Do the army support the president even if his orders are against your constitution? How is the overll clima and feeling today?
Just asking because I’m curious, I have no horse in this race :)
Edited to Armed forces since thats exactly what I ment
none of my friends in the armed forces are smart or socially conscious people. they are not at all curious about any of life’s questions.
Yeah, the armed forces is overwhelmingly conservative. Even if you’re not conservative when you go in, being immersed in it for so long means you likely are when you get out. There are outliers, sure. But statistically, the people in the armed forces will only have the opinions that Fox News tells them to have.
I have no horse in this race :)
The fascist armed forces do and they have them trample on protesters.
I am recently (last few weeks recent) out of the Navy. Not eoas but I doubt people are interested in the reasons and it would be easy to dox me if I got into details.
Its bad. Most of the people in the navy are more than willing to do whatever they are told. I was a role that had a higher than average level of people leaning left and even then most of them were explicitly republican even if they thought trump was stupid.
The military will just do whatever they are told unless someone higher up is willing to break ranks first.
That’s honestly really sad and pathetic.
I’d expect there to be more rational thought, even if it doesn’t translate into the action of disobedience.
So it’s like every other big institution gotcha 😉
I know you’re kidding but I hope people aren’t excited about “showing those savages who are boss” at the nees that were bombing people.
Im not really kidding in most big organisations people just do what they’re told, being the hero fucking sucks and will ruin your life that’s why most people just keep their heads down and focus on their own and families survival.
Most of the US military have zero qualms about obeying illegal orders.
Reference: Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and most other U.S. instigated wars for their entire history.
If that’s the case, then we should shun these traitors.
This is what has been most depressing/distressing about watching all of this unfold. People online (and I’m not immune to this either) have this impulse to think “Surely not right? Surely these people will come to their senses and not just blindly follow transparently evil orders right? We’ve been told these people are heroes who stand up for freedom and democracy and our safety right? Surely at least some of them will do the right thing right?” It’s so ingrained into us through support our troops propaganda and various TV/Movies showing them and cops as principled heroes saving the day. We’ve also seen this with corporations. “Wow I can’t believe this company turned away from DEI so quickly. I can’t believe this company is going to keep selling surveillance tech to the government. Surely someone will see how wrong that is.”
And then I snap back to my senses and remember history. We’ve seen what horrors these people are willing to commit, whether they want to or are “just following orders.” Maybe you at least believe that they won’t do it to US, as cynical as that is… and then you remember Kent State, segregation, the violent crackdown on unions, the police rallying around protecting cops who execute people in the streets, etc.
Nobody is going to come to their senses. None of them are coming to save us from themselves. If we don’t stand up for ourselves this is just going to happen and be another chapter in a long history of cruelty.
The thing is that it becomes different when the order becomes “go to your home town, shoot anyone who disobeys, including your friends and family.”
It might take a decade of brutal civil war, but look what happened in Syria. In the end the people in the army were also tired of murdering their own people.
The solution here is even easier than the division they’ve already been sowing upon the American people.
You don’t send them home. You send them to the place that is the most culturally disparate from the way they grew up possible. You’re a New England liberal? Great. We’ll post you in the center of conservative Texas. Red Cap from a family of Diehard conservatives? You go to Oregon. New York inner city youth? You get special duty, guarding critical corporate infrastructure.
Keep them divided, keep them guessing. All it takes for control of a human being.
The Milgram experiment. The Zimbardo prison experiment. The bystander effect. At the end of the day, humans are just monkeys with smart watches. As social primates, it’s really hard to be the one to stand up against the crowd. Our brains decide how to act based largely on the reactions of other humans around us.
It’s disheartening.
Don’t use the Zimbardo prison experiment. From your link:
Certain critics have described the study as unscientific and fraudulent.[6][7] In particular, Thibault Le Texier has established that the guards were asked directly to behave in certain ways in order to confirm Zimbardo’s conclusions, which were largely written in advance of the experiment.
That just makes it worse! (From my point of view here.) People behaving reprehensibly because an authority figure asked them to do it? That’s just the Milgram experiment, but without any apparent hesitation!
I’m going to repeat what @plyth said. “Don’t use the Zimbardo prison experiment”.
Zimbardo was as manipulative as the psychologists from the Robbers Cave experiment,
with the only difference being that the former was only done once, while in the latter,
the subjects figured out that they were being manipulated and turned against the psychologists.Because of this, the conclusions Zimbardo drew himself are very different from when you conclude that
Zimbardo was behind the whole ordeal pulling the strings.
