54
Bro, what
this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
54 points (78.7% liked)
MeanwhileOnGrad
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"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
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People on Lemmy can be so wild
Everyone in here is just a fake bot to test how committed and right I am. They only ever disagree with me to play devil's advocate and don't actually mean it.
And if they are real they just haven't realized how smart I am or they would be agreeing with me anyways, they are just dumb which I will be condescending but act like I'm being generous for talking to them at all about it.
Social media I so easy and I am winning it so hard!
People on Lemmy can be so wild
I don't see it
This is what happens when people are terminally online.
it must be nice to be so morally upstanding and pure. i only wish i could aspire to the perfection most terminally online people claim to possess.
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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?"
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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Throw a Z on that helmet and then what do they think? Rhetorical question.
They think the same thing this is posted by anarchists not "tankies" it's possible to oppose both you know.
I really wish more people understood that saying something anti-american does not automatically make you pro-china or pro-russia. Killing people halfway across the world in countries you're not even at war with is not ok, and doing it for the money is possibly even worse. I know many are desperate, and most want to defend their country instead of shooting other poor people in some desert. But in the end, each soldier is responsible for accepting being part of that senseless violence, of being the one to pull the trigger, in exchange for money.
Instead of putting the blame on individual soldiers, how about we instead focus on the people ordering the senseless violence to begin with? When we constantly need former service members coming out and making public statements about how soldiers don't have to follow unlawful orders, doesn't that say something about the structure they've cultivated in that organization?
"Be ruthless to systems, Be kind to people."
When they are in these situations, an individual soldier is little more than an expensive weapon the people at the top are pointing at someone or something. If one of them malfunctions, they get replaced.
Yes, this doesn't absolve them of responsibility. "Just following orders" is not a defense for war crimes. But if you've watched former service members discuss how disobeying unlawful orders works, you'll know "You're asking me to do something illegal" also isn't a get out of jail free card. It is a defense for when you face punishment for violating that order. A defense crucially that can fail if the order is found to be lawful. So if you're a soldier that say comes from desperation and might be looking at losing literally everything to a dishonorable discharge if the court martial doesn't find in your favor and says that you were in fact disobeying a lawful order? Can you maybe see why someone like that might feel like they have no choice but to pull that trigger?
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying they don't bear some responsibility. I'm saying maybe they might bear less responsibility than the people that put them in that position to begin with and maybe we should show some goddamned compassion to people who in that impossible moment feel like they only have one way out.
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.zip does have .ml alts i can confirm.
I love the infighting. MF I'm on world because it's vanilla and I wanted somewhere that meshed with everywhere else.
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