Just some liberal claptrap attempting to justify the unjustifiable and doing a bad job of it. Shoe-horning in “Material Conditions” is not a substitute for a reasoned argument. Being poor doesn’t absolve a person for their choices, neither does the fact that they didn’t singlehandedly “create the imperialist war machine” (wtf? really?).
If anything she too is victimised by the machine
So then it’s okay to join the machine and victimise others?
her agency stripped…
So now it isn’t a “choice” at all? In which case the point is moot? It’s always a choice.
You say there’s always a choice, but where do you draw the line? Is it just the military, or is it other things?
I knew a guy who joined the National Guard because his son, they couldn’t afford the insulin for his son. Tricare paid for that. This was before insulin, the price was set at the ceiling. It was a thousand-something dollars a month. What choice should that man have made? Hey, we can provide you health care for your son, you might have a chance of getting called up to do something awful. That’s a real fucked up choice to have to make in this country
I had a friend who was a prison guard.The only job that was available in his area that paid that well. He was a prison guard, and he told me, “man, I’m guarding the same people I went to school with. Isn’t that fucked up?” That he always had a choice, because now he’s engaging with that prison industrial complex. Is that man irredeemable in that scenario?
What about if you’re a engineer? You go to school for aerospace engineering. Ever since you were a kid, you’ve been inspired by the moon landings, and that’s what you want to do. You ain’t politically educated. You get into college, and you have an awakening when you’re 27, after working for Raytheon for three, four years, that what you do is awful, and evil, and contributes to awfulness. Are you irredeemable at that point, because you always had a choice? You could have not worked for Raytheon. You should have known better.
What if you’re from one of the Dakotas? You go work in the tar sands, or from Texas, you go work in the oil fields. Are you not contributing to the heating of our planet, the environmental degradation of our planet? We know what goes behind, what happens behind closed doors with fossil fuel companies. Are those workers not equally to blame? They always had a choice. When the pipeline spills, and all that land, that stolen native is destroyed, are those workers not to blame?
It seems to me that “there’s always a choice” thing. It’s just anti-materialist. It’s moralizing. It doesn’t win people over to your movement. Fundamentally, I don’t give a shit about impressing other communists in the party with how moral, and how holier-than-thou I am. I care about organizing the working class, and in this country the working class sometimes has to make some real shitty fucking choices.
The counter to that, though, is you always have a choice as to what you want to do in the military. Like, that one dude who is, like, a big leader in the PSL, he was a straight-up Guant- Mike whatever, he was a straight Guantanamo Bay torturer. You don’t get to be one of those types of positions unless you like doing that type of shit. Unless you want to do that type of shit. You’re not just picking random people off the street and going, Hey, you’re gonna torture people. No, you pick that role, right? So it’s… There’s a nuance to it. If you were an HR paper pusher, I got a hard time being a Vindical- Vind- Vindiful- Vindical- Vind- Whatever, I got a hard time being a mad at ya. But if you were, like, that guy, well… That’s a- That’s a frag, you know what I mean?
You say there’s always a choice, but where do you draw the line? Is it just the military, or is it other things?
Maybe I don’t understand the question but the line is drawn wherever the question is asked. “Is this a morally thing to do or not?” is the question. Yes you can ask that question of other things.
I knew a guy who joined the National Guard because his son, they couldn’t afford the insulin for his son.
That’s a different case, this person could argue coercion. The example from above is someone joining for greater luxury. But to take this case, how about we frame it as, “Is it okay to kill an innocent to save the life of your own child?”. Granted this person’s culpability in the crimes of the US army is watered down, since there are so many people involved. But no one droplet thinks it’s responsible for the flood. Where you draw the line is up to you.
Prison guard? Sure there’s levels here, and we’re all in some way connected to horrors that are done in our names. Everyone needs to make their own choices.
Dakotas… it seems you’re just painting an increasingly more benign scenario from the original in order to slide its justification down a slippery slope. The Simpsons did a bit on this when the mafia guy was justifying his organised crime to Bart:
Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?
And suppose you have a large starving family. Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread to feed them?And, what if your family don’t like bread? They like cigarettes?
Now, what if instead of giving them away, you sold them at a price that was practically giving them away. Would that be a crime?
The question was about a woman joining the military in order to improve her life. The claim was that this was always justified because mumble mumble material conditions. There is no real argument made as to why he thinks it’s justified.
Now you’re shifting the goalposts and bringing up new scenarios that I need to argue against, and if I fail, then for some reason the original is also justified.
It seems to me that “there’s always a choice” thing. It’s just anti-materialist. It’s moralizing. It doesn’t win people over to your movement.
Now we’re trying to win people over to… sorry what? It was about a woman joining the army for dental and free college, no?
Fundamentally, I don’t give a shit about impressing other communists in the party with how moral, and how holier-than-thou I am. I care about organizing the working class, and in this country the working class sometimes has to make some real shitty fucking choices.
Okay? Spreading communism by justifying joining the US army. It’s a novel approach.
