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

  • Mutalisk [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    12 days ago

    we have members of the Air Force on this forum and should be worried about their feelings

    this forum views and pitches itself as leftist

    doggirl-lol The libs have lost the plot so much

    • reader [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      12 days ago

      It doesn’t show at any window size or zoom level because of their shitty web design but inspect element reveals the second sentence is of course “Glory to the heroes!” (which if anyone doesn’t know somehow, is a slogan for the past 100 years of ukrainian fascists and their allies, which western liberals have of course adopted unquestioningly)

  • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    12 days ago

    military aircraft casualties outside of war

    Guys they’re not currently wearing their family killer caps guys, they’re wearing their casual test flight caps

    You wouldn’t blame Jeffrey Dahmer when he’s just out shopping right? If he’s not actively murdering someone, you should be civil

  • RedNajm [any]@hexbear.net
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    12 days ago

    What even is knockout chat? Is it leftist (from that comment)? I keep seeing libshits posted here from that site lmao

    Anyways rip bozos another kkkrakkkas down officer-down

      • EmmiLime@lemmy.mlOP
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        12 days ago

        Yup, their politics section is hidden and if you could view it you’d see some genuinely horrible shit all the time. But sometimes it does leak through into their other public sections. Their view of Chinese and DPRK people are horribly racist.

        Here’s another example of their racism.

        Context is the latest Call of Duty game portraying DPRK as the bad guys who are invading Occupied(south) Korea.

        The “?” ratings on the post are used as a way of calling someone dumb.

    • reader [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      12 days ago

      Apparently (this is all from their wiki so grain of salt) it’s a freeze-gamer forum descended from the facepunch forums (formerly run by the guy that made garrys mod).

      I think they also host video game servers for old valve games.

      Where politics comes into it idk but it seems very typically liberal (up to and including describing themselves as leftist), and I’m guessing that just reflects the general consensus of the user base, plus is probably partly in response to frequent exposure to the utter abrasiveness of gamer chuds and 4chan types.

  • Poophammer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    12 days ago

    “the way people have discussed poor people here is deeply infantalizing. not everyone understands imperialism, but everyone knows the military’s direct function: murder. >”

    Well hold on, as a poor, I’d like to speak for myself and my experiences:

    I hate to tell this person that a lot of these people who join are just out of high school or finishing up high school. A lot of them pick jobs where they don’t kill, don’t think they will kill or if they do they have a very childish conception of what it and why they’re doing it. They are fucking stupid. How do I know this?

    I HAVE BEEN AROUND THEM. THEY ARE FUCKING STUPID. I was in the military, my job was infact non-violent, not even the supply/logistics/admin side, basically as uninvolved as you can get. Ontop of that, I was a shitbag, usually made things worse/harder for everyone around me and I refused to do most things. I have been UCMJ’d.

    I joined for money and I left as soon as I could. Speaking from first hand experience, the FOXnews-NYT propaganda split does work, which is why they do it, and if you don’t know much about the world, you can fall for it or atleast buy enough of the lies to stay closer to the “jobs” side of things opposed to the war criminal side of things.

    What’s more shocking to me and probably other lefties, is the amount of people who try to join and can’t because they

    1. Poor education, flat out stupid. The imperial core refuses to water it’s plants and then reaps unuseable harvest for war.

    2. Too unhealthy. Imperial Core poisons it’s plants flat out. Shit food, lack of food prep training, no physical fitness, no third spaces, no walkable cities.

    3. Criminal records. They can’t get a job anywhere, and the military is not an exception. The US again puts them in socioeconomic conditions where they’re more likely to commit crimes. Additionally, compounding trauma from growing up in the broken US, poor, around drugs, struggling to survive makes people do weird things.

    I’ve met people trying to join who can’t read at all completely illiterate, people who do join with illegal immigrant family (surely they understand the situation?) And all sorts of contradictory people who “should” know better.

    All this to say is that, it’s annoying lefties really don’t know anything about military or being in it yet they speak from a place of authority on it. For example, the purity politics is nonsense because if you were to look at people who tried to join and couldn’t for one reason or another, it doesn’t actually shade the perspective you’re trying to tell. Poor people aren’t a fantasy monolith who understand the plight of the working class, no ironically, theyve been fucked so hard they cant even participate in the war machine. Pretending that they are and not seeing it for what it is is actually alienating, that’s dehumanizing. You don’t know any of these people yet you’re ready to invalidate them.

    Yes- fuck those troops who the fuck cares- they died doing something genuinely bad, but it’s genuinely annoying to me when rich white college kid who has parents pay for everything gets to come to the right conclusion in the easiest way possible, no real life experience informing it, and then try to talk keyword: DEFINITIVELY on shit they don’t really know.

    • ghosts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      12 days ago

      All this to say is that, it’s annoying lefties really don’t know anything about military or being in it yet they speak from a place of authority on it.