One only needed to stand up against one person, not a crowd.
Military operative have been trained to obey like dogs, their sentience has been mercilessly beaten out if them. Just look at the mindless obedience of your coworkers, sheeps to the slaughter the lot of them. The few that awaken gets co-opted by the system as sheep dogs of the system are rewarded with meaty, juicy bones. Questionning authority is not an option, it’s a sin. They know their masters would never punish their obedience, it would never happen, it NEVER happens.
The military is a corrupt and vile institution, it is irrelevant who they are killing for, they are not on “your” side, they are trying to survive and will kill what they are told. All who participate in organized premeditated militarism as a job, while not under immediate attack of another organized and premeditated military, are simply lost to humanity, they have become the enemy, tools, no matter what flag they jack into at night. In hyperwar militaries are obsolete because they become incoherent, there is no enemy if cannot point to it. The enemy is you.
Of course they do, they also want to keep some sanity or, you know, keep breathing.
I’m certainly not getting my hopes up, but this being in LA instead of Kabul might have a significant effect on how willingly the rank-and-file will just open up on a crowd.
There’s a big Navy base in San Diego; some of the Marines are probably coming from there. Some probably grew up in California, more probably visited LA at some point. Going a few hours to a place where people speak your language and there is an In-and-Out Burger down the street is very different from going halfway across the world to a place where you recognize little and understand far less.
Honestly it depends people have become pretty divided, I’m sure there are enough freaks in the Maga media cult that no longer see their fellow citizens as humans but just as a part of the woke mob. The direct and logical conclusion of the culture war was always an actual fucking war.
Normally they just terrorise brown people, also nice that they don’t have to take a plane to do that now.
You might want to edit your post to read “armed forces” rather than army. The United States armed forces include Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Marines, Air Force, Space Force (LOL), and the National Guard. I apologize if I left anyone out.
The National Guard is not monolithic either, as it is per service and per state. I.e. Minnesota Air National Guard, Minnesota Army National Guard, Iowa Air… you get it
To clarify the army has 3 types active, national guard and reserve
The reserve doesn’t have combat mos and are primarily support. Active duty soldiers live on bases when not deployed, and train throughout the week like a regular job. The national guard is still part of the army, they train for the same jobs at the same place and wear the exact same uniform. All three departments wear a name tape that says U.S. army.
They just so happen to be in their respective states service, and can be acted on by the governor as well. National guard also does disaster relief when state side. All three departments can be deployed to a conflict internationally.
I’d like to know if there is are general differences between the branches. Like, is the Air Force more liberal?
There are differences but I wouldn’t use terms like “liberal” although those who chose to join the Marines due tend to have a particular stereotype.
Something something crayons right?
That’s a special dietary need.
There are differences, but it’s quite difficult to define. There’s not a huge political difference except maybe the Marines are stereotypically known to be more right-leaning.
You are right that is what I ment! Just edited
Let’s face it, who do you think elected the Mr. President?
Musk’s voting machines?
white boomers, incels, religious fundamentalists and petty tyrants?
As a leftwing incel I find that offensive, the right wing incels give us a bad name
I’ll bite, in what way are left wing incels different? Genuinely curious because I’ve never heard incels split into right vs left before.
I mean an incel is just some one who’s involuntarily celibate, it wasn’t a political thing it used to just be a bunch of awkward guys on the net the BS politics and the insane misogyny all came later.
Right wing incel is playing video games and acting shitty to women gamers
What’s even funnier is that often being a „good feminist“ can literally lead you to getting no pussy which often drives these people into even more misogyny. I have extreme anxiety talking to people I find attractive and have a very hard time reading people’s body language as to when they’re sexually interested, the only time I’ve ever managed to pick up a random person has been basically when I acted like a pick up artist. It sucks and I hate it but in cis dating (at least where i live) basically all the responsibility is put on the man and it fucking sucks.
The right wing incels don’t get a pass for their shitty politics but being starved of intimacy as an adult human is a form of torture imo and it fucking sucks. Not that men or any person has a right to other people’s bodies but I’m pretty sure if you deprived a bunch of men of any form of sexual intimacy 99% of them would go fucking insane. There is a reason why celibacy was considered a spiritual practice or sacrifice for humans it’s not an easy thing to do or be.