You seem like a real fun dude to be around. Brother we live in the most heavily propagandized country in the world. Billions of dollars spent getting people to have cognitive dissonance about the reality of what America is and what America does.
You can make the Human Resources lady a pariah if you want, but the reason she joined is because of her material conditions, created by our capitalist society. I guess it’s easier to moralize than to build the dual power required to get people to not join.
Just some liberal claptrap attempting to justify the unjustifiable and doing a bad job of it. Shoe-horning in “Material Conditions” is not a substitute for a reasoned argument. Being poor doesn’t absolve a person for their choices, neither does the fact that they didn’t singlehandedly “create the imperialist war machine” (wtf? really?).
So then it’s okay to join the machine and victimise others?
So now it isn’t a “choice” at all? In which case the point is moot? It’s always a choice.
You say there’s always a choice, but where do you draw the line? Is it just the military, or is it other things?
I knew a guy who joined the National Guard because his son, they couldn’t afford the insulin for his son. Tricare paid for that. This was before insulin, the price was set at the ceiling. It was a thousand-something dollars a month. What choice should that man have made? Hey, we can provide you health care for your son, you might have a chance of getting called up to do something awful. That’s a real fucked up choice to have to make in this country
I had a friend who was a prison guard.The only job that was available in his area that paid that well. He was a prison guard, and he told me, “man, I’m guarding the same people I went to school with. Isn’t that fucked up?” That he always had a choice, because now he’s engaging with that prison industrial complex. Is that man irredeemable in that scenario?
What about if you’re a engineer? You go to school for aerospace engineering. Ever since you were a kid, you’ve been inspired by the moon landings, and that’s what you want to do. You ain’t politically educated. You get into college, and you have an awakening when you’re 27, after working for Raytheon for three, four years, that what you do is awful, and evil, and contributes to awfulness. Are you irredeemable at that point, because you always had a choice? You could have not worked for Raytheon. You should have known better.
What if you’re from one of the Dakotas? You go work in the tar sands, or from Texas, you go work in the oil fields. Are you not contributing to the heating of our planet, the environmental degradation of our planet? We know what goes behind, what happens behind closed doors with fossil fuel companies. Are those workers not equally to blame? They always had a choice. When the pipeline spills, and all that land, that stolen native is destroyed, are those workers not to blame?
It seems to me that “there’s always a choice” thing. It’s just anti-materialist. It’s moralizing. It doesn’t win people over to your movement. Fundamentally, I don’t give a shit about impressing other communists in the party with how moral, and how holier-than-thou I am. I care about organizing the working class, and in this country the working class sometimes has to make some real shitty fucking choices.
The counter to that, though, is you always have a choice as to what you want to do in the military. Like, that one dude who is, like, a big leader in the PSL, he was a straight-up Guant- Mike whatever, he was a straight Guantanamo Bay torturer. You don’t get to be one of those types of positions unless you like doing that type of shit. Unless you want to do that type of shit. You’re not just picking random people off the street and going, Hey, you’re gonna torture people. No, you pick that role, right? So it’s… There’s a nuance to it. If you were an HR paper pusher, I got a hard time being a Vindical- Vind- Vindiful- Vindical- Vind- Whatever, I got a hard time being a mad at ya. But if you were, like, that guy, well… That’s a- That’s a frag, you know what I mean?
Maybe I don’t understand the question but the line is drawn wherever the question is asked. “Is this a morally thing to do or not?” is the question. Yes you can ask that question of other things.
That’s a different case, this person could argue coercion. The example from above is someone joining for greater luxury. But to take this case, how about we frame it as, “Is it okay to kill an innocent to save the life of your own child?”. Granted this person’s culpability in the crimes of the US army is watered down, since there are so many people involved. But no one droplet thinks it’s responsible for the flood. Where you draw the line is up to you.
Prison guard? Sure there’s levels here, and we’re all in some way connected to horrors that are done in our names. Everyone needs to make their own choices.
Dakotas… it seems you’re just painting an increasingly more benign scenario from the original in order to slide its justification down a slippery slope. The Simpsons did a bit on this when the mafia guy was justifying his organised crime to Bart:
The question was about a woman joining the military in order to improve her life. The claim was that this was always justified because mumble mumble material conditions. There is no real argument made as to why he thinks it’s justified.
Now you’re shifting the goalposts and bringing up new scenarios that I need to argue against, and if I fail, then for some reason the original is also justified.
Now we’re trying to win people over to… sorry what? It was about a woman joining the army for dental and free college, no?
Okay? Spreading communism by justifying joining the US army. It’s a novel approach.
You seem like a real fun dude to be around. Brother we live in the most heavily propagandized country in the world. Billions of dollars spent getting people to have cognitive dissonance about the reality of what America is and what America does.
You can make the Human Resources lady a pariah if you want, but the reason she joined is because of her material conditions, created by our capitalist society. I guess it’s easier to moralize than to build the dual power required to get people to not join.
Want my real take? Read this and learn to have some nuance. https://erikhoudini.com/houdini_blog/news/aaron-bushnell-the-courage-of-principles