      Sorry, what is it that leftists need to know to “speak from a place of authority on it”?

      Fuck the troops, all the troops. Every single job in the U.S. military exists to further its imperialist goals: murder, genocide, plunder, etc. There is no position in the military that magically absolves someone of their role in the death machine. It doesn’t matter why someone joins (money, education, ignorance, etc) because their reasoning doesn’t change the system they’re participating in.

      I’m absolutely not saying this just to say “fuck you” or to say that everyone in it is pure evil, but that they are definitively responsible for their actions.

      For those who served that don’t want to be the target of the “fuck the troops”, the only “purity test” is that they’ve educated themselves and understand that their service was furthering the goals of the Great Satan. There’s just genuinely no place on the left for troops who are proud of their service or think that their personal excuse absolves them of their role in the death machine.

      Give me the troops who say “fuck the troops” all day long though. Fuck the pilots, fuck the people who built the planes, fuck the maintenance crew, fuck the logistics crew, fuck the janitors, fuck the recruiters, fuck the troops.

      • Poophammer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        If you dont know anything about why people join the military or haven’t been in yourself you’re probably counterproductive to explaining or understanding either and things related to it. What’s so hard to understand?

        We get that it’s bad, that’s not for debate. But being knee-jerk “everyone is evil but me!” makes you come off as self-righteous and annoying.

        More so when lefties at-large are blatantly wrong about facts and details.

        • ghosts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          12 days ago

          Well it’s not like it’s some inscrutable thing. It’s usually propaganda, ignorance, or greed. I don’t need to bomb an elementary school myself to figure out why that’s a bad thing to do.

          Call me self-righteous and annoying but I really question the usefulness to any leftist organization of soldiers who would still make excuses for their service to the Great Satan.

        • -6-6-6-@lemmygrad.ml
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          12 days ago

          https://archive.ph/2x19K#selection-105.0-109.329

          "This has been documented by the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation in their study on the recruitment demographics of the united $tates military, which found that only about 10-11% of the united $tates military recruits come from the poorest quintile (defined as making less than $33,000 annually), with a fourth of the military coming from areas whose median income is more than $65,000 annually.[1] They gathered this information using addresses of personnel at the time of recruitment, which has faced much criticism by those who argue for the existence of a poverty-draft. What problems do they see with this method? Well, according to the Boise Weekly the statistics are unreliable because “[m]any recruits are college dropouts who list their last address—their college dorm—when they sign up”, which they believe would provide an inflated statistical portrait of average income.[2] They assert that this is the case without actually presenting any evidence.

          As for the validity of the claim that, by and large, the military is made up of college dropouts who use their college residence as their permanent address: that is already a questionable assertion. It also raises questions about the kind of people they assume are “forced into the military by poverty” who are still equipped with the financial support to move out on their own to attend university. Furthermore, their label of “uneducated” seems a hardly fitting descriptor for a military which does not accept people without a highschool diploma.[3] This is a deliberate deception; their assertions rarely contain vital evidence and rely on definitions of “education” that hardly fit the bill. Even more interestingly, this article assumes that those who do not finish college or do not attend must automatically be poor and forced into the military for that reason. This assumption is further jeopardized by the fact that most amerikans have not earned a college degree. It is true that the Heritage Foundation, being quasi-fascist troop-worshippers, have their own motives for promoting a class-collaborationist and prosperous image of the military, however we judge their study on its merits rather than the inconvenience of its results."

          • Poophammer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            10 days ago

            I’ve seen this study, every leftie jumps on this in lieu of having any first hand experience. Which is incredibly frustrating watching people pass around the same source, many not even reading it.

            Im skeptical of this study because it doesn’t account for COL, 65K household isn’t shit in many cities.

            Also, iirc it doesnt talk about the machine eating itself and producing too many unhealthy dumbdumbs to even cannibalize.

            • -6-6-6-@lemmygrad.ml
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              5 days ago

              Either or not you dismiss the study, I’ve had personal experiences and beyond being a security risk they’re imperial stormtroopers who signed up to kill, incentive or not. I’d have more respect for someone joining the foreign legion than the U.S military. Or joining a volunteer organization that actually benefits people instead of killing for the Empire.

              You can have your doubts, opinions, etc. In the same regard, don’t be surprised if people, like my friend who lost family in Lebanon, have reason to hate the Empire and their dogs.

    • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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      12 days ago

      theyve been fucked so hard they cant even participate in the war machine.

      Yeah that’s part of why I don’t have too much sympathy for the American war machine operators. A lot of them really aren’t poor or desperate.

      A lot of them pick jobs where they don’t kill, don’t think they will kill or if they do they have a very childish conception of what it and why they’re doing it.

      1. If you’re too stupid to understand that the military is for killing, or have a childish view of killing, you barely qualify to pass 3rd grade much less to be a committed political asset.

