I work in medicine, and one of the hospitals in our system is the VA. I have literally no interest in serving veterans; people who fight in wars for America pretty much stand and act against everything I believe in. It's not necessarily that I think these people don't deserve great healthcare, it's that I don't want to be the one giving it to them. I would much rather spend my time serving people from my community who didn't spend large parts of their lives wrecking other communities.
Sure, some of my patients anywhere are going to be complete assholes. Sure, there are a lot of veterans who weren't involved in combat (but they did directly aid those in combat at least, right?). Idk, is there a perspective I'm not seeing here? Is it wrong for me to be morally opposed to working for the VA?
I don't think we even have to go to moral "oughts" if you just genuinely don't feel like working with veterans. I see it how some therapists don't want to work with children or something; it's just a segment of the population you personally don't want to work with. If you can get around it and it makes your time at work better then why not.
What percentage of vets would you estimate are persuadable?
That's what I see as the central question here: if a group of people can be convinced to become leftists, we should be working with them regardless of whether it's difficult. We're not going anywhere unless we get literally tens of millions of more people on our side, and not all of those people are going to be perfect.
A non-trivial amount of people join the military as it’s their only attainable means of upward mobility.
There's an important unspoken calculatio here. The
veteranex-war criminal has decided that their own upwards mobility is more important than the lives of the brown people they will help murder.It's not morally justifiable for a poor person to kill other poor people for cash as a hit man, so it's not morally justifiable for a poor person to join an Imperialist military to kill poor people overseas for money.
What would you think of someone who joined a gang for upward mobility, but didn't personally kill anyone? Or hell, what would you think of someone who joined a gang as a minor, did kill someone, but now deeply regrets it, and actively wants to make sure that others aren't sucked into that world?
There's a real contradiction between thinking the way we treat criminals is horrible and writing off veterans as irredeemable.
I appreciate you pointing this comparison out, this gives me a lot of perspective about veterans in general and how I view them.
Good point but also you're assuming they can see through the propaganda when they're signing up. "I get paid to kill bad guys who want us dead" is about as far as it goes
That's a good point. However, in my mind it's not a sufficient excuse on a moral level.
Consider an 18 year old SS soldier in WWII. He would have spent most of his life having Nazi propaganda crammed down his throat. So if he said "Look, I didn't know it was wrong to machine-gun those Jews, they told me Jews were bad people." Would we accept that as sufficient excuse for his crimes?
If someone is gunning down unarmed people, yeah, they should know that's bad regardless of propaganda. But while that does happen, certainly not every vet does it. I want to say a majority don't even see combat.
Idk comrade, that sounds awfully close to the "Clean Wehrmacht" myth where the non-SS parts of the Nazi military tried to rehabilitate their image by pointing out that they were not as directly involved as the SS.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but not being the one directly doing the killing should not be accepted as a bright line distinction morally.
not being the one directly doing the killing should not be accepted as a bright line distinction morally
Well, I didn't suggest that. I'm only suggesting that there's at least some difference between gunning down unarmed people and sweeping floors at some base in Nevada. Both the mass murderer and the floor sweeper may be guilty of something, but they're not guilty to the same degree. We have a whole bunch of crimes and degrees of guilt in our criminal codes for a good reason.
The comparison I made elsewhere in this thread is to members of a gang with different jobs. Say Bob buys guns for the gang and Tim goes around killing people for the gang. Tim very obviously has done horrible things, but Bob? That's not as simple. He benefited from criminal activity that wound up killing people, but he never hurt anyone personally. His job to some extent facilitated people getting killed (although maybe that connection is attenuated -- say, none of the guns Bob bought were used to shoot anyone), but the mere act of buying a gun and giving it to someone is something plenty of people do without any inherent criminality. How should society treat Bob and Tim?
That's actually somewhat of a myth. I'm sure there are cases of it being true, but as a whole modern army recruits come from middle class families.
https://web.archive.org/web/20200819190100if_/https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/04/18/recruits-to-americas-armed-forces-are-not-what-they-used-to-be
Makes sense. A lot of the most poor and underprivileged people will have physical or mental attributes that would disqualify them from being recruited.
But for the millennial soldiers, reared in an age of American swagger, the opposite is true. Their median family income is more than $73,000
If you're a family of four living on $73K, you may not be poor, but you also are going to need significant loans to pay for college and and you're not going to be able to count on much from the Bank of Mom and Dad.