Edit: I mean I’m fine with downvotes but it’s telling that people just click the button instead of actually trying to positively contribute in some way. Cis dating sucks, and dating as a heterosexual man is miserable if you don’t fit into society’s expectations of what a „man“ is. I find it hilarious how leftists will literally have a systematic critique for everything, but when confronted with this issue they’ll just point and laugh at the loser incel men because they deserve what’s happening to them. I’ve met a couple of really nice incels who aren’t reactionary they just find it really difficult to date. Whatever some feminist completely agree with me on this point so I don’t really mind what random internet people say.
I have extreme anxiety talking to people I find attractive and have a very hard time reading people’s body language as to when they’re sexually interested, the only time I’ve ever managed to pick up a random person has been basically when I acted like a pick up artist.
Just ask them, word for word, “do you want to go on a date sometime?” It’s no more anxiety-inducing than anything else, and you don’t have to do any weird pick up artist stuff.
If they are actually interested in you, they’ll say yes.
I don’t like approaching strangers I fucking hate it in fact I’ve been forced to do it my whole life and it literally just feels like work,but I’ve done that plenty of times I always had to be fucking wasted to do it and I just can’t be fucked to drink anymore. There are also other factors that just make men unattractive like being very depressed and being unable to gain employment or hold steady employment. Anyways these are my personal issues other people will probably have different ones.
I’m aware all of this is just in my head but so fucking what lots of people have issues that are just in their heads and still get taken seriously whatever 🤷♂️
Don’t forget the overwhelming general apathy towards, and lack of participation in, politics the majority has.
well yeah, if we were organized in collectives and unions to actually push for better policy, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem.
The 9-10 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 and didn’t bother voting in 2024.
edit: fixed date typo
“It’s the voters who are wrong, not my genocidal policies”
“Hey why aren’t people voting for me, wait, come back”
I think you got the wrong year there on the first one
oops thanks, fixed.
They should have voted for gore, could have swung the election
If you honestly think they have an issue with following illegal orders, I think you should take a look at The Kent State massacre
The military has done some horrible stuff but going back 50+ years to prove how they feel today seems a stretch.
Get literally any soldier who was deployed to iraq or afghanistan drunk and they’ll tell you about unpunished warcrimes they witnessed or participated in.
I served in the military. You don’t seem to know much about it.
Literally any soldier? Really? The cooks? The guy at the mechanic shop? Literally any soldier?
Not everyone is going out on patrol. Not every soldier is committing a war crime. I’ve known dozens of people who went over seas and didn’t even see a hint of action. WTF is with these wild assumptions being passed as facts.
Does it happen, for fucking sure. But not at the level you seem to be implying. Not at all. People let their emotions rule over reason way too much.
I feel like you could use critical thinking and assume I’m talking about people who saw action.
Support staff aren’t innocent either to me. They supported the mission and it couldn’t have been done without them.
You said literally any soldier, so maybe say what you mean instead of being hyperbolic and then blaming people for thinking you mean what you actually said. You choose those words. You didn’t even say, “ask any soldier” you really wanted to classify it with “ask literally any soldier”. So if that’s not what you meant, why did you make that absurd claim.
And even then, I know people do have been in action and not witnessed any war crimes. I’ve known lots of these people, across a large sample. You’re in your room making baseless assumptions.
Yah, every guy making sure you get fed really condones war crimes. You lack any sense of nuance or actual understanding.
You’re just throwing out grand, sweeping claims…
Fuck off. I have 3 deployments under my belt and 0 war crimes. Some of us are just born poor as fuck and wanted to go to college. The military honestly isn’t some monolithic entity… 90% of the people on this thread literally have never talked to a service member and it shows lol
I have them in my family and have heard their stories. I don’t care what reason you justify joining. You acted as a tool of imperalism against people who did not deserve it.
Even if it was over 50 years ago it was a significant point in history that a lot of people seem to forget, and was a major turning point for the public during Vietnam. It’s also relevant to today with what’s happening.
Yes, but no one serving then is serving now. Leadership has cycled many times. I mean, how far do you take this? Can you use events from 200 years ago to claim how a group thinks?
Also culture has changed, the type of people in the service has changed, so much has changed in 50 years. This is ignoring all nuance.
Ah, so you think learning from history is pointless because it’s not happening here and now, gotcha.
… How dishonest.
Learning from history is one thing. Holding people accountable for the actions of others, from before they were even born, is stupid.
But you knew that. You’re just trolling or hate the military too much to think clearly.
