So I was naturally drawn to this post asking whether it was evil to join the military from @jakemccauley. Seeing as how I'm apparently like, one of three military veterans active on this platform, I'd have to take a peek at this post and see why it was doing so well... and then I read it.
Wow. Such original thought... I haven't heard this argument, like 100 times yet... this was probably only the 87th time I've heard this one.
When given the option between admitting you're either a idiotic dupe OR a baby killer, which would YOU choose?
I choose neither, and I'll actually write why with supporting evidence, no less!
So lets dive in. All quotes from the original article.
Surely I'd be entirely unfree, not able to voice my heretical opinions, if not for our friends and family members in costume traveling to the other side of the planet and blowing brown people to scalding bloody bits.
Aww man... why do they have to be brown? You weren't even a few paragraphs in yet.
What a piece of shit I must be for even asking it. Nobody should ever question our lord and savior Uncle Sam, or anybody that carries out his holy will.
Wait. How did YOU become the victim in this all of the sudden?
Don't believe me? Look at the military's chain of command structure. You'll notice that at the very top of it is not you, it is not I, it is whoever had business sponsors wealthy enough to become the President of the United States; the Commander in Chief of the military.
Your premise being that each "chain" along the way is an unthinking, brainwashed cog amidst a larger machine? There are consequences for following orders that violate the Law of Land Warfare and the consequences are as bad as those doled out to those giving the orders. However, I get the feeling that doesn't matter in the slightest to you.
The politicians base their military decisions on the lucrative interests of their partners in the war manufacturing industry - the guys that build the tanks, drones, jets, etc - which receive trillions of dollars that were stolen from you.
I wholeheartedly agree with you here. And I've actually seen it!
And yes, if you think about it objectively, taxation is clearly theft.
Hmm. You must have forgot to explain why. This is not "clearly" theft in every instance. Perhaps a topic for another time?
No, taxes are not necessary to have infrastructural services and defense, and modern wars aren't initiated for defense in the first place.
If there are no taxes period, then a nation would be hard pressed to exist as a cohesive unit, or at least the capacity to act as a cohesive unit easily. This seems like a horribly complicated topic to try and debate when trying simultaneously to convince your audience that people who join the military are either evil or fools.
If you believe that a group of people with the power to selectively allocate trillions of continuously stolen dollars, is not receiving a hefty cut of those dollars in exchange for some of the most lucrative contracts on the planet, and that these politicians, of all people, actually have more integrity than normal people would in the same scenario, and that these bureaucrats are actually acting selflessly under the delusion that slaughtering middle eastern people indiscriminately is actually in the interest of the American people, then you're the insane conspiracy theorist.
Read above for my feelings on military-industrial complex. The only people "slaughtering middle eastern people indiscriminately" is those seeking to spread the tentacles of Shariah Law (read: pretty fucking un-Anarchy) across the globe. PS - This is the longest paragraph I've read in a very long time.
The parasite class - the politicians - know mass-murder evil. They know it's not at all defensive, and they know they're bathing in blood money. They do not give a fuck.
While I prefer to avoid stuffing masses of people into labels based solely on demographics, I think I probably agree with your sentiment here.
I could rant about the military industrial complex for hours, but let's just get back to the original question;
Yes. Please do.
You swear an oath. An oath to defend and uphold a piece of parchment (The Constitution) which advocates that one group of people should rob everybody else in order to fund its own monopolistic, socialistic, and virtually unilateral versions of law, defense, justice, and arbitration.
If you're talking about the 16th Amendment, I'm in agreement with you there. But you seem to hate the Constitution as a whole, so I'm going to have to disagree with you in general there.
Hell, I tried to join the military myself when I was seventeen.
Well now you have my curiosity piqued. I'm sure you didn't get bounced out because of the ASVAB, so what happened? I only ask because your opinion of the military (and apparently anyone within it) is apparently shaded by that experience.
Do you think the military of Nazi Germany was made up of evil monsters with horns willing to die in the name of murder and destruction?
No. I know through study of history that they were made up of a core cadre of devoted followers and believers in the cause who snuffed out dissent and opposition through violence, murder, and coercion. This devotion 'to the Cause' was virtually religious in nature due to the master race ideology Hmm.. now that I mention it, this sounds remarkably similar to Muslims seeking to spread Shariah Law through violence, murder, and coercion. That's pretty religious too and they're actually killing people by the thousands in mass graves too. What a coincidence. But lets get back to your REAL enemy here...
It's uncomfortable to think about, but the Nazi troops were generally just regular guys that believed they were "serving their country", much like our friends and family members in modern American armed forces.
Yes. Many of them were. But the SS Officers lived by a slightly different code of ethics. Who do you think ran that show? PS -- appreciate the allegory between German mass graves and American military in modern wars. Your capacity to willfully ignore differences in scale and scope while making a point is impressive.
The people that join the politicians' military are certainly not inherently evil people, they are normal people deceived into signing up to do evil things.
Ah. Thank you for that out. Better to be an easily manipulated dupe than to be a blood thirsty baby killer, eh?