I mean, we know the "middle class" has been hollowed out for decades now, and "middle class" jobs still leave you one medical issue from bankruptcy. I don't think we can correctly point out all the financial stressors on the "middle class" but then discard all that when it comes to the motivations a 17-year-old might have to join the Army.
That would also apply to all of us. Anyone performing any labor for an American company or actively receiving the benefits of imperialism (cost of products, etc.) are also furthering that, just in a less direct way.
:yes-chad:
Any socialist revolution where the residents of the imperial core get to keep their ill-gotten wealth is no socialist revolution at all.
the residents of the imperial core get to keep their ill-gotten wealth
I wonder what's underneath the settler colonialist self interest of "degrowth will harm the global poor!!!"
I just don't understand why the VA exists honestly. I don't understand why there's an entirely separate hospital specially for war fighting/supporting pieces of shit.
I absolutely agree that there are a lot of people who get into the military because the military preys on poverty and the youth's ignorance... but idk, at some point I feel like there's gotta be a time to say "this is not worth the upward mobility, this is horrendous what we are doing." I realize how privileged and possibly ignorant that statement may sound, but c'mon. I wouldn't cut any slack for a cop who took the job because he felt he had to, why would I do so for a military grunt?
this is not worth the upward mobility, this is horrendous what we are doing
absolutely, but the VA serves people who are out of the military for whatever reason. i met a friend of mine organizing, and he uses the VA hospital since a few years back he got medically discharged* and has no other healthcare. he was only in the corps for a year. it's complicated.
disregarding the VA if you sign up and do four years, but then don't reup because you realize it's fucked up, you're still forever a "vet" right?
i feel like a lot of chapos don't really understand that living in the imperial core is complicated and dynamic and changes over time.
*tw: rape
spoiler
discharged for PTSD after his superior officer raped him (she later got a promotion). therapy is part of his VA care.
We have the VA for the same reason we have the GI bill, tricare, barracks, etc.
Without the appeal of getting your basic needs taken care of, far less people would enlist. If everyone had access to free healthcare, education, and housing why would people sign up?
You’d only get the patriotic chuds and military families to serve, but the war machine is dependent on having hundreds of thousands of disposable bodies.
No I don’t think it’s wrong. Whether they realize it or not they’re most likely implicit in horrible crimes and America’s veteran fetish has gone on long enough.
If this is something that weighs heavily on your mind I think you should try to find opinions from non-Americans tbh. You're never gonna get an "unbiased" answer about American veterans on chapo. If you said "I live in Israel and don't wanna serve veterans of the IDF" you'd get way more people telling you they totally get your wishes.
If it's a more general question - idk, do doctors still swear some version of the Hippocratic Oath? Go by your personal interpretation of that, I guess. If it's specifically about working in VA vs a regular hospital in your community - I don't see how it could be wrong to prefer working in one hospital over another tbh.
If we can say Acab, we can say the same about literal imperial soldiers, don't serve veterans.
Yeah I work in healthcare also. I've thought about this before. I wouldn't be able to provide them with the highest possible standard of care. Sucks cause VA is a Federal job. Very good benefits.
I mean federal jobs are Nazi jobs too. It's all part of the same system. If the guys in the VA or the Government Accountability Office or the Post Office didn't come in to work then the boom boom explode children guys wouldn't be able to do their job. It's all the same shit. You can't pick and choose and say "I just did paperwork, my hands are clean."
When you're calling postal workers Nazis, you need to log off for a bit
I logged on this morning and read the postal workers are Nazis and then the below comments and my mind was just blown.
postal workers
by definition they're not proletariat because they're leeches off the imperialist, colonialist federal government. read Marx
As a patient they'd be deeply dependent towards you and because of that would probably be willing to listen. You'd be surprised how much regular people agree on certain issues. Unfortunately another awful element of imperialism/capitalism is that the individual has a decent possibility to remain blameless through delegation and lack of education/understanding as to how their actions lead to other worse actions.
It's up to you, but I think empathy as a starting position would be wise. If you had to, maybe boycott outright Trumpers or Lobbyists lol
I think the empathy up front approach is key. No patient wants to be told by a doctor that they aren't "worthy" of treatment or any sort because of something they did and would only undermine their trust in medicine I would never want to do that.
Interestingly, my favorite patient I've ever had was a right winged boomer. If I met him in a bar I probably would have told him to fuck off but something about the professional setting really helped bring out the good nature in him.
would only undermine their trust in medicine
"Black newborns more likely to die when looked after by White doctors" https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/18/health/black-babies-mortality-rate-doctors-study-wellness-scli-intl/index.html
something about the professional setting really helped bring out the good nature in him.
