or even just… what cops in the U.S. do to any minority.
Had a co-worker today try to be like “extra-legal executions just aren’t American” and I was like “welllll we sure seem to love doing them, especially against anyone with a skin color other than white.” Topic changed pretty quickly after that.
Or detention centers, prison and jail conditions have been absolutely disgusting in the US since forever.
I agree, the detention centers are abhorrent, but prison rape has been used as a fucking joke since I’ve been alive, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. None of the jerk off politicians calling out these camps has done a fucking thing about the same shitty conditions that persist in their own districts to this very day.
detention centers, prison and jail
Private ones are a gold mine with the government handing people over as slaves.
I’ve got a folder on my computer documenting countless extra-legal executions by American law enforcement I could find. Videos, articles, documentaries, the whole shebang. Anyone shocked by this and saying it can’t happen here is being wilfully ignorant at this point.
uhh im pretty sure everyday they just sat around base bored as fuck and jerking off. real life isnt a call of duty game people 😂
And yet more than a hundred thousand Afghani people died. I’m glad your trip was uneventful.
Shock and awe and civil unrest also took lives. The US gov’t at whole deservesbthe blame, and everyone in the military sure. But the indiscriminate murdering of civilians in the street was not common. US troops actually had rules of engagemrnt
You don’t have to murder civilians to humiliate, dehumanize and diminish them. You just have to disrespect them and show them they are powerless. Which both ICE and US military do.
My own experience was that we took our boots off and helmets off when entering homes to meet with village elders. We did not talk to nor break customs around interactions with their women. I built wells to give communities water, ensured they had cooking and fuel oil, repaired infrastructure, and I placed my body over a family to shield them when the house I was in was getting shot at.
There were 237 casualties on my battalion, but by the end of our tour the place that was mired in firefights every day became peaceful enough that the press could walk about with officers and not even wear body armor.
We played soccer with kids, gave out food, ran electricity to homes, and made the best of what we could.
I have done humanitarian aid for NGOs in the years since and worked on mission trips. Neither experience has come close to the magnitude of elevating community needs as my time in the military did for those we were trying to help.
Just my own personal experience, but felt it was worth sharing.
Thank you.
Tell me you weren’t there without telling me 🙄
That’s not really accurate, the experience of an infantry soldier doing foot patrols in Afghanistan is completely different than someone who lived in a giant base in Iraq that had hiphop night and taco bell and never left it.
Most ICE officers start at the office, are their paycheck justified to you?
whataboutism
Poor reading comprehension.
why are u making fun of my wage
Ok this joke was actually funny lmao.
Sometimes they were so bored that they tortured and raped people. And made photos of it for others to enjoy
regular civilians have done that too, am i gonna suggest you do that stuff? you are a regular civilian right?
im not saying the military hasnt done that stuff im saying the vast majority of members have probably never seen combat and more probably never even left base
“Everyone else is doing it too” is not a justification for rape…
Also do you have sources for that “regular civilians too” part? Because even if Shariah is a problematic system, it’s pretty fucking strick about rape/zina.
talking about any citizen in any country
Oh my bad for misunderstanding that part.
It just feels fucked when soldiers doing it were never held accountable, and knew that they were never going to be held accountable.
i agree that part is disgusting
Internet historical moment:
In this thread, a conflct almost occurred, but the result was reasonable discussion instead of a flame war.
Can confirm, was a fobbit.
This is why I didnt join the airforce in 2006, I didnt want to be paid to murder poor people on the otherside of the world.
there was this funny (dark haha) video of some marines handing grenades out when kids asked for candy. forget what it’s called and cant find it anymore, pretty sure the DoD’s propaganda wing tried to scrub it from the internet. was made by some of their combat-camera people
I’d like to think that some of us vets are aware of that
My cousin was aNavy F16 pilot who got a medal for dropping the most bombs on Syria. I casually asked him what it felt like to he responsible for so much death and broken families and he looked at me like his brain was shorting out.
Not to take away from your story, but the USN flies F18s and F35s, the F16s are all USAF.
It’s a very, very common mistake, especially with the “teen” fighters. The fact that movies and TV often get it wrong by inserting a model of one aircraft and claiming it’s another doesn’t help.
The phrase “you can tell that’s not an F-18 because it’s shaped exactly like an F-16” has been said more than once at my house.
