I had family who died in the holocaust. I had other family who refused to fight in any of America's imperialist wars and paid for it. I don't have a lot of patience for anyone trying to absolve nazis of their guilt or claim it was impossible to resist the draft.
most people can not “pay for it” most can’t flee to another country or be thrown in jail for 5 years and then be released into homelessness and poverty. this is the 60s we are talking about lol. I’m glad your family was class conscious/anti-imperialist but a large majority of Americans are not/were not.
Honestly it wasn’t even 5 years, I just rolled with that number because he pulled it out of his ass. More like 2-3 tops.
Anyway, there were tons of people in the 60’s who fought back and resisted the Vietnam war. My family weren’t an outlier.
Homelessness and poverty is such a strange assumption about what happened to draft dodgers, especially given what happened to vets when they came back.
I’m glad your family was class conscious/anti-imperialist but a large majority of Americans are not/were not.
And? The imperial machine marches on whether or not imperial subjects choose to recognize it. Imperialists who commit atrocities can't just get a blanket pardon because they didn't know better
I’m not saying blanket pardon, I’m not even saying forgiveness, I’m simply talking about analyzing the material / societal reasons. unless you believe people are just evil and like doing evil it seems like the “normal” take leftists should have lol
His argument is paternalistic: Americans simply aren't capable of introspection and moral relativism of the 1960s and American exceptionalism probably inhibited such thoughts of desertion, draft avoidance, and imprisonment from the majority of the population of the US at that time.
That's probably true, but we are certainly capable of condemning the past and condemning the current executioners of American hegemony.
To understand is not to condone, and yet calling for understanding and nuance rhymes with calls for acceptance and reconciliation with the society that produces and necessitates this global genocidal violence.
Analyzing the material reasons people do what they do is good. Recognizing the systemic factors that lead imperialists to project imperialism is something that we should do. But that doesn't mean treating imperialists with these uwu kid gloves, especially when they haven't deprogrammed.
Oh well if the genociders might have had to experience poverty if they didn't commit genocide, that's hunky-dory! I wonder if the people they were genociding ever experienced poverty or homelessness. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
I'm saying from a person in the 60s pov yes. You have been force-fed American exceptionalism and anti-communism from the cradle, of course, you should fight those dirty commies. (although only 1 out of 7 draftees was in combat) But the alternative is if you don't have a family to fall back on you lose everything(job, car, house if you have one), have a criminal record, and have spent a prolonged period of time in an American prison, an institution that is proven to turn 1st-time offenders into repeat and more violent offenders. or you have enough money to go to another country/have a good enough education to get into college (during this time a huge % of people, especially in the midwest did not finish high school)
i think my main point is there is a reason the draft worked in the 60s and early 70s, but we wouldn't dream of it being attempted today; less dissenting news against US imperial interests, a lack of a real existential threat (china/sinophobia is like 1% of what the population thought of Russia. side note for example my father/mother and most everyone they went to school with 100% believed that nuclear war was going to happen, it was a fact of life) and a lack of understanding of how awful the war was until later into the conflict. Today day 1 we would see pictures of soldiers getting blown the fuck up/mass refusal to report if you got drafted also inpart due to a cultural shift towards anti-war among younger people.
like 5 years and a 25k (200k adj. for inflation) fine or have a 6 in 7 shot of never seeing combat for 2 years then returning with GI bill benefits + pay. It is understandable to me why some took the state's offer. That does not mean it is GOOD, or ABSOLVES THEM OF WAR CRIMES, it means i can see why,at the time, draftees did not see themselves as the modern-day wehrmacht
I mean, the same logic works for the Wehrmacht itself. There were a good six years between the Nazis taking power and the invasion of Poland. Plenty of time for propaganda pushing on top of the resentment from losing WWI. Nobody sees themselves as evil.
Like, if you want to go full materialist and say everyone is a product of their times then sure, but that line of thought is really only suited to historical research. It doesn't serve a purpose politically other than to absolve those people of any crimes they committed, and since that doesn't seem to be what you're going for, it's kind of a weird argument to make on a leftist politics website.
Bruh...
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I had family who died in the holocaust. I had other family who refused to fight in any of America's imperialist wars and paid for it. I don't have a lot of patience for anyone trying to absolve nazis of their guilt or claim it was impossible to resist the draft.
most people can not “pay for it” most can’t flee to another country or be thrown in jail for 5 years and then be released into homelessness and poverty. this is the 60s we are talking about lol. I’m glad your family was class conscious/anti-imperialist but a large majority of Americans are not/were not.
