https://knockout.chat/thread/84117
Imagine having to pay respect to troops who sign up to kill people in the global south to plunder their resources.
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What kind of answer is this??
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"MILITARY IMPERIALISM DISCOURSE" LMAO WHAT
For posting all the anonymous reactionary bullshit that you can't post anywhere else.
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A lot of them is not the same thing as all of them. By the stats collected by the US government, the average person who joins the military has a higher income than the national average.
Obviously a poor and desperate person can and will choose any job that they can get, even the military. That doesn't mean they are the main people who make up the military.
And also, it happens to be the case the case that I've also known US military recruits. It's not as if US military members are a secret organization that few people in the world have access to.
The US military's dealings in the criminal world, drug trafficking, terrorism, genocide, extremism across the world aren't exactly secrets. They didn't escape gang violence they just went to the most professional gang that offered the best benefits. God speed to them for getting their life together, doesn't change the political reality that the US military has been the number enemy of leftism since the end of WW2.
There's a real contradiction between how leftists view traditional crime and how leftists view service in the military. Say someone was affiliated with a street gang in their youth and really got in deep at 17. Maybe they didn't personally kill anyone, maybe they weren't even directly involved in a murder, but they worked for an organization that murdered and harmed people. A lot of leftists will emphasize how that person was a kid when they joined, the economic circumstances they grew up in, how limited their personal role was, etc. There's truth to much of that, but we're also talking about a largely self-interested pursuit that largely hurts people. But if that person's twin joins the military at 17, maybe after participating in some sort of ROTC program for a few years before? Then they're not a kid, their circumstances weren't desperate enough, wouldn't a Nazi sweeping floors at a base still be a Nazi, etc.
A street gang isn't the same thing as the military, but we can't correctly note all the similarities and then treat them completely differently.
You bring up a good point. Certainly there is a similarity in how some people end up joining gangs and how they join the military.
But more than half of military recruits have a family member who served, and military recruits (before joining) have a higher income than the national average.
Yes the 17 year old kid has poor decision making ability. I do not deny this and will not pretend as if everyone in the US military is a sociopathic monster (I have never stated this).
But we actually don't need to infantalise these people by saying that tons of people are rejected for being stupid so anyone who is accepted is also stupid and uwu smol bean and "we should accept 1 disaffected military guy over a 100 liberal streamers who talk about imperialism" which starts to veer into absurd territory
👍 You have seen the same posts and youtube videos i have