But let’s follow your logic. Let’s take actions of people in the past and apply them now. So, given the holocaust I’m assuming you think all present day Germans hate Jews and want them to die? I mean we need to learn from the past right? Just because it’s not happening here and now you can’t ignore it. Right?
How myopic, asinine, and worst of all, willingly ignorant.
Since you have no regard for learning, enjoy doing everything from scratch.
So just insults. No counter point, no logic. Just yelling that I’m wrong and you’re right? How convincing.
If you had any logic to stand on you’d present it. But you don’t. And you’ll find every excuse not to provide any. You know you’re wrong, you’re just too proud to admit it my guy.
People inside rn be like: “Why are some of these people I’m shooting white??.. Ah well.”
Are they allowed on Lemmy? Partially sarcastic
As individuals yes, as representatives of the armed forces? Not likely. Anonymity helps, but I’m sure many would be wary of posting anything contrarian views right now.
Lemmy isn’t anonymous, it’s pseudonomyous.
Depends on what a person posts, but yes I’ll give you that. I can’t see it being anonymous from the government if they wanted to find out someone’s identity.
and even then, finding out can simply be a matter of knowing who subscribes to that ip. on some places all they have to do is ask the admin nicely.
i’m surprised theres no public tool to extrapolate someones identity for the lemmy posting history just yet, like there is for reddit.
Probably not a large enough user base to warrant it yet.
yeah thats what i figure. lemmy will really need to figure out a solution to bots and astroturfing as soon as it reaches critical mass though.
Yeah, since it’s “peace time” and less risk there’s probably a decent chunk of the armed forces who are just in it for the perks ( free college, Healthcare) and don’t believe in it and are trying to serve there time and get out and not make a career of it.
They aren’t cops who almost always want to be cops and make it a core part of their identity and belief system. They aren’t allowed on lemmy.
Is anybody not allowed on Lemmy? It’s a federated platform
These boots taste great.
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“War criminals of lemmy, what do you and your fellow pond scum think about potentially shooting white people for a change?”
Pond scum is an extremely productive microecosystem. I won’t stand for you insulting it by comparing US soldiers to it.
Additionally, gonna hazard a guess that the majority of the protesters aren’t white or at least wouldn’t be considered white by the soldiers regardless of their skin tone. They’re literally protesting white supremacist actions by the government.
😂
Anyone who answers this question is doing so at risk to their career. I hope they do either way.
Where the fuck are you getting your rhetoric from? It’s woefully inaccurate.
Servicemen are allowed to talk about the military.
Yeah I know. But I’m curious to know if they support the president even if he decides for a coup. Just curious not american
Some definitely do. The majority may not support it on its face, but will follow orders to a far point.
we would have to get too many chuds in.
but maybe if we put effort into creating some warthunder forum accounts…
How about we ask ‘Americans that are in the National Guard’, too.
i didn’t know the difference since Im not american. Another nicer person let me know and I edited it
Since that’s organized under each state they probably feel good about their own states.
You’d be surprised, also regarding federalization for immigration enforcement and protest control. Who’s to say that the courts don’t weigh in on the side of CA and limit the use of CA-NG by the POTUS, and then he brings in a neighbor state’s NG instead? These are wild times, they even activated the Marines… on top of NG. This is crazy stuff.
Remember when the Chinese protests in Tianmen square happened the regime was afraid that sending in local troops to deal with the protestors would run the risk on them joining in or refusing to follow orders because they were familiar with people in the crowds. They instead sent troops from other regions that didn’t have the same issues and we all know how that ended.
If Trump ends up sending the NG from a red state where people think California is some dangerous “third world country” as some representative said not long ago there is a chance it would end up the same as Tianmen. I really hope that doesn’t come to pass, people don’t deserve to be massacred for speaking their minds.
China gave orders to massacre, so it’s no surprise they got a massacre.
The only source I would trust here that you linked is the famous 1998 CJR article. It just points out the misnomer caused by what we call the incident to point out that mass killings happened elsewhere while students were peacefully evacuated from the square itself. Of course I also trust the photos you linked are real. But just like the aforementioned myth (also explored by the CJR article), you perpetuate the myth of the crackdown being on primarily student protests when far far more of the dead were of the inspired workers’ protest, especially those killed as the army was heading into Tiananmen. Such violent crackdowns made it so Deng could not recover his influence until 1992.
