Lot of people on here seem to assume that the US military is basically as bad as US police when it comes to “being totally dominated by frothing MAGA freaks.”
This is absolutely NOT the case.
people forget that the military specifically targets poor kids for recruitment, using benefits/stability as a big draw, and therefore you have a lot of people in the military who would not otherwise choose to be there
and of course there are people who will moralize that decision by saying that folks don’t have a right to live comfortably through that route, but I just also don’t believe that folks born into situations they cannot control should be forced to suffer to ensure their morality remains pure
a somewhat cursed but true statement is that the us armed forces, especially in peacetime, are one of the greatest elevators to the middle class for the poor and minorities
it’s absolutely true! while my mom sucks for other reasons, joining the military allowed her to leave a creepy older husband when she was 19 (her parents had gone back to Okinawa right after she graduated high school and she had no other support, financial or otherwise)
i've had a very charming conversation with a neighbor about how much he enjoyed living in Germany and seeing the world. his father was a sharecropper and he owns his own home
My time in the military exposed me to a ton of people from different backgrounds, ethnicities, races, etc. My 80 man bootcamp platoon had more people of color than my entire high school. That experience played a fundamental part of my politics today.
There is a nonzero number of kids in every single basic training cycle who have simply NEVER SPOKEN to a Black, Latino/a, white, non-Christian, etc. person. It's insane. Like, every rotation you get someone saying "Huh, I thought Those People were all [insert horrible, often hilarious, stereotype]."
some of the most thoughtful people I’ve met are veterans from those areas who had to confront that upbringing in the military and ended up very left wing as a result
When I was in basic training, most of the other kids with me were not politically aware at all. The few that were swung to the left. Once I was done, there was a lot of heavy recruitment of the same kids by religious orgs like the Mormons, and those people virtually always ended up on the right.
Most Mormons end up in the State Department and other security services. NSA, DHS, CIA are majority Mormon.
They're all VERY patriotic, and because they're all Mormon, they all vouch for each other during security interviews/investigations.
My dad -- who first served in the segregated Amy Air Force -- made that point to me many times when I was growing up
"When the air crew keeping your plane from falling apart at 30000 feet is Black you quickly find that racism is a luxury you can;t afford," or words to that effect
sometimes! sometimes white people go rancid and come out of the Army about half a degree of separation from the Aryan Nation! DEFINITELY NOT SPEAKING FROM EXPERIENCE HERE
yeah there’s quite a bit of “leftism” that doesn’t seem to be built on the idea of community, and I don’t like that at all! and I think that’s why fuck ups are deemed “unacceptable” by some
like i have many bad things to say about organized church and the catholic church in specific but the idea that sin is universal and that concrete actions can redeem it is one that is often lost in leftist spaces imo
It’s also why “leftist” politicians are abandoned by the left as soon as they’re elected. Governing is compromise even under the most ideal of circumstances and that is treason.
The only politicians continuously supported by the left are incapable of using their power.
Oooo as someone who grew up with a perfectionist parent I promise that instilling the fear of doing anything wrong in a person is the best way to guarantee that this person will go through their life getting absolutely nothing done. They will be too terrified of fucking up to do anything.
Biden’s domestic agenda, the best by FAR in my lifetime, is canceled by the sin of the Gaza War. He and everyone who supports him must be punished for that sin with a Trump return.
A certain irony is a lot of right callousness can be seen as a similar impulse to avoid aiding evil people.
Since avoiding this is so vital, helping based purely on need is bad as nothing stops it from going to evil-they need charity only to go to the trusted: church members, relatives and so on.
Agreed. There's just no pleasing leftists who are more obsessed with purity. It's better to work with those who are more open to forming pragmatic coalitions.
I think part of the problem is that our extremely Individualistic society is so ingrained in people that when you try to organize you often end up with just a group of individuals, not a community. People are only there for themselves, not for any greater good
I think about this a lot. when someone posts something insensitive without realizing, they're often dogpiled and exiled. people can change for the better if they were unaware of their mistakes.
then they're driven to the right where they're welcome and encouraged to be MORE insensitive.
Worse, I think it’s thought of as a “chosen” community both in the sense that the individual chooses to associate with like-minded believers (until they don’t) and in the sense that the community is “chosen” to be special (until it’s not). Either way, it’s a recipe for disaster.
as a Catholic this is my main criticism of whatever exactly you want to call secular culture right now. No one is repentant and it wouldn't mean anything if they were because there is no absolution.
Evangelicals are more like as long as you believe in jesus - their version of jesus - you can be as shitty and evil as you want and still be saved. There are some strains of leftism like this as well
I think a lot of it is Calvinism: the world, including all of humanity, is inherently fallen/irredeemable (total depravity) AND only the elect can be saved - and any good works you do don’t matter at all.
Honestly Catholicism has a fairly robust model for freedom and culpability—a person coerced to do evil hasn't committed a mortal sin in Catholicism.
Leftism is its own thing.
