discipline posted:troop hate smacks of methodological individualism ftw and draws attention away from the more general reproduction of society
isn't this the exact argument someone like bhpn would use to attack a feminist organisation for condemning rapists
blinkandwheeze posted:discipline posted:troop hate smacks of methodological individualism ftw and draws attention away from the more general reproduction of society
isn't this the exact argument someone like bhpn would use to attack a feminist organisation for condemning rapists
i'm laughing because of who upvoted this
hey posted:troop hating always made me feel pretty nervous cause I could never really understand it. troop hate almost seems to me like a tool for imperialism because it makes people ignore indoctrination and focuses on the individual.
when I was younger I always wanted to join the military. My parents were very conservative and encouraged it. and every time someone would speak negatively about the military i felt even more compelled to become a military man due to a sense of nationalism. and it's always the same shit like "you're a fucking murdererer fucker FUCK". But it's like yeah. that's the fucking thing. The military and whatnot have been convincing us that that's the purpose of the troop, and have been very successful at it. It's like telling a mechanic that he's a dope ass engine fixing mother fucker. I'm not sure how it's productive.
It seems like people get a smug sastifaction out of troop hate because it's the lowest of the lowest hanging fruit. It's pretty easy to convice some dum ass hipster that killing people is bad. You get to pat yourself on the back becaue you got somebody on your side on your gay ass fight against imperialism. but in reality you're just having a nice little circle jerk at your fav cafe.
I dunno, im pretty drunk and thats my 2 cents. i didn't read goatsteins post cuz i hate reading his posts. and i never joined the military because i started doing coke at young age. and wooo-eeee what a ride has it been since then
thjis is a good + true post imo
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2384841&pagenumber=1
i've moved on.
deadken posted:so a kid from a small poor town whose family is full of decorated veterans, going to a school where adulation of the military is instilled from a young age, and finding after graduation that he has almost no other employment actions, if he chooses to join the military, he's uniquely sociopathic? it doesn't matter if you think it's the right decision or not, he's not signing up to go and kill non-whites, the army is at the head of an entirely separate chain of signification. you've got some pretty heavy-duty ideological blinders on. basically you can't see past your own chin.
i said soldiers as a whole are uniquely sociopathic. you are bringing it down to one (fantasy) individual as though this disproved the rule. whos guilty of the ideological crime of Individualism now
deadken posted:its not useful agitprop
its a babby step toward more meaningful anti imperialism, like posting in lf
deadken posted:goatstein thinks people who join the army are somehow uniquely sociopathic. basically he's blind to ideology because he is ideology. nobody makes decisions based on objective moral calculus, that's liberal nonsense.
Ken Heres where your wrong.
Goethestein posted:something about bein a ganster
what if he doesn't recognise that he's a gangster. what if he's privately morally conflicted about killing people but honestly believes in Defending America and Fighting For The Nation. yeah its a dumb ideal but plenty of people would say the same about killing for socialism or w/e. thing is i agree that us soldiers are enemy combatants but by calling them all sociopaths you're not carrying out anything close to analysis, you're going on what looks like a deeply personal rant
e: nice edit bro
deadken posted:i remember i was doing the troop hate argue in wddp and someone said that they hated the army because the troops she'd met were all really rude and mean and transphobic and i pointed out that you dont need to go to the army to find transphobia and that as reasons for opposing us imperialism go thats pretty weak and everyone got mad at me for Transphobia Denial or whatever. weird place. anyway basically thats u goatstein
that was goatstein. seriously.
deadken posted:if people have false consciousness it's because leftists aren't broadcasting their ideas loudly and comprehensively enough. soldiers have been an essential class element in every revolution. we should be propagandising to them, not sneering at them for being psychopaths in a forum read by twenty people
right-wing reactionary racist white heterosexual sociopath males from middle-class backgrounds in the first world are not a revolutionary class. the military itself as a structure bends towards fascism. you note that soldiers have been an essential element in every revolution, you fail to mention that most of these have been right-wing juntas.
deadken posted:Goethestein posted:something about bein a ganster
what if he doesn't recognise that he's a gangster. what if he's privately morally conflicted about killing people but honestly believes in Defending America and Fighting For The Nation.
intent doesn't matter
Goethestein posted:i said soldiers as a whole are uniquely sociopathic. you are bringing it down to one (fantasy) individual as though this disproved the rule. whos guilty of the ideological crime of Individualism now
your whole op was about a fantasy individual, even if you used the plural pronoun
Goethestein posted:deadken posted:Goethestein posted:something about bein a ganster
what if he doesn't recognise that he's a gangster. what if he's privately morally conflicted about killing people but honestly believes in Defending America and Fighting For The Nation.
