I would stay stateside. 3 months after basic I was on a plane to the Horn of Africa and 9 months after that deployment I got sent to kuwait.
I had no idea what I was going to do or get involved in, because if recruiters did tell you what it was actually like then no one would join. The big joke when you are in the military is that “my recruiter lied to me”
The big joke when you are in the military is that “my recruiter lied to me”
:10000-com:%
Also goddamn, that is horrible. I’m sorry you went through that.
Not every job is literally a boots on the ground carrying a gun and patrolling the streets. There are plenty of medical, administrative, mechanical, computer, etc jobs that people join to do to get experience outside of normally going to college. Yeah paying the bills is exactly what it does for some people and it’s why they stay in. And I’ll argue my two soldiers from the Philippines and the other from Haiti were potentially in danger.
I’m an anti imperialist. Former troop. I understand my entire life is only as easy as it is to the extent that it is built off the backs of the global south. And that argument doesn’t just involve troops but Americans especially at large. They don’t see what happens in these countries where colonialism still holds and imperialism reigns. They just see coffee beans on a shelf or gas at the pump without thinking as to how it got there.
You don’t need to waste your breath on veterans or troops that could possibly be comrades. Just let them go on straight to the arms of reactionaries if there is no hope in educating them. That only makes the job of revolutionaries harder in the long run. I’ve personally talked to veterans in the VA who are interested in communism after I explain my views, even Vietnam veterans.
You didn’t become the perfect cut out of Lenin after reading a book or doing an emotionally driven critique of a veterans point of view on a social site. What should we realistically do with veterans then? Alienate them increasingly by refusing to do anything with them? P
that argument doesn’t just involve troops but Americans especially at large.
I think that’s part of the moralizing and grandstanding you’re running into here. Multiple people jumping onto soapboxes to try and absolve some of the guilt they feel.
We’re not on reddit and I think folks forget that sometimes. Of all the people here, I feel a former troop who has since seen the light probably has some of the clearest understanding for just how fucking evil American imperialism truly is at its core.
You would think so comrade. I’ve been around the world and I just try to use my experiences to help educate others. I try to bring veterans towards communism. I explain it’s because of my military experience that I became a communist. It’s not impossible.
It truly is not impossible. If anything, I’m surprised there aren’t more leftist veterans. Likely why there’s so much chud propaganda pointed at them, to be honest. You’ve seen how the sausage gets made.
You’re fighting a good fight. I think the shock for other leftist folks who deprogram themselves from American Jingoism can be harsh enough that anything which introduces further complexity can be met with strong resistance. Us leftists also love to soapbox, which doesn’t always help things.
I was almost snagged by a recruiter right out of high school. Those fuckers are relentless and they are predatory. I had some medical issues that disqualified me and at the time I was devastated. Now I realize I dodged a bullet.
You’re not viewing things from a materialist perspective if you are letting your emotions of a certain even cloud your judgement in the conditions that lead to someone to join.
What responsibility do they bear then if they did not know better at the time of enlisting?
And I’m not defending murdering foreigners for money so gtfo. No where have I been defending the slaughter of innocents.
This is not a good reason to kill an innocent
I don’t think anyone is arguing with you on that, friend.
It’s late so my reading comprehension might be off, but it seems like you’re making a lot of arguments to opinions different than what Redarmor has written.
I was talking in general, you weren’t the only person harping on him. To be fair, that is effectively my takeaway from a lot of what you’ve written in this specific conversation. You’ve had other good takes outside of this thread, so we clearly just diverge on this.
Don’t remember if the up their own ass comment was about something you posted. I remember what I was responding to being pointlessly combative for no reason. I get grumpy when I see folks talking past each other.
My interpretation of RedArmor’s posts is that leftists should not blame troops for joining up because they get some material benefit for their “work”
Huh. That’s a completely different takeaway than I got. You might want to consider specifically asking them next time if that’s what they’re communicating. Again, I might have missed that in there.
Why else stress the incentives, unfortunate backgrounds and lack of access to jobs or collage? Why would that matter?
All of those incentives are the bait that gets dangled in front of a kid who has already been steeped in imperialist propaganda since birth. Propaganda that downplays and lies about what the military actually does. Background matters because most rich kids go straight to college. Enlisting is presented as another option if your parents can’t or won’t pay for it.
It explains why a stupid fucking kid might make a deal with the devil. It does not absolve them for anything they might do after that. Not everyone enlists and it’s good most don’t. Most Americans don’t even understand what imperialism is, including those who enlist.
If we want to dismantle the imperialist machine, it helps to understand how it pulls in more bodies.
I admit that my articulation can be strung out a bit because there are a lot of points to bring up regarding this topic. Plus I’ve been getting Harped on for the last day about this and it gets exhausting at a point.
Regardless, in hindsight, I think it was a stupid thing for me to try and argue. It is obviously true that veterans should be welcome on the left and that we should understand the material conditions that effect people’s decisions to enlist without making personal responsibility arguments in the same way we don’t treat criminality or drug abuse as an issue of personal responsibility.
This is the takeaway I am trying to get people to understand. That’s it’s a complicated issue that is larger than “I want to kill people” for many who enlist.
