Seems like every day I meet more guys on a Raytheon coop program or some other project building weapons. How are you supposed to respond when all you can think about when looking at them is the deaths and the blowback their work is directly causing? I know that being well adjusted to a sick world is not a good thing, anyone who can shrug off mass murder to be professional is on their way to being a ghoul themselves.
That being said though, if I went on a Jeremiad every time I met one of these guys I'd be an utter pariah. So fair I've just tried to avoid these people and used them as a reminder of what we struggle against. How do you deal with it?
So fair I've just tried to avoid these people and used them as a reminder of what we struggle against
This basically
People who are literally working for weapons companies aren't going to be easily swayed that their way of life is evil. It's not worth the emotional effort or looking weird in front of coworkers for no benefit.I think this advice technically makes me a lib according to Mao, but I think he was writing more about fellow comrades than people who should be getting the wall anyway
Oh I've never entertained the idea of trying to convince them lol, they're already absorbed into that different world. But it just feels like I'm being a lib if I'm sitting down at a table and someone else starts talking about their drone project and I do nothing but pretend I don't hear what they're talking about. 1 nazi at the table and all that.
I'm a big white dude with a beard who works directly with tradespeople. Generally when somebody tells me a joke where the punchline is a racial slur 5 minutes after meeting me all I can really do is go huh and looked unimpressed and very obviously change the subject and make sure to double check any work the dymbass did.
I justify this because if you try to push back they love it and tell their coworkers they triggered a slur lover but maybe I'm just a cowardly lib.
I've organized at workplaces like this and it's pretty easy to embarrass guys like you mentioned. That's the only thing that works, but you need to have a context to do it in.
I'd always single out the racist, chud-like ones in meetings and that gets them to shut up fast. They'll say slurs when think they're alone, they'll hesitate when they know more people are watching and stakes are involved. I don't know if you have the right context
reactionary beliefs are easy imo. just be polite, argue if you feel like it, but remember that you can't rely on that person when the shit goes down.
the question of what to do when you meet someone with real power causing or abetting unspeakable evil is a lot harder, because conscience demands that you stab them in the throat, but circumstances prevent that.
I think it works best to try to make them feel like an unfunny loser, rather than going for any sort of moral objection.
Living in New England is a constant reminder that the MIC is a writhing leviathan whose reach stretches further than can be imagined
If it's not Raytheon, it's BAE Systems or Northrop-Grumman
Generally, if their job is anything higher than custodian, they get an earful from me if I'm feeling scornful or a snide dismissal if I'm feeling tired
Not to self dox or be a weird one up guy but I think it's probably even worse where I am. I see those on a daily basis, but also Lockmart, Honeywell, Halliburton, L3Harris, Boeing, Collins, the army corps, the Marines, and it goes on. It's hell.
I get it
Hopefully you find some decent folks to hang out with and help you to keep your mind off that shit
Dwelling on that stuff for too long is gonna drain your batteries
Just gotta remember that you're just a single person and you're not going to be able to do anything about it
Yet
How are you supposed to respond when all you can think about when looking at them is the deaths and the blowback their work is directly causing?
You should let them know what the fruits of their labor are: death and mayhem. Most of these dudes, even the ones who work on things like the warhead design team, have literally never had anything beyond the most surface level thoughts about the implications of what they're building. I used to be one of those guys. I think what ultimate made me rethink what the fuck I was doing in my labor was the Obama's drone war and the obviously uncaringly murderous nature of it. My labor was directly contributing to making it cheaper and more efficient for the American empire to extend it's power. The bodycount from the last 20 years of American "interventions" is in the millions, and every Little Eichmann who contributes their labor has a not-so-theoretical bodycount that they are morally responsible for. The gears of death don't grind onward on their own.
But it's going to fall on deaf ears, especially now that all these dudes have consumed Russo-Ukrainian war propaganda. Whereas before, the workers at military contractors were mostly apolitical, a lot of them are now explicitly pro-war and think the fruits of their labor are going towards expanding freedom in Europe.
I was SO hoping someone would get the joke so I didn't look crazy
GO TEAM VENTURE!
Hell, I made a Venture Bros. joke on the Testicular Torsion post the other day
There's also a photo of me dressed up like Number 21 out there somewhere
It was my buddy, I'm was just shy of six feet and a little dumpy and he was 6' 3" and rail skinny so it worked like a dream
Yeah, we were at Wizard World in Chicago back around 2008
The wings were a pain in the ass, but I think it added to the character that I was finagling with them and trying to scoot past everyone
Oh absolutely. If you're ever back in the Midwest, holler at your corgi!
A while ago I was talking with someone who worked for an energy company and she said she was trying to get transferred to the clean energy section. I responded "Oh you mean the green washing department?"
She did this small high pitched laugh and said "I know right?" and the conversation got really awkward. She excused herself to talk to someone else and avoided me the rest of the event. I didn't explicitly intend to call her out on it - a jobs a job sometimes. It made me wonder if all oil & gas companies are filled with some percent happy ghouls and thousands of libs with pending transfers to 6 open slots in the solar/wind/carbon capture departments.
Where do you work where oil & gas workers are libs? I work in energy and everyone is a ghoul in training or a Klansman without the robes
White collar officeworkers specifically. You might be right, It's hard to tell I am just going off anecdotal interaction. I agree they're getting ghoul study materials daily.
For a lot of these people the MIC is just a high paying job with decent unionization rates. If they could get similar work with similar conditions without the defense part, a lot of them would. Boeing, in my opinion, is a good example of this. Boeing Commercial isn't doing the best financially, while Boeing Space & Defense is doing great thanks to government contracts.
It's also important to remember that a lot of technology produced on the commercial side of things is used in defense, so even if that particular engineer has a change of heart and moves to the commercial side of the industry, they could be helping MIC just as much.
Your second point is definitely something I've thought about that keeps me up at night. Obviously capital is all-encompassing so it should come at no surprise, but the fact that you will have blood on your hands no matter what is something that I can't really stomach.
I'd imagine the level of effort will be proportional to the number of layers of abstraction they have from the use of their productivity to kill and maim civilians. If they are directly working on some death machine product, it might be possible to draw their attention to this, but no guarantees that they will care as
implies.If they are just engineering some widget that happens to be used in the supply chain for death machines or similar, probably not going to have any luck using this line of reasoning unless they are already left leaning.
Edit: or ignore them, walk away, tell them they're a piece of shit, slash their tires, whatever seems like the best course of action depending on the circumstances.
Normally, i try to uphold the "be normal" point in public, but i literally can't in these situations. One time i met a contractor for raytheon and when he told me what his job was, i just replied "so how's the wedding bombing business?"
We were at a wedding.
I just make that face of that one popular image of a kid cringing with their teeth showing and try and extricate myself from the situation.
Challenge them on it. Directly.
There is no "be normal" with full scale ghouls. You should not "be normal" about people that make bombs and kill civilians for a living. You be normal with the average working class person, not an engineer putting real time into figuring out how to kill people and advance the interests of the empire better.
You make them uncomfortable, or you make the situation uncomfortable for everyone.
Unless you're organising and in a leadership position getting merced is probably off the table. If you are, then yes but not for going off on some ghouls but rather because the state thinks that offing you could be the critical link that hobbles your org or the case of something like BLM they offed leaders to put a stop to the activities they wanted to see an end to.
Or a journalist doing real journalism.
oh lol it's not like that it's just wannabe lanyard freaks, not people in high places. but they are working on actual projects though.
it's a long road ahead isn't it
