musing re: anti-authoritarian/anti-fascist thoughts
I, personally, cannot put much venom into a cry of "fuck the troops." I understand it, I even support it, I just can't say it with any conviction myself.
Why?
Because too fucking many soldiers in the military forces of the supposedly-United States of America fell for the propaganda and the lies, and too fucking many of those same soldiers were born so deep into poverty that military service was the only way they had to get out of poverty that wasn't dying on the streets of preventable illness or starvation.
I don't deny that there's a higher proportion of fashy authoritarian-leaning assholes in military service, it does tend to attract them simply by virtue of being military service.
I just can't forget that there are people involved who were backed into a corner from birth whose only way out was through the military, and that survival under capitalism requires that difficult choices sometimes be made.
re: musing re: anti-authoritarian/anti-fascist thoughts
@LexYeen No energy for details but I thought I'd weigh and mention that I transcribed a series of USMC and US Army oral history tapes from Iraq and Afghanistan... and I was impressed by what a bunch of assholes the middle-brass WEREN'T.
They actually kinda won me over. They reminded me of the troops from Catch-22, kinda drably aware that they've been sent to a clusterfuck and just too tired and busy to be mad about it.
They weren't exactly woke, but there was some VERY frank speech in those tapes, and the closest they came to racism was being uniformly unimpressed with local military discipline and job pride. And they even seemed aware that some of this was because THE LOCALS WEREN'T ABOUT TO GO OUT OF THEIR WAY FOR INVADERS. They were mostly just griping about, say, "Why the FUCK can't our local water guy ever show up on time?!?"
They were very up-front and forward, at least on mike, about the fact that there was CATEGORICALLY NO TIME for bullshit like abusing the locals, because they absolutely would not get by without earning their trust.
How all this played out in reality... well... *sigh* But I went in with very low expectations and ended up kinda liking some of these majors and captains.
re: musing re: anti-authoritarian/anti-fascist thoughts
@zebratron2084 Exactly what I'm driving at, yeah. At a certain point, decision-making from on high puts otherwise-decent people in positions that suck to be in no matter what options they choose, so let's maybe not throw *every last* baby out with the bathwater here.
(and yes, I know, using a metaphor about throwing out perfectly good babies around a tiger - it's only a metaphor, I promise every real baby winds up going to a hungry tiger somewhere.)