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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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They literally set up their biggest recruitment centers in the poorest areas of the country offering "a way out" that isn't the prison pipeline while being one of the biggest propaganda outfits in history.
Multiple things can be true at once. The military can be guilty of unimaginable amounts of cruelty while individual soldiers can also be victims exploited by the systems of poverty that those on top have perpetuated and continue to benefit from.
You've literally got elites starving people, handing some of them some table scraps in exchange for cracking some skulls for them and these people talk like every single one of them is just as bad and there's no possibility that they're getting exploited too.
Eew! They're using nuance in here! Ick.
Oh my! I completely forgot! I should have put a content warning on this... I knew I was forgetting something. Sorry about that... No hard feelings right? :3
Also people forget the power of propaganda. Many soldiers talk about how they were duped about fighting terrorists, only to find innocent civilians.
Right? Wonder how long it'll take though for someone to come in and non sequitur this into "oh so since they're propagandized we should just forget all the atrocities American soldiers committed?"
did they disobey orders or shot those civilians? that's the difference, if they disobey those orders then get discharged that's fine. they duped them. but if they pull the trigger fuck em, as criminal as the state that sent them. no Nuremberg defense bullshit
only 10% of military members are combat troops.
90% are doing shit like driving trucks, mechanics, logistitcs, intel, guards on bases, MP, etc.
i've know dozens and dozens of military people. only a handful were ever in combat.
also, i live in one of the richest zip codes in the country... they have recruitment centers here to. There is one right next to where I buy my $7 lattes. one of my well-off nephews aspires to join the military.
A lot of us were fucking kids who didn't know what we were getting into, and the military is so goddamn big that a lot of us still leave without having seen the dark side of this shit. PFC Snuffy sitting pretty in SK for air defense, or Staff Sergeant Bob Roberts running support for Peshmerga in Syria are gonna have a very different outlook than someone who was tossed on the ground in Iraq, or who operated drones against 'insurgents' in whatever fucking country in the sandbox drew our ire today and doesn't even see the 'collateral damage' numbers until the fucking debrief.
Shit, even there it takes a lot to wipe the scales from your eyes.
I despise this tendency of online lefties. What we're up against is so huge and so faceless that they tend to just lash out at any little piece of it they can reach no matter what it is or even if that piece is victimized by that system too. Even if that piece they can reach is on their side. But they'll dress it up in purity tests and how those people need to do better. It's their fault actually.
More of us need to keep in mind the words of the late Michael Brooks. "Be ruthless to systems, be kind to people."
a massive insecurity complex that creates a massive moral superiority complex, fueled by simplistic narratives that don't reflect a complex reality and where reality is rejected in favor of a morally pure world where they are the only source of goodness and all other people are evil or enablers of evil. also being totally allergic to facts, common sense, and any possibility that they might be wrong.
not any different than the MAGA supporters
they are actually worse to each other than anyone else. constantly witch hunting for who is the most idealogical 'pure' and who is a 'traitor' to the cause. they are all mini-Trumps wannabes.
Aren't corporations people? And didn't people decide to make corporations people?
Which people do we need to be kind to? Which systems, that are also people, do we need to be ruthless to?
Find me one actual human leftist that thinks corporations or institutions are people. I'll wait. 🤡🤡🤡
It's cute that you think that I was talking about just lefties when typically only idiotic right wingers buy that bullshit.
Can you show me in my post where I used that term? I will also wait.
Ah well, you're trying at least...
Honey, you responded to a comment talking about a tendency of "online lefties" that ended in saying "more of us" meaning lefties need to keep in mind the words of the late Michael Brooks, A LEFTIST COMMENTATOR.
YOU might not have been talking about lefties, but the conversation you inserted yourself into was. So you walked into the Wendy's and are getting mad that they won't serve you a Crunchwrap Supreme. Fucking clown thought he ate with that. 🤣🤣🤣
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the main character of the game.
Cringe
I see why that conversation hurt you personally. but if you harmed people because of your orders then you're not innocent in your story.
Most of the people American soldiers have killed have been fucking kids, too. Sorry, it more than cancels out. You were the fucking kids with the fucking guns. Genuinely, what do you want from people? If you reject state violence, then surely you don't want to be celebrated for what you did. Should we just pretend it didn't even fucking happen?