Some people can separate pushing a button from pulling a trigger and feeling recoil.
we call them sociopaths
Homeboy chooses not to think about it or what he’s done, I don’t think Id like your cousin simply for that alone.
Ask a black person that has grown up in the USA, ask how free they have felt before even all this. I had one break it down for me and it started the trek to changing my view of the USA as well as political positioning. We’ve always been like this from inception, just it’s hitting close to home now the moderate is feeling the pain.
Imperial boomerang is smacking the US right in the head
100% It’s about time Americans read Discourses on Colonialism by Aime Cesaire, and suddenly, everything will tragically make sense
I don’t have time to find the correct link to the project. For some stupid reason it wasn’t on their main page. Excellent reporting on one of undoubtedly many cases of USA soldiers murdering people in Iraq:
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/podcast-dark-examines-crime-went-unpunished
Soldiers have way more trigger discipline than the gravy seals.
Yeah, that’s what I was going to say. There are lots of problems with the military, and there are also clear use of force guidelines. I’m not saying those are never violated, but they at least have them and more training.
Jonathan Ross was a soldier before he joined ICE.
Some of the best people I’ve ever met were Servicemembers… All of the worst people too. I’ve met some losers but some of the most high key bad people I’ve met were Servicemenbers…
Do you think its more likely that American soldiers have fantastic moral character and discipline or that American soldiers are not punished when they make mistakes?
Did you mean are punished?
The guy who shot Renee Good was a soldier…
There are plenty of shit bags in the service. There are plenty of fantastic people too. The military is a great representation of all proletariats.
So what? The same could be said about ICE. The quality of individuals doesn’t mean anything when the institution as a whole is so rotten and evil
The US military has murdered orders of magnitude more unarmed civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan than ICE ever conceivably will in the US
So what?
My point is, you can draw a direct through-line between Iraq/Afghanistan and what is happening now domestically. You can’t really separate the two. Thus there’s no point in drawing a distinction between a soldier and a “gravy seal”. That’s just cope; the military is not coming to save us
Don’t worry sucide got my cousin. I mean, yeah I knew him as a kind liberal person who would jave been an asset against ice. But yeah, i am sure the world is better off without him because I am sure every soldier had the exact same job.
Thank you kind person from a country with free healthcare and education.
This presidency has made a lot of people go mask off. Sad and disgusting to see frankly.
Thank you for the knowledge. I wasn’t aware this concept existed, but it explains a lot.
Hannah Arendt had alot to say on this topic in her 1951 book “The origins of totalitarianism”. Its a scary reflection on how and why totalitarian states could arise in the first half of 1900’s. Especially eery with the current state of the world are the parts that paints a picture on how easy it can be for truth to become obfuscated and how lies can replace them to become the head-cannon of the masses.
It works the same way with demographics as well.
Colonize a place and eventually you make allowances and permit some sort of “very strict” immigration from the colonized places. “The Goods Ones” and a few politicians that carrier water for you. But once you’ve broken the seal, it’s a slippery slope. Not too long after that you have “natives” who have squandered or never even had generational wealth that was the proceeds of colonialism seeing how they’ve been matched or out-classes by another group, and start to feel loss aversion.
Also works with foreign wars, as they require collaboration with a side in that war. Suddenly you have translators and local staff and spies and politicians and sudden spouses of soldiers, all legitimately asking for a taste of what they and their family suffered for (often quite a bit more than the foreign fighters, who sat in a tent directing things).
I don’t have one of those. I have an ex-marine friend, who I chastised when he originally signed up I remember I joked “If you die in combat I’m going to kill you.” because he was basically my best friend at the time. He came from an extremely poor family.
He ended up (unwillingly) being assigned to being a MP, and ended up never shooting or bombing a soul. He was just agonizingly bored for hours and hours (He hoped for bar fights to break out just to fill the time). Hes now a union rep for a private security company and he hates all of his co-workers because he tells me they’re almost all retarded racist assholes (hes half black).
Hey, great comment except for using the r-word, it’s a slur. That’s why I’m removing it.
I was vaguely quoting someone. I’ll repost it censored if you’d prefer but I don’t remember it word for word so you’d need to send me a copy of it.
It should be in the modlog for you. Let me know if it isn’t. Make sure you’re in this community’s modlog.
Ah, learn something everyday. Thanks for the education, I appreciate it.