intent doesn't matter
if you're calling people sociopaths, then yes it does
here's a quote by zizek:
Israeli and American films dealing with war in the Oliver-Stone style often forge an image of the soldier not as a righteous superhero, but rather as a sensi- tive individual who acquiesces to his own moral weaknesses. In a dialectic way, because he reveals his moral failure, the soldier then receives moral sympathy from the audience. Not only is a liberal audience ready to forgive him for his war crimes, but the fact that these crimes make him so human is the very impetus for us to embrace him as an errant child. Take, for example, the pro- tagonist (who also happens to be the director) of the recently released Israeli film Waltz with Bashir. The director took part in the massacre of Sabra and Shatila only to, years later, make a documentary about his post-traumatic state journey, the end of which includes a scene where he is redeemed by his shrink, who, in so many words, tells him: “You are good person. It’s true you made a mistake, but don’t ever forget: You are not a killer.” In Forgiveness, on the other hand, the soldier arrives, at the end of his journey, to the terrible understanding that he’s part of a perpetual killing. The crime he commits is not an individual failure within a healthy ethical structure, but an ethical failure built within the ideological structure itself.
the problem with american soldiers isn't that they are sociopaths. they are probably, in general, well-attuned to social norms and what's expected of them. the problem isn't individual moral failing so much as the imperatives of social structure that produce that sort of person. and it's the same basically for the response: you can understand as an individual but you have to respond at the level of systemic change. and the only way systemic change happens is by articulating a movement that can impose changes to the structure of society. and that can only happen if people see it's in their best interests to join such movements, which means focusing on the oppressed, and linking oppressions into a political fight. but even then, the level of coordination you need across huge numbers of people is so difficult that it happens in grand waves across decades.
so part of the issue, why i get so angry, is that i want to be able to arrange society in a nice way, but obviously i don't have the power to do that. and there are so many different injustices every day but i can't do much about them. any attempt to engage in a sort of visceral direct participation against the system would just be suicidal or close to it. like alcoholics you have to admit that you're basically powerless to "fix" society by yourself and you have to trust that there's a possibility we'll figure things out together. and i think once i can really wrap my head around that then i'll be better at just living day to day instead of feeling like i have some sort of personal quest to fix everything. so i want to be able to get angry, be angry, and just sort of live with that while i pursue personal projects i care about.
ilmdge posted:deadken posted:i remember i was doing the troop hate argue in wddp and someone said that they hated the army because the troops she'd met were all really rude and mean and transphobic and i pointed out that you dont need to go to the army to find transphobia and that as reasons for opposing us imperialism go thats pretty weak and everyone got mad at me for Transphobia Denial or whatever. weird place. anyway basically thats u goatstein
that was goatstein. seriously.
no seriously guys im 99% sure that was a goatstein alt. he had a valerie solanas av i think and his name was some feminist pun or something and he made the trans case against the military and then went on to make a broader case and then got banned for being goatstein. am i wrong goatstein, come clean
getfiscal posted:basically i was posting this seven years ago goat
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2384841&pagenumber=1
i've moved on.
thats a cool thread but it's more about how their deaths are beneficial than how they deserve to die, imo
ilmdge posted:ilmdge posted:deadken posted:i remember i was doing the troop hate argue in wddp and someone said that they hated the army because the troops she'd met were all really rude and mean and transphobic and i pointed out that you dont need to go to the army to find transphobia and that as reasons for opposing us imperialism go thats pretty weak and everyone got mad at me for Transphobia Denial or whatever. weird place. anyway basically thats u goatstein
that was goatstein. seriously.
no seriously guys im 99% sure that was a goatstein alt. he had a valerie solanas av i think and his name was some feminist pun or something and he made the trans case against the military and then went on to make a broader case and then got banned for being goatstein. am i wrong goatstein, come clean
that sounds more like something iwc would do
ilmdge posted:ilmdge posted:deadken posted:i remember i was doing the troop hate argue in wddp and someone said that they hated the army because the troops she'd met were all really rude and mean and transphobic and i pointed out that you dont need to go to the army to find transphobia and that as reasons for opposing us imperialism go thats pretty weak and everyone got mad at me for Transphobia Denial or whatever. weird place. anyway basically thats u goatstein
that was goatstein. seriously.
no seriously guys im 99% sure that was a goatstein alt. he had a valerie solanas av i think and his name was some feminist pun or something and he made the trans case against the military and then went on to make a broader case and then got banned for being goatstein. am i wrong goatstein, come clean
ya. play 2 ur audience, imo
deadken posted:goatstein thinks people who join the army are somehow uniquely sociopathic. basically he's blind to ideology because he is ideology. nobody makes decisions based on objective moral calculus, that's liberal nonsense. he blames those under the influence of false consciousness for having false consciousness because his analysis is not built on any solid theoretical base. troop hate is a function of liberalism
there's no such thing as false consciousness: everything is damned in the scope of infinity.