Enough Musk Spam

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[–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 3 points 3 days ago* (1 child)

I’m under no illusion that the state of my tactical training (read: none) is somehow sufficient to accomplish a task like that

Tactical training can be improved with some time and effort.

And I highly recommend doing it. Because in the coming turmoil, it will be useful for a lot more than just vigilante justice.

(And 'tactical' doesn't just mean 'gun'. Even if you can't currently own a gun for legal or mental health/safety reasons, you can still train. Figure out what self defense tools you are allowed/willing to use. Get them. Train on how to use them. Exercise -- weightlifting, cardio, agility. (At least be good at running away!) Take some first aid courses, then maybe even graduate to field medic courses if you can find them. Acquire and learn how to use methods of secure communication that don't depend on the internet and cell networks. Build a 'go bag' with all the essentials you need to survive for 2 weeks, which can be grabbed at a moment's notice without taking time to pack. Spend some time outdoors, familiarizing yourself with the local area and building up hiking/wilderness skills. Build a secret room in your house where you could hide persecuted people from the authorities. Learn how to build and fly drones. Learn the basics of cybersecurity and maybe even develop some hacking skills. Learn physical pen-testing skills; learn how to infiltrate enemy facilities. Familiarize yourself with likely threats -- learn to identify the enemy and their equipment, especially when they're trying to be covert; learn what you can about their strategy and tactics. If possible, identify weak points and plan ways to exploit them. All of those things can be done without ever even touching a gun.)

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[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 3 points 3 days ago

Solid advice... although by 'tactical' I meant getting through the security forces in the service of evil people, and killing said evil people. And ideally, making it back out without being detected. For someone like me, the odds of success are zero.

My point though was that it should never come down to a person like me - we have a 1.3 million strong force of people who are obligated to engage people like Trump or Musk the same way engage any other enemy of the US. Don't get me wrong: that force isn't doing shit, so I guess it's on the peasants... It just shouldn't. Fucking maddening.

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[–] finallymadeanaccount@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 child)

At this point, that oath appears to mean nothing to the members of the US military.

They just plod along, obeying illegal orders (bombing girls' schools, bombing fishermen, bombing wedding parties), despite being treated like shit (USS Lincoln), and even having their deaths switched from column A to column B to make the numbers seem better.

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[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 3 points 3 days ago

100%. And despite the evidence of their inaction, I can't and won't believe the literal entire force is just okay with their peers dying to defend the reputation of a pedophile - surely at least some of them signed up over some sense of patriotism and loyalty to the country, not just loyalty to some orange shitstain. And for those servicemembers, they've got to be much closer to a snapping point than the average Joe Dipshit running in that 9-5 hamster wheel. And to them, I'll continue to say: better late than never, DO YOUR FUCKING JOB!

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[–] Josey_Wales@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 days ago (1 child)

I appreciate the sentiment, but just to paraphrase what you just appear to have said…

I am waiting for a group of people that I was never a part of and know nothing about to come save me.

This mentality is one reason nothing has happened yet. It’s not quite so bad that you (or I) or a critical mass of anyone else feels the need to put our lives on the line to respond.

I guess my point is, as bad as it is now, it’s nowhere near as bad as it needs to be to make happen what you appear to have already written off.

If you are going to rely on someone else’s oath to protect your rights, they were never your rights to begin with. You read that as an oath to an ideal. Those in power read that as an oath to them. The people that took that oath currently feed themselves and thier families by allegiance to power. The system is working as intended.

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[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 3 points 3 days ago (1 child)

Yeah, silly me for expecting even a single person within group of over a million to do the job they signed up and are compensated for with a a solid third of my and every other tax paying US citizens' paychecks.

Kinda like how when I go to that dentist and pay them to drill and fill, and then they just send me home after an hour and a half of waiting in the lobby. Happens all the time, right?

But since we're pointing fingers at our fellow peasants, why haven't you stepped up? Even if you live in some other country, you're one plane ticket away from becoming a global hero, and this a global problem.

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[–] Josey_Wales@lemmy.zip 1 point 2 days ago* (1 child)

You are expecting them to do the job you think they singed up for. They are doing the job they think they singed up for. What makes you think they are on your side or share your world views?

You keep making a dentist analogy. The problem with it is when you pay the dentist they work for you. When you pay your taxes the military works for the government. You are at odds with your government. Not a party. The entire government. Liberal Zionists Are Evil Shitbags CAITLIN JOHNSTONE The current fucked up reality we are in is a capitalist/western government creation. It’s not the fault of a single political party in one government in that system.