I think a discussion about the R word would be interesting, but I know this isn’t the time and place for it. I’ll repost my comment with it removed.
Just replace the ‘rard’ word with regarded individual and most everyone will get it.
It’s wasn’t until old Smosh made that song saying regared mean slow and its offencive and it went viral, then a few months later then suddenly everyone found it ‘offencive’, took the song down then made a song about saying regarded was fine and it got no traction.
Yes I will die on this hill and I do arbitrarally blame Smosh for my fav word being socially banned.
I’ve literally never heard if what you’re talking about, and I’ve known the word of a slur since I was a teenager. Maybe its time to grow up a little?
Maybe mind your own manners a bit, there is more to growing up then just the words we use.
Mind your manners, says the person defending the usage of slurs. The lack of self-awareness is astounding. You’re right though, there is more to growing up than the words we use, but dying on the hill of pro-slur is a childish thing to do. Pathetic.
I grew up in a time where everyone called each other gay as a slur, not understanding how bad that was. We all adapted and don’t say it as a slur anymore.
Maybe, I think people these days are way to soft, then again I’m also sick of the way things are structured socially nowadays, it just seems so superficial to get bent out of shape over some of these things in my mind, but I always had thick skin I guess.
Edit: Fuck this is Turing into old man shouts at cloud.
On your edit, yeah a little bit. But at least you recognized it yourself?
Language changes. Change with it or doom yourself to being the old man yelling at clouds. The choice is yours.
I don’t have one of those. I have an ex-marine friend, who I chastised when he originally signed up I remember I joked “If you die in combat I’m going to kill you.” because he was basically my best friend at the time. He came from an extremely poor family.
He ended up (unwillingly) being assigned to being a MP, and ended up never shooting or bombing a soul. He was just agonizingly bored for hours and hours (He hoped for bar fights to break out just to fill the time). Hes now a union rep for a private security company and he hates all of his co-workers because he tells me they’re almost all [redacted] racist assholes (hes half black).
If OP thinks those conversations haven’t been had, they are living in blissful ignorance.
I think the target audience for that tweet are the Obama worshipping, white, upper middle class, suburban Democrats. This country has done a lot of fucked up shit under Reagan, Clinton, W, Obama, Trump, Biden, and again now Trump. I’m not sure about HW Bush, but he use to head the CIA so…
Just have to look at the country’s history. This is business as usual, it’s just now affecting the moderates.
You are talking about people who got lied to all their lives when they where kids.
There’s only so far one can claim ignorance as an excuse. I blame it on a mentality in the USA of people having such bad experience in public education that they “don’t want to learn no more.” The desire to question and expand one’s knowledge was ground away. As well it was easier to live in ignorance before the internet. Now it feels more of a choice.
These days? Sure. But back then it was a much different country. And a lot of solders came back as liberals, but according to lemmy they deserve to die anyway
Not all of lemmy does, but there’s some out spoken people I’ve seen I disagree with.
Most the people posting here sure seem to be.
They we’re not that stupid when they left. They chose team murder willingly, that’s not something you can just shed like so.
It’s the only way to have any kind of social mobility in the US. Do you realize how many lbgtq and minorities end up joining? This shit isn’t simple.
And that on top of all the lies and brainwashing
Ah, so murder is okay as long as you’re part of certain groups? Or is just being poor enough? Lower middle-class?
The audience is really anyone who continues to feel even a scintilla of patriotism for this shithole.
Don’t confused patriotism with nationalism. Nationalists are rooting for ICE and Trump and all of those asshats. Nicole Good and Alex Perreti, and the many others out there still, are all Patriots.
As someone who knows the history of this country patriotism is barely distinguishable from nationalism.
Nationalism is the ideology that a certain people should have a state for themselfes.
Patriotism is the love for one’s state, but that state may have one or more people in it.
Which is why it doesn’t make sense to me, since I hate states in general and the United States specifically.
Fundamentally there are two kinds of nationalism: civic and romantic. Civic nationalism is about people adhering to a society’s set of laws and values. Romantic nationalism, also known as blood and soil nationalism, incorporates those concepts of birthright and bloodlines as important to one’s status in a nation.
The United States was a major pioneer and proponent of the civic kind, defying the traditional romantic nationalism that grew out of Europe. Despite our historical misgivings it’s an important difference.
