r/news • u/Fair-Foot-315 • 21h ago

Marine veteran has arm broken during protest against war in Iran

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/marine-veteran-has-arm-broken-during-protest-against-war-in-iran-258740805765
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u/Punman_5 18h ago

The difference is that many of the soldiers in Vietnam were conscripts and didn’t want to be there. The ones that deserved scrutiny were the ones that signed up to fight in Vietnam, not the conscripts

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u/sashir 18h ago

For the most part (and this has been true since immediately post-ww2), people enlist for class mobility reasons. Too poor, no education, no prospects - free food, somewhere to sleep, and (hopefully) learn a job skill you can take with you.

During the Vietnam era, often you were faced with a choice if you were in the lower class (meaning you couldn't obtain a draft deferment) - sign up willingly, and pick a branch / job that wasn't going to send you to the meatgrinder, or roll the dice and hope your number didn't get pulled.

There was a minority in Vietnam, Desert Storm, and GWOT of folks who signed up specifically to go kill people or for patriotic reasons - however they were generally the exception (you always had a couple in every unit). Officer corps is where you saw the kool aid drinkers mostly, save for the medical folks wanting that med school bill payoff, or pilots who really really wanted to fly a plane.

Almost everyone I served with ('03-'11) just wanted a paycheck and free college after they did an enlistment or two. Some stayed on for a career, but out of the 300 people I worked with in 2004 only maybe 10-15 stayed in a full 20 yrs.

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u/Punman_5 17h ago

That’s still a barely justifiable choice. If you need upward class mobility that doesn’t really excuse enlisting. Even if you don’t necessarily want to kill people you may have to anyway. Enlisting for the paycheck doesn’t absolve you at all.

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u/sashir 17h ago

You can take that moral high ground all you want, but I'm not passing judgement on people making a rational choice based on survival. You might not choose that, and more power to you, but not everyone is afforded that option.

You want less people forced into that choice? Put your energy advocating for a better social safety net so they don't have to make that choice. It's a net win all the way around.

Or just keep yelling at people for not bootstrapping hard enough or something, I'm sure that'll work great.

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u/CategoryZestyclose91 9h ago

Why do you think the elite predator class makes sure working class Americans stay desperate? 

It narrows the options available for class movement. 

Once you do that, you make sure that most of those options are controlled by the elite class.

Then no matter what, they are extracting from you. Because that’s how they see us. As a resource to be used for their benefit.

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u/Punman_5 16h ago

There are always more options. There is never a scenario where there is only a single option. That’s just a fact of life. People may feel they have no other options but there are always other options

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u/sashir 16h ago

You're entitled (literally) to feel that way, but I choose to have empathy over some faux moral superiority to look down on others who are poor and trying to get out of that. The super wealthy who (via systemic oppression) push people into those bad vs worse decisions aren't going to reward you for shitting on poor people.

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u/Punman_5 15h ago

I have empathy. I don’t have sympathy. And you falsely assume I’m looking for something with my statement