So assuming you are really calling for a physical overthrow of the current political order… my reason for not actively engaging in violence is it’s not bad enough for me yet. The only people who have come close to stepping up are either dead or in jail. Personally I am responsible for to many others that cannot take care of themselves to entertain any hero fantasies. My trip wire is when their wellbeing requires action on my part.

So instead I do what many people suggested in response to your comment. I train, I learn useful skills, I pass those on to my family, friends, neighbors. I don’t assume that some other group of people are going to magically come to my rescue because I pay taxes to a government that has been operating this way for its entire existence.

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[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You are expecting them to do the job you think they singed up for.

\1) I am expecting them to continue blindly following a domestic enemy, as they have been. Like I said in my very first post here, if it were going to happen, it would have by now. 2) This isn't some pedantic word game - what they sign up at the most basic level is established very plainly in their oath, and similar oaths for taking office or commissioning. I'm not projecting some ideal onto it, it just outright says it. And 3), "they" are not a hive mind. We don't need the entire military to turn and do what's right in unison - it'd be fucking amazing, but there is zero chance of that happening. "They" are 1.3 million individuals with their own world views, opinions, and threshold of bullshit they're willing to tolerate before finally taking their oath seriously. Even if what I'm saying only resonates with 0.01% of them, that's 13,000 candidates who have the training and moral/sworn/contractual obligation to do the deed. We need a single one of them to do their job.

You keep making a dentist analogy. The problem with it is when you pay the dentist they work for you. When you pay your taxes the military works for the government.

I mean, generally you don't pay the dentist, you pay a clerk at the front desk, who forwards your payment to their organization, who then gives the order to the dentist to work on your teeth. That dentist is under obligation by whatever their employment agreement establishes. Not unlike how my my taxes are filed and processed by some finance employee working for the govt, gets added to their own pool of cash, and entitles me as a tax paying citizen to the services funded by those taxes. To include military protection from all enemies foreign and domestic.

As it stands, I'm paying that clerk at the front desk, but have been abandoned in the lobby with a festering tooth ache. Where the fuck is my dentist?

You are at odds with your government. Not a party.

Yeah no shit. Actors like Trump and Musk are symptoms, not the root. Our issues won't magically disappear when they do. But the symptoms of this disease are severe enough that they urgently need to be addressed. An infection can be harder to treat than the fever it causes, but the fever can still kill you - when that's getting dangerously high, you need to prioritize the fever. Get that under control and then go back to fighting the infection. Or better, both simultaneously, but either way, we've got a hell of a fever right now.

So assuming you are really calling for a physical overthrow of the current political order

Depends on what you mean by that. I definitely do NOT want the military to start a coup and seize power for themselves. Their action needs to be like a surgical excision - get in, chop that fucker out, then hands off. Even if that means power transitioning to some other villainous shit like Vance or Johnson, that person will then act with the understanding that a severe enough abuse of their power will be a mortal liability. ...and really, that needs to happen to some extent at all levels of government. Not by military intervention or anything, like look at Salem's approach recently to their city representatives bending the knee to data centers: a crowd showed up with an actual fucking guillotine... that turned out to be a nonfunctional prop, but still, when those in power feared for their lives, they stopped the oppressive shit and got the fuck out of there. I think the message was lost when it came out that it was a prop though... there needs to be tangible consequences. I digress.

my reason for not actively engaging in violence | So instead I do what many people suggested in response to your comment

Right... same... so what exactly are you criticizing? Am I somehow in the wrong for doing that and calling out servicemembers' hypocrisy? You don't see those as mutually exclusive, do you?

I don’t assume that some other group of people are going to magically come to my rescue because I pay taxes to a government that has been operating this way for its entire existence.

Congrats! You're not an idiot. If you're implying that my own assumption is said magical rescue, then I invite you to reread my first post here. Or any post here, being that I never expressed such an assumption. If that's what you're worked up about, then I think we're running circles around a miscommunication.

Edit - I think I see where the disconnect is. I'm going to highlight the distinction between contractual expectations and expectations established by pattern recognition.

With regards to the oath, the expectations are clear and established. We as a citizenry have a reasonable expectation that the oath will be fulfilled.

We can also see plainly that it is not being fulfilled, and as of now, have no reason to expect that will change.

Those are not mutually exclusive. Even after two hours in that dentist's waiting room, I may have abandoned any expectation of actually receiving care; but there's still a contractual expectation established by the transaction.

This is one of those weird instances of two different contexts of a word popping up in the same setting, so I can definitely understand why there's a disconnect here.