this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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I know the nuance will be hard for some. So I will start by saying that I am very against the actions of our government, and have been since a pretty young.
But, the vast majority of our troops are in the military because it was the best or maybe only option to make a living. And that is the way the government design the economy. They make sure people have no or few other choices.
Now compare what the military is doing to distract from the epstien files to what the billionaire class is doing. Then look at who you work for. Odds are your job in some way supports the very people who made epstien possible. So we are all complicit. Yet we all have little choice but to work. So instead of pointing your anger at someone who just like you is complicit. Point it at the people actually responsible.
Drug dealers and mobsters are often in it because that's their viable option for social mobility. Therefore I will give soldiers the same respect owed to drug dealers and mobsters. All accept the reality of maybe having murder innocents for some rich jackasses too.
The same justification was made by my grandfather for joining the SA and for another two members of my extended family for joining the SS. Honestly, that is exactly what they said when I confronted them as old men.
I don’t know much about the SA. But my understanding was that the SS required a person to be pretty fanatical. So that is a little different than just joining the regular army to be a cook or something. It really would be more of a person by person determination, than a sweeping generalization of everyone who joined the military. There were and are certainly plenty of people who join looking to become murderers and such. But in todays military, that percentage is a lot lower then back there. There is just a lot more jobs that lead to a better career, and are often the only way many people can get to that stable life. This is of course one of the reasons they don't want college to be free. It's thier hook for a lot of people.
The SS did, in its early days, surely have high standards regarding fanaticism and race purity but later on lowered their expectations dramatically... if not on paper then at least in practice.
Those people in my family were not bad people, at least later in life I would categorize then as good men, but opportunism led them join horrible institutions.
US troops are disproportionately middle class. Full article is on scidb if you wanna read the whole thing. But here is the important part:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2019.1692660?src=recsys&journalCode=fjss20
Also they are not doing this to distract from Epstein. The rich got away with that, we have not taken out any of them in retaliation. We're not even protecting kids from troops at Ft Brag. We don't care enough to stop them, they can do whatever they want until we hit our breaking point. Just shitty to know that pedos running concentration camps for kids is not our breaking point
Eh..... Those types of studies are usually pushed by the dod from places like the Brookings institute to validate their own recruiting practices. The data behind them is questionable at best.
For example they claim that "middle class" starts at 38k per household income, which is below the poverty level for most states with a 3 person household.