Honestly it wasn’t even 5 years, I just rolled with that number because he pulled it out of his ass. More like 2-3 tops.
Anyway, there were tons of people in the 60’s who fought back and resisted the Vietnam war. My family weren’t an outlier.
Homelessness and poverty is such a strange assumption about what happened to draft dodgers, especially given what happened to vets when they came back.
And? The imperial machine marches on whether or not imperial subjects choose to recognize it. Imperialists who commit atrocities can't just get a blanket pardon because they didn't know better
I’m not saying blanket pardon, I’m not even saying forgiveness, I’m simply talking about analyzing the material / societal reasons. unless you believe people are just evil and like doing evil it seems like the “normal” take leftists should have lol
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His argument is paternalistic: Americans simply aren't capable of introspection and moral relativism of the 1960s and American exceptionalism probably inhibited such thoughts of desertion, draft avoidance, and imprisonment from the majority of the population of the US at that time.
That's probably true, but we are certainly capable of condemning the past and condemning the current executioners of American hegemony.
To understand is not to condone, and yet calling for understanding and nuance rhymes with calls for acceptance and reconciliation with the society that produces and necessitates this global genocidal violence.
Nobody is arguing that we shouldn't do that.
Analyzing the material reasons people do what they do is good. Recognizing the systemic factors that lead imperialists to project imperialism is something that we should do. But that doesn't mean treating imperialists with these uwu kid gloves, especially when they haven't deprogrammed.
Oh well if the genociders might have had to experience poverty if they didn't commit genocide, that's hunky-dory! I wonder if the people they were genociding ever experienced poverty or homelessness. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
Are you saying fighting for imperialists (or less charitably, commiting genocide) is preferable to prison?
I'm saying from a person in the 60s pov yes. You have been force-fed American exceptionalism and anti-communism from the cradle, of course, you should fight those dirty commies. (although only 1 out of 7 draftees was in combat) But the alternative is if you don't have a family to fall back on you lose everything(job, car, house if you have one), have a criminal record, and have spent a prolonged period of time in an American prison, an institution that is proven to turn 1st-time offenders into repeat and more violent offenders. or you have enough money to go to another country/have a good enough education to get into college (during this time a huge % of people, especially in the midwest did not finish high school)
i think my main point is there is a reason the draft worked in the 60s and early 70s, but we wouldn't dream of it being attempted today; less dissenting news against US imperial interests, a lack of a real existential threat (china/sinophobia is like 1% of what the population thought of Russia. side note for example my father/mother and most everyone they went to school with 100% believed that nuclear war was going to happen, it was a fact of life) and a lack of understanding of how awful the war was until later into the conflict. Today day 1 we would see pictures of soldiers getting blown the fuck up/mass refusal to report if you got drafted also inpart due to a cultural shift towards anti-war among younger people.
like 5 years and a 25k (200k adj. for inflation) fine or have a 6 in 7 shot of never seeing combat for 2 years then returning with GI bill benefits + pay. It is understandable to me why some took the state's offer. That does not mean it is GOOD, or ABSOLVES THEM OF WAR CRIMES, it means i can see why,at the time, draftees did not see themselves as the modern-day wehrmacht
I mean, the same logic works for the Wehrmacht itself. There were a good six years between the Nazis taking power and the invasion of Poland. Plenty of time for propaganda pushing on top of the resentment from losing WWI. Nobody sees themselves as evil.
Like, if you want to go full materialist and say everyone is a product of their times then sure, but that line of thought is really only suited to historical research. It doesn't serve a purpose politically other than to absolve those people of any crimes they committed, and since that doesn't seem to be what you're going for, it's kind of a weird argument to make on a leftist politics website.
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Oh come on now, we both know I had a good night's rest and woke up to wonderful news!
Umm that wasn’t what he argued.
please stop replying to me
The path of least resistance is going to prison where you won't die. It's objectively safer and easier than going to war.
They volunteered to go because, like you, they see foreigners as subhumans.
American prisons in the 60s were not objectively safe as you seem to deem, especially if you weren't white
Objectively safer than Vietnam.
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thats definitely debatable lol
like empires have conscripted soldiers against their will for thousands of years
You are right, and throughout that time, people have come together and rebelled against it.
Oh Jesus Christ what the fuck
I was up at like midnight so was nazi boi.