this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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chapotraphouse
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Yeah, socialist hopes for getting the military on your side have only been successful when the material conditions were overwhelmingly terrible. If a troop or a vet tries to use their status as a troop or vet to make a point beyond possible tactics, if they try to excuse in any way being a stooge for the US Empire, they're not helpful or useful.
I know this maybe isn't "tactical", but if you were a troop you are irredeemable for your direct role in US Empire and will be going to hell unless you make an effort to genuinely try and help tear it back down. We won't be winning any troops on our side, might as well venerate the ones who care enough to help anyway.
Edit: This is however what I've gathered personally over time, I've not found any convincing literature that supports that troops or vets may help as a force for socialist revolution in the imperial core, and I'll happily be convinced with evidence or a properly backed piece of theory.
no "unless" about it. no amount of good deeds can erase the crimes of the past. you cannot "make up" for killing innocent people.
not to say someone in that position can't be useful in some way but they will never reach a point where they've fed enough homeless people to somehow overwrite their atrocities or whatever
Yeah but we as socialists aren't here for the best morals; if a troop wants to jump on a grenade and save ten people that's fantastic and should be celebrated: but my experience tells me that people like that may as well be science fiction.
no, i'm with you. i just disdain the language that gets used when talking about this topic. the idea that there's some cosmic scale you can balance with good deeds is total nonsense and should be treated as such, that's all.
speaking as someone who has done things that haunt me to this day (rightfully so), not as some moral paragon judging from on high
I get your point, but how does someone make up for past actions in your moral system? Sure you can't kill someone but you also can't unsay something mean. I guess you may see it as a scale, and smaller offenses can be wiped clean, but I still wonder what you think is supposed to happen once someone crosses that line but also sees their evil and regrets it. Obviously this is not relevant to the revolutionary efforts, someone is either useful or not.