      1. If you do understand that you’re participating in a murder machine, then why are people supposed to trust you despite the fact that you helped participate in the killing of the exact same people leftists are supposed to fight for?
      • MarxMadness [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        If you’re too stupid to understand that the military is for killing, or have a childish view of killing, you barely qualify to pass 3rd grade much less to be a committed political asset.

        Good thing we can educate people.

      • Poophammer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        Yeah that’s part of why I don’t have too much sympathy for the American war machine operators. A lot of them really aren’t poor or desperate.

        You wouldnt know. I think for my childhood friend who joined to escape ganglife (Latin Kings mom was a queen who was SA’d in the same room he shared with her), poverty and then became a leftie through life experience and synthesis of those experiences and the aftermath was definitely poor/desperate.

        Not responding to the rest bc you’re already so correct from your ivory tower.

        • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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          12 days ago

          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.

          who joined to escape ganglife

          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.

          • MarxMadness [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            12 days ago

            They didn’t escape gang violence they just went to the most professional gang that offered the best benefits.

            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.

            • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.net
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              12 days ago

              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

    • the thing about poorly educated / too dumb to even get in is so crazy to me. i know you’re right and that its ballooned into a real “problem” for recruitment. i grew up stable during middle and high school and my mom was up my ass about school the whole time. my friends were less lucky and out of my high school friend group, i was one of the few “going to college on scholarship” outliers. probably 80% of the guys went into the military. this was pre-9/11, so the “jobs” angle was far louder than the “patriotism” angle in those days. it was such a different vibe, i considered it for a little bit. took the ASVAB, etc. most were out before Iraq invasion, and literally only 1 even used his GI bill: the marine who came out hating the military and referred to the US as “a joke” lol. guy changed a lot from age 17-22 lol.

      i have family that barely graduated high school and lacked any self-discipline for skill development. just 100% no fucks given drinking at 16+. they went in and have drunk all the koolaid about it, deciding to go career in some handing-out-socks-in-a-tent ass job. i think theyre at like 8+ years now. definitely the kind of clown that would never do anything productive unless someone was threatening to fuck them up, otherwise. so of course they have all the asshole tattoos and wallow in the thank-you-for-your-service ass kissing they get for emptying trash cans in georgia or wherever while letting people think they planned the Maduro kidnapping. absolute douche bag.

      i met a handful of guys who were post 4-year enlistment in my 20s. only a few even tried to use their GI bill. most didn’t like their time in, decried the crime on base or on ship, and the daily institutional and individual idiocy. they couldn’t wait to get out once they were in and rolled their eyes at “career” enlisted.

      those that served in some kind of situation that earned them VA benefits like tricare explained how it sucked and required the level of paper shuffle bullshit that most guys who go into the military do not have the aptitude for.

      ultimately, i have the respect for any job-side enlisted i do for anyone who has worked some shitty job and i only deride the assholes that talk it up like it’s great or honorable, because those guys are out there poisoning the minds of impressionable young looking for meaning and experience and stability in a society that doesn’t offer much of any.

      i dropped out of school initially and spent most of my 20s working some dogshit jobs. i learned a lot about myself and power, but i would never encourage someone to follow my path without warning them of the long term / hidden cost of those kinds of jobs where human life is cheap and pain is dispensed freely.

      • Poophammer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        The job side guy can be absolute morons too though, I dont let them off the hook either just because they did some stupid butt picking job.

        If you’re second enlistment and still drinking the koolaid you’re a lost cause in my book. Not worth dealing with.

      • Poophammer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        Too dumb to get in is a hilarious contradiction within the US

        You want to bleed everyone dry and steal everything that you start to cut off the hand that literally steals for you.

        What do you mean everyone is too stupid to do the basic tasks required for my pillaging machine? And it’s completely my own doing?

    • peeonyou [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      11 days ago

      i idiotically called up the marines when i was failing out of college for the 2nd time and was in my mid 20s and had absolutely no prospects for anything else in my life, and they rejected me because of my criminal history. i was flabbergasted that a DUI and a misdemeanor < $10 theft would prevent me from joining the military, but it did, and looking back I’m fucking glad as hell it did.

    • Sleepless One@lemmy.ml
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      12 days ago

      Ah yes, hypothetically being murdered by the police is clearly as ridiculous a hypothetical as the world being made of pudding. All hypotheticals are equally ridiculous, regardless of grounding in reality. /s

    • Damarcusart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      11 days ago

      Libs only understand hypotheticals in 2 ways:

      1. The hypothetical is one where their opponent is wrong, therefore their opponent is wrong in real life, regardless of how irrelevant the hypothetical is.

      2. The hypothetical is pure solipsism and navel gazing where we can’t ever know anything for sure and nothing is understandable or knowable. So we need to just stick with the status quo and not question it.