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

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.

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

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.

https://youtu.be/LbWAFu3H3rw

Around where I live, I'm like a fish adapted to contaminated water. I just have to keep swimming in it, taking it in, and moving on. There's just that many PMC lanyard ghouls and enough of them want to engage with me when I'm in line or seated somewhere or on break. On a good day I might get peddled some greenwashing proposal like putting up more solar panels on my roof (that I would pay a subscription for that goes to some ), or blockchain grift or some "protecting freedom with more surveillance" hustlegrind startup opportunity might get pitched my way because I look like I might buy in for some reason. On a bad day I have to hear about how much they hate homeless people. Department of Defense recruiter vultures are sometimes perched around to swoop up students, too.

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.

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.

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.

Pancor jackhammer

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'll ask my vegan friend who works for Big Food when I see them later.

Roll for initiative