politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
- No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
- No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Being poor explains but doesn't excuse the action. Just like me being poor explains why I say rob and kill my elderly neighbor to sell all their possessions. My poverty doesn't somehow make my actions defensible. If they are part of the us armed forces they already lack a conscience given the mass suffering it causes worldwide.
Again, you’re being reductive and oversimplifying an issue that is more complex than killing and robbing a neighbor. Remember, veterans are (at least socially) widely celebrated in American culture, and the more morally abhorrent things the US military participated (and continues to participate) in are often glossed over or outright ignored by our education system. It is easy to immediately recognize murdering your neighbor for their stuff as inherently wrong, but it is much harder to do so when you may not even realize what the military entails at the time of joining, and by the time you realize what you’re complicit in (likely at the point of active duty/in your first deployment) there is no real recourse to leave unless higher command decides that they are willing to let you go, and they’re generally pretty resistant to that. You can always take the conscientious objector route, but they generally make that quite difficult, and the burden of proof is on you to show them that you truly believe this, so it’s likely that feet will be dragged and you’ll just get moved to light duty in the (very long) meantime. Even then, denials of discharge on these grounds are common. Once you take that oath, once you get assigned your first deployment, there is essentially no going back unless higher command allows it until your term of service is done. If, then, you decide to force the issue by intentionally breaking rules, you’d be likely to get an “Other-Than-Honorable Discharge”, which would show up on your record of for any government job applications going forward and would be visible as a red flag if an employer (any employer) chose to request records from your time of service. Additionally, you would lose out on the GI Bill, VA benefits, Healthcare benefits, etc., and would have to deal with social stigma for having not finished your term of service. All of that is doable, certainly, there’s nothing there that is the end of the world, but the system is configured to make leaving very painful, be that in a social, financial, or physical sense.
All of that also ignores that not everything the US military does is universally evil. Certainly, it’s responsible for immense human suffering around the globe, both throughout history and into the present. I won’t argue with you on that, because such a position is inarguable. I ask, however, if that same level of condemnation is warranted for a logistics officer whose job is to coordinate supply transfer to Ukraine, for an intelligence officer who collates and synthesizes information on Russian movements to Ukraine and the broader NATO alliance, or for an analyst offering recommendations to US Asia Pacific allies on how to better deter potential regional aggressors? Moving even one degree further away, is the same condemnation warranted of the Coast Guard? Of EOD? Of field medics?
Look, I can understand your view, certainly. I said so myself previously when I mentioned that they are complicit simply by being part of the broader US military apparatus, however I don’t think the level of complicity is the same, and most legal systems worldwide would agree. After all, a distinction is made legally between murder and manslaughter based on intent, foreknowledge, and degree of participation, with even that often being separated further by degrees of severity, so why shouldn’t people who may have joined the military not knowing the truth of what it was they were getting into (who may not even serve outside of US borders or in an active combat role at all) be given the same consideration?
You do realize most military members sit behind a desk right? The vast majority isn't combat arms.
A lot of people cannot fathom a world outside of their own sphere of problems, emotions, ambitions and dreams, and live basically on autopilot through their lives.
I am not going to say there's a difference between stupidity and evil, because material outcomes are what matter to me most so they're basically the same, but I would make the point that until we bring everyone up in cognitive capability, we're always going to have people who want to feel like the hero, and want to achieve that feeling by joining something larger than themselves.
As individuals, I firmly believe you can change people. I've done it countless times, in one-on-one discussion, you can make people feel new things, you can make people question what they know, you can change people's direction.
But as populations? We are a liquid. We are water. You cannot contain water nor judge it for being water and seeking it's level. The only thing we can do is try to change the conditions in which that water flows and settles.