Yes, students did stone and kill soldiers and Molotov APCs, including the lynching of (just) one soldier as depicted in the photos. But that does not justify the hundreds of protestors killed with live ammunition. Yes, there was no carnage in the square during the Tiananmen square massacres. Misnomers abound. But as a person I try to get others to understand me in communication. Yes, the “Tiananmen square” part is a misnomer. But who’s gonna understand me if I go about every day saying “June Fourth Incident”? Not to mention a lot of the killings were also committed around 11 PM the previous day.
I also did a bit of a misnomer: It’s dubious whether you could define the mass killings as massacres. My point was that China ordered the army to do what they did. It sounds to me like Kirp was characterizing the other regions’ hatred to blame for what happened around Tiananmen, which hopefully we can agree was not what happened.
My point was that China ordered the army to do what they did.
What’s your source for this? Had they been ordered to shoot a bunch of protesters, why would they have let protesters in the square leave peacefully?
The much more likely scenario is soldiers were met with deadly violence at some point and – as most armed people who face deadly violence will do – opened fire.
I’m not making an argument about what violence was justified and what wasn’t. I’m pointing out that the facts we agree on contradict your claim that there was some top-down order to massacre people, and that you haven’t provided any support for that claim in the first place.
this surprised me. from what I can tell from your sources and Wikipedia:
✅ the tanks were indeed leaving the square.
✅ Tank Man stopped them, climbed onto the top of a tank and talked briefly with the soldiers inside, then was quickly shepherded away by two people. it’s unclear whether the people were PLA or concerned bystanders. nothing is known of the man.
🤔 sources disagree on whether civilians were killed in the Square itself. some supposed witnesses were shown to have left or been elsewhere.
❌ at least 300 people, mostly civilians, were killed that night, according to the PRC itself. most of the casualties were likely students surrounding the square. from what I can tell it was likely a Kent State situation, where students were throwing rocks and setting fires, and the PLA overreacted with lethal force.
China’s suppression of the media didn’t do them any favors. the Tank Man photo wouldn’t be so infamous but for the Streisand effect caused by PRC’s heavy-handed censorship. rumors of a massacre in the Square would be easy to dispel if foreign journalists were allowed to stay and film. but protests were an embarrassment to China, and China sweeps embarrassments under the rug.
rumors of a massacre in the Square would be easy to dispel if foreign journalists were allowed to stay and film. but protests were an embarrassment to China, and China sweeps embarrassments under the rug.
We don’t know how many people U.S. police kill every year, and you could fill volumes with all the other horrible stuff our government does that only leaks out decades later. Governments being shy about publicizing embarrassments is a government thing, not a Chinese thing.
The specifics of the incident are murky overwhelmingly due to one reason: the western world decided to mythologize it. The vast majority of western discussion on it now falls into two camps: right-wingers who deliberately spread the most lurid campfire stores imaginable (10,000 deaths! Tanks ground people into paste!), and liberals who lazily repeat inaccuracies and falsehoods that are occasionally more plausible (e.g., the legacy media doing this in the Columbia Journalism Review article). Some academics and leftists will try to sort through all this garbage, but they are the distinct minority.
A few people may have been killed by random shooting on streets near the square, but all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully. Hundreds of people, most of them workers and passersby, did die that night, but in a different place and under different circumstances.
The Chinese government estimates more than 300 fatalities. Western estimates are somewhat higher. Many victims were shot by soldiers on stretches of Changan Jie, the Avenue of Eternal Peace, about a mile west of the square, and in scattered confrontations in other parts of the city, where, it should be added, a few soldiers were beaten or burned to death by angry workers.
The resilient tale of an early morning Tiananmen massacre stems from several false eyewitness accounts in the confused hours and days after the crackdown. Human rights experts George Black and Robin Munro, both outspoken critics of the Chinese government, trace many of the rumor’s roots in their 1993 book, Black Hands of Beijing: Lives of Defiance in China’s Democracy Movement. Probably the most widely disseminated account appeared first in the Hong Kong press: a Qinghua University student described machine guns mowing down students in front of the Monument to the People’s Heroes in the middle of the square. The New York Times gave this version prominent display on June 12, just a week after the event, but no evidence was ever found to confirm the account or verify the existence of the alleged witness. Times reporter Nicholas Kristof challenged the report the next day, in an article that ran on the bottom of an inside page; the myth lived on. Student leader Wu’er Kaixi said he had seen 200 students cut down by gunfire, but it was later proven that he left the square several hours before the events he described allegedly occurred.