I don’t even like society’s laws and values, though.
Pure fantasy.
Right I see. In case you happen to be interested, Hannah Arendt suggested a system of federated councils which I find interesting. I’m not an expert on it, but there are some essays about it like this.
Thanks!
So leave.
I would but there’s nowhere without a country to go to
You must become an astronaut. That’s all that left when you start thinkin’ I gotta get the hell out of here. Just need to create your own world with its own rules.
That’s the plan: become an astronaut, hollow out an asteroid with sunlight, and build an O’Neill cylinder inside.
“Have you tried just not being a mutant?”
Go where? It’s not like it was when Ellis Island was running. Anybody who immigrated through there would be an illegal immigrant today. Any Americans today whose parents or grandparents went through there are anchor babies who should be deported alongside the rest of their family under the current regime’s stance on immigration.
And it’s not any easier today to immigrate elsewhere. Unless you’re rich or have a degree that makes you a valuable commodity, most countries want nothing to do with you.
It is a meaningless distinction.
Patriotism is defined as “love of country”, yes, but also “devotion to the welfare of one’s compatriots”. I personally believe there is nothing more patriotic than doing everything possible to root out a corrupt and harmful government.
I actually think the USA is a beautiful place and I want to protect it from those who would destroy it. The word you’re thinking of is jingoism, which is honestly a serious problem here
Ok, so if someone is not American, you don’t care about their welfare?
If no, thats internationalism, the opposite of patriotism, if yes, you see why we have trouble distinguishing yall from fascists, right?
I never said that? The difference is as an American citizen I actually have some say in the welfare of Americans but by no means mistake me for a nationalist. I think you may need to touch up on the difference between patriotism and nationalism
Patriotism is just nationalism for people who haven’t grappled with the reality of patriotism. The core is still juxtaposing human worth and real estate.
I see what you’re getting at, and perhaps my definition of patriotism is more wistful than the reality of it, but I’ve always thought of patriotism as similar to family. You’re more devoted to them because you are closer to them and there’s a certain want to preserve that alongside the places where it happened, y’know? And just like family, sometimes you have to override that devotion when the relationship becomes too toxic to maintain.
I feel like that’s where I’m at with the US. I’ve always been a naturalist at heart and I adore the landscapes of the country in particular, but it’s like a toxic parent. I try my best to pursue reform but I’m nearing a point where I’ll just have to leave and cut my losses. But it is hard because I legitimately do love this country, just…not the government or the people who run it.
The problem ain’t just the Trump administration, it’s systemic and I wish more people here understood that. I just think it would be better for the whole world if the US could get its shit together instead of every person with a moral compass abandoning it to its inevitable doom and the subsequent suffering of everyone too screwed by the system to leave.
I care about the welfare of every living breathing human, but tbh I think fixing the US (however that’s done) would benefit a hell of a lot of people in a whole lot of places. This country’s global military presence is so pervasive and damaging, it’d be nice to put a stop to it.
If the want to truly fix this place makes me not patriotic, so be it, but I’ve always seen that as the definition of patriotic. Maybe I’m just naive tho
So patriotism is just mutual aid + nationalism.
Why not just skip the last step? After all, the things I like about America would exist even if the nation doesn’t.
I think they’re talking about national socialism.
All the way back to Washington.
Sooo… the vast majority of Democrat voters? I know we’re all pretty big lefties here, but I’ve never met a single Democrat voter out in the real world who didn’t think Obama was the perfect president who did absolutely nothing wrong. My father in law - who has a degree in political science - keeps a photo of Obama in his wallet at all times along with pictures of his family members.
Sure, plenty of people have started to come to the realization that our soldiers are not heroically staving off evil abroad, but they’re still a tiny fraction of the American population as a whole.
Some people understand that the world is imperfect.
Worshipping Obama?
I seen you’ve made the common logical error of assuming the democrats worship their leaders. That’s something left wing and right wing extremists do in equal parts but everyone in between, is absolutely not worshipping any poltical leaders.
He was popular and his excellent oratory skills induced people that liked him to like him more personally
Yes, the target audience is definitely not the actual fascists who are supporting the brownshirts and their actions.
You described most of lemmy. Not a person here has met a solder or had to deal with not having health care or not having any options of social mobility.
They want us to fight a revolution without anyone who can fight. And apparently Pretti deserved to die for helping fascists