Read Marx and learn what human nature really is
remain blameless through delegation
it's so funny how socialists think the Banality of Evil is an argument in their favor and not one that condemns them for being worthless little drones
think empathy as a starting position would be wise
Radlibs will never use marxist historical materialism because its in their class interests to obscure materialism
I don't disagree with your derision of the banality of evil defence, but the delegation and relative degrees of powerlessness allows us to judge on soldiers as a case by case basis.
They're proletariat just like you. Many people have no option but to join the military, our system is designed to funnel the poor and downtrodden into military service. If healthcare is a human right, soldiers should have access to it as well.
Soldiers should have access to healthcare, 100%! I very strongly agree with that. I just personally don't have any desire to be the one to give them that healthcare (unless for some reason I was the only option for them... like I'm not going to just watch someone die because they got drafted into Vietnam, but I don't want to spend 8 hours of my day every week managing the meds of those people either if I had the option).
So why did you enter the medical field? Are you okay with denying medical care when you don't agree with their life decisions? There is a wide range of people who served in the military and Vietnam had a draft so a lot of people were forced in. Who are we to say they deserve to suffer from medical issues because the government pulled their draft number almost 60 years ago?
Absolutely not! I would never ever want to deny someone healthcare (save for MAYBE murderous fascists, but even then I wouldn't make the choice to do it). If I was the only person available to give a veteran healthcare, I would do it in a heartbeat. Nobody deserves to suffer unduly from treatable medical conditions.
I got into medicine because I want to treat people with debilitating conditions. People who have found them in unfortunate circumstances not as a result of their choices but just poor happenstance. I want to help underserved people especially. However, given the option of working in the VA or working in the regular hospital, I think I would choose the patient population that I don't hold such severe grudges against (who wants a healthcare provider who doesn't respect them anyway? I would never intentionally give subpar care, but there are studies that show that our implicit biases do indeed affect the quality of care).
I guess the question I'm grappling with is "should I treat anybody no matter who they are when they walk in the door because healthcare is a right and I am capable of executing their treatment" or "should I deliberately select the patient population I serve because I'm morally opposed to the lifestyle that some people live (with the added risk of retaliation from my superiors)? When I put it that way it starts to sound pretty moralistic. Other people have already pointed out that for many people, being a vet doesn't feel "voluntary," and even for those who do volunteer, many get out due to moral opposition at some point, and I have no way of really knowing who is who.
This thread has given me a lot to think about.
Like other people have said, ultimately it is your decision, I just wanted to help give you a different perspective to help you reason through this quandary. I am not in the medical field nor have I stepped foot in a VA facility, that being said I know a lot of vets who would be dead by their own hand or by the effects they suffered while serving if not for the VA. To challenge oneself is a a noble exercise. I do not know what political ideology you adhere to but Mao talks about not everyone being the same level of Marxist but they are still necessary to the revolution even if they are just 10% Marxist in their behavior. I think of people like Smedley Butler who is a two time medal of honor recipient but went on to criticize the country's use of soldiers as the armed extension of capitalist interest. Like you said you want to help people who are in a position by no fault of their own and given the economic liberation sold to young kids who join the military as a tool for recruitment can we really fault the kid who sees it as their only way out of dire poverty?
As Michael Brooks would say, hate the policy not the person. Yes a good many of them were probably complicit in war crimes or committed them themselves but if you're in healthcare then you've already made a choice to help people regardless of their politics or life choices. Would you not help someone who's a trump supporter or Q Anon nut? Would you not help a cop? Of the groups mentioned, most rank and file soldiers are working class and used the military as one of few options to get a job with benefits so I don't blame them for how our military industrial complex is wielded on the world.
I'm not judging your hatred because I agree on principle, but if that's how you feel then you should try to transfer away from military locations or attempt a career change.
Would you not help a cop?
Hmmmmm
if that’s how you feel then you should try to transfer away from military locations
That's what I'm debating here. It's not that I don't want the people to receive healthcare, it's that I feel like my time would be better spent at other hospitals in my community. It's a challenging decision I think.
In your position I would either bring it up honestly or make up a story about being around troops giving you ptsd cause patriotism depending on who I'm talking to and what might make it so I don't have to work at a VA. I'd say morally you should try to get out of it but ethically you definitely have to do it.
That depends on what you put higher, anti-imperialism or medical ethics.
Look at it this way: You'll be in a perfect position to give them a little payback in Minecraft :sicko-yes:
