I keep asking my lib acquaintance in the National Guard what he’s going to do if/when he gets deployed to an American city. A month ago he said he’d flat out refuse. With DC he said, “Well, it’s a federal jurisdiction.” My guess is that he’ll be fine with doing whatever they tell him.

[–] InevitableSwing@hexbear.net 47 points 1 month ago (1 children)

A month ago he said he’d flat out refuse.

I'm going to make a prediction - they're going to say "Look, I might not like going to Chicago next month if not next week and patrolling the city in body armor with combat gear but I have to. The courts have determined it's legal or legal enough anyway so blah blah fucking blah..."

[–] FishLake@lemmygrad.ml 24 points 1 month ago

You can’t use a time machine to make a prediction. That’s cheating.

[–] Ram_The_Manparts@hexbear.net 38 points 1 month ago

"I'm just following orders"

[–] D61@hexbear.net 33 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Here's the number and website for the GI Rights hotline, 1-877-447-4487 for advice, or visit them online at https://girightshotline.org/.

See if you can get them to at least read through the website's info if not actually call the line and talk to somebody about actual options.

[–] FishLake@lemmygrad.ml 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thanks for the info. Hopefully he’ll read through it. This guy wasn’t on board with calling the Palestinian genocide a genocide until some Israeli based charities started saying it a couple weeks ago. So I’m not hopeful that he will be able to use his own judgement to refuse being used as a domestic police force.

[–] D61@hexbear.net 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not sure if this is at all helpful, but it took me over 10 years after I got out of the Army to finally let go of a whole lot of things and fully accept that the US military is an imperial force, anywhere the US military operates it is actively working to do bad things in the area, and even though I managed to kill exactly zero people as part of the invading and occupying forces of Iraq in 2003 I'm still one of the "bad guys".

If you have the patience and your aquiantence isn't immediately walking away from you when you try to give them correct information, you just need to keep pumping that info into their envrionment. Little cracks become big cracks over time.

[–] FishLake@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thanks for the advice. And sorry you went through that. I’m glad you’re in a better place now, comrade.

[–] D61@hexbear.net 2 points 1 month ago

Self inflicted so ... shrug-outta-hecks

But I do wonder how much faster the turn could have been if I had stumbled into some theory literate Anarchist or MLM people.