Basically what I said in the original thread... Why we're screenshoting and recommenting is beyond me
Um... because I wasn't involved in the "original thread" and only found this through this thread?
Yes I am aware
I was posting for the void
Ah, fair.
The only war is class war. The self-described communists would recognize that, if they weren't imperial fascists in disguise.
Agree, those behind recruitment for targeting, misleading and brainwashing good people, those behind military command for destabilising whole regions for nothing but profit, and those behind the economic system pushing so many young people to see enlisting as the only viable way to provide for their family have a huge role and are ultimately the real source of the scene depicted in the comic. But as you said, multiple things can be true at once, and this doesn't absolve the guy on the trigger side of their individual responsibility
Absolutely, as long as that first part is remembered when it comes time to figure out what "justice" looks like for those people. It doesn't absolve them of responsibility but there are such things as mitigating factors.
Yeah, I mean, if they get people with either 'let's get you a gun so you can start killing people' or 'your country needs protection or it will be destroyed by a country on the other side of the world' you know these were folk already down on their luck, stuck in a system and/or pre-fucked.
Can't really develop a habit of regularly questioning your orders in the military tho.
The killing would stop way too early & we apparently just can't have that.
Not an excuse. If I kill my elderly innocent neighbor and steal everything they own because I'm in danger of falling behind on rent it explains but doesn't excuse my actions. That is on top of the "poverty draft" being mostly a myth at this point.
The fact that your first thought was "falling behind on rent" and not "haven't eaten in days and my kids are starving" tells me you know nothing about being in poverty. Pray tell, what do you mean by the "poverty draft" being a myth? Do you mean they don't deliberately target them? Do we need to have the conversation about incentive structures and feedback loops again? You don't need a deliberate choice to target poor people for the incentives to line up that way.
Edit: Regardless, do you think they just throw recruits into the murder? They exploit them, get them dependent on the structure, indoctrinate them first. By the time murdering the neighbor comes they've already been made to feel like it's impossible to say no. Why the sugar frosted fuck do you think we need so many fucking videos reminding service members they CAN REFUSE UNLAWFUL ORDERS?
You know nothing about me I've been homeless for years at a time fuck off with that shit. What I mean by calling it a myth is that the average military recruit is slightly richer than the average American and that those in extreme poverty and the least likely to join only rivalved by the ultra rich. Soldiering is a middle class profession currently. How is anything you say an excuse youre excusing mass murderers and genocidal racist war criminals and presenting them as the primary victims of their own actions makes me throw up.
https://www.military-ranks.org/army-pay
Starts at $24k per year. Not to worry, though, once you're a sergeant with 14 years experience it caps out at $48k, and once you've reached literally the highest rank of enlisted man it is possible to achieve, of which there is only one in the entire army, it goes up to $118k!
(You do get a signing bonus, too, which since you're a middle-class person and not being taken advantage of, you'll stick into an investment account to start saving up for your middle-class life, instead of buying a new Dodge Charger. All those new recruits with their investment accounts are practically a meme at this point.)
Bless.
Motherfuckers around here parrotting lies just because they mesh well with their pre-establushed hate boner.
Plus food, housing, medical. More bennies if you knock up one of the local strippers. Money for education, sweet home loan terms, preferential hiring…
Meanwhile, full-time work at Federal minimum is $15k a year. Biggest benefit is that you get to keep your soul.
This also means more to lose if you try to disobey what you think is an unlawful order but when you get to the court martial it's found to be lawful. Weird, it's like we understand that these kind of imbalanced power dynamics make people feel like they just have to accept what they're given and can't say no in some contexts but not others...
But it's okay because these people "sold their souls" which I guess you say to mean they've forfeited their humanity?
I respect the pigs that kill themselves.
You’re still so concerned about yourself, and not at all about the people you chose to harm for a bigger paycheck.
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about?
Have fun fucking shadowboxing I guess lmao.
I think I'm going to stop making fun of your point of view now, I think the point is made
"They are victimized and exploited by the system too."
"How dare you present these mass murderers as the primary victims."
You win. You're the better leftist than me honey. I can't beat that shit.