The original post is gone from the subreddit, but still available here if anyone wants to read it. There’s some really interesting discussion
unrelated, but there’s a mastodon instance called “toad.social”?!
I think I found the instance for me!Reddit is like the coliseum of bots where you can watch bots fight each other at the center of what’s mostly an ad distribution platform.
I liked Battlebots better when they had spikes and buzz saws!
Remember that one bot that had a saw that spun so fast that it almost beheaded a judge when it was forcefully detached, and then they had to change regulations to make sure it didn’t happen again? They were simpler times back then…
Just in case someone was wondering about the actual answer to this question, here’s an answer from a former servicemember.
This is your brain on American exceptionalism. It’s kinda funny when people think an organization that practices war crimes across the world wouldn’t do so at home. I’d love an explanation about how Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay happen when soldiers would never follow an illegal or immoral order.
Police kill Americans every day. The National Guard has killed Americans before. Maybe the military won’t be called in to kill Americans, but I think people saying “The military would never kill Americans” really mean “I would never kill Americans”. American citizens were killed by drone strike without anyone batting an eye.
How many right wing militiamen are ex military? Does anyone really believe there are no White Supremacists in the military? Probably most of the military wouldn’t fire on Americans, but anyone who thinks there are zero service members just itching to murder people needs to read more history.
Thanks for posting that. I appreciate what she’s saying and I would like to think that is what would happen, however, chaotic situations lead to very unpredictable outcomes. When you have chaos, an angry mob of people, and armed soldiers being told their job is to keep things under control, you’re putting a lot of faith in the individual good vs group think mentality that tends to be a sad aspect of human nature.
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Especially given that you have corrupt governors pushing federal policy at the state level, there is a very good chance you will have the national guard called in to handle dissent. I’m watching my own governor abuse his power and grant some very questionable authority to the guard already. Kent State is a really good example of why this should be very scary. It’s not “fear mongering” to make sure people are aware of overlaps between fairly recent U.S. history and the current reality.
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I do know there are soldiers who truly would refuse an illegal order, but I think it’s naive to rely on that when it comes to what we’re seeing now. Especially considering the goal of this administration is to deconstruct and tear down everything they dislike about the current U.S. system.
As someone pointed out, Hegseth is now in charge of the military and seems to be doing everything he can to root out opposition to the administration. He’s setting a tone for what is to be expected of anyone not following orders. Apparently ignoring the whole incident where he ended up texting war plans in a group chat on signal where a journalist somehow got added, the Pentagon has also started threatening department of defense employees with polygraphs in order to determine who is leaking information to the press. They actually sent this memo out threatening employees late on Friday night and news of Hegseth accidentally leaking sensitive information broke on Monday.
Soldiers get issued an RoE card. The card specifies the procedure for Escalation of Force. Usually it’s “Verbal Warning, Show of Force, Warning Shot, Lethal Force” with the option to skip steps in case of self-defence.
However, soldiers sometimes still do illegal and immoral thing time while deployed in other countries. Sometimes because they’ve been ordered to, and sometimes because they choose to. Is that representative of the entire U.S. or the military? No, but it definitely happens way too frequently.
- There are a lot of comments from military members in the original post. A retired member of the army commented this. It’s in the 3rd screenshot of the pictures, and the original post is gone from the subreddit but still available to view here if you want to look over it:
by the time “effect martial law on [insert US city] and summarily execute anyone who does not comply” makes it’s way to the commander of a maneuver company, it is formatted in an operations order in a way that is devoid of any subjectivity. orders are distilled to a rigidly-formatted set of instructions that almost anyone in the formation are able to understand and carry out.
the reason for this is so the people who carry out the orders don’t hesitate and don’t contemplate the wider meaning. an infantry platoon’'s task won’t be to effect martial law; it will be “seize and hold objective [whatever] (could be a street intersection, train station, etc) by 1700 hrs”
Again, I believe at the individual level, most people would choose to do the right thing, but we’ve seen over and over again, that especially in times of panic and chaos, frontal lobes go offline, lizard brain takes over, and herd mentality kicks in as a defense mechanism.
There’s a lot of variation in national guard units too. If one were to go off, I’d wager Texas, due to Abbot’s repeated willingness to use them as political pawns.
In Louisiana, our current Governor snuck in a new section to a recent renewal of the former Governor’s executive order declaring a state of emergency to handle cyber security.
The new section granted the director of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) authority to act as he sees fit to handle the emergency.
What makes that especially concerning is that the same day, he placed all of GHOSEP under the command of the Louisiana National Guard, gave the director of GHOSEP a new title, and named a member of the guard interim director.
I think we might have TX beat, but our state’s Heritage Foundation/SPN affiliate think tank is actually trying to argue we should be trying to be more like TX. Fun times. It’s like every day I learn some outrageous new bullshit that makes me more angry than the day before.
Here is a video they made describing their brilliant idea
The CEO/president of GNO Inc that speaks throughout the video was also chosen by our Governor to be the official “Superbowl Czar” which has got to be the dumbest fucking title you could ever waste money on.
But I guess I can’t complain too much bc
Landry might have me shot by the National Guardthings could always be worse I guess.snuck in a new section to a recent renewal of the former Governor’s executive order declaring a state of emergency to handle cyber security.
any state that elects klansman probably is ahead in this game… used to live near Bossier… I do not miss the state. Food was great. But wow…
good luck. I recognize getting out isn’t an option for everyone, it’s abjectly depressing.
Sorry, don’t mean to rant like a crazy person, but these fuckers have just about driven me to that point.
I don’t plan to leave if I can avoid it. I love New Orleans and most of the people here for better or worse. When I moved here, even the conservative Catholics seemed laid back compared to the southern Baptist bullshit I grew up with in TN.
Honestly at this point I blame the Heritage Foundation for just about every fucking problem in this country. It basically began with their mandate for leadership they delivered to Ronald Reagan. Instead of saying wtf is this horse shit, he said, sounds great. Let’s make it happen. Now here we are and they are finally in a position to make their dreams come true with project 2025. They want the entire world to look like what I grew up in and what I couldn’t get away from fast enough. They don’t give a shit about any of the ideology. It’s about control and power.
Keep people divided, make shit so bad in places like Louisiana it drives away anyone that votes against them or stands in their way. It leaves only the extremely wealthy controlling all the resources and the extremely poor completely relying on them. The poor will keep voting them into power based on whatever they can use to in-group (race baiting) or whatever scraps of hope they dangle in front of them (jobs and the economy) with no intention of ever allowing social mobility or fixing anything. There’s a reason they’re destroying the economy. They do much better when it’s broken.
I also feel at this point there’s really nowhere to run where they won’t also eventually take over. These state policy networks exist in all 50 states and Europe. They have way too much power and it’s no different than any dictator. They use Heritage Foundation money to push for the same policies they’ve already purchased at a federal level, and disguise it as representing the people of the state. They will take and take until there’s nothing left.
We can run until there’s nowhere left to hide, or we can try to push back. I know not everyone agrees, but even if we lose, why make it easy on them? If they didn’t care about shit being exposed at this point, there’d be no reason for them to try to keep the information suppressed and hidden, so fuck them.
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So, years ago, I used to run a PvP guild on an mmo. I rigged up a set of laws that meant, no matter what a person did, they’d be breaking one. Murder and fun often ensued, with the additional psychological element of “you did this to yourself”.
Should I sue Reddit for stealing my idea?
Out of curiosity, which MMO?
Shartak - good times that game.
Control the media, control the people
What did the russian soldiers say?
You can still read the original post here
He was saying many Russian soldiers that have been captured have said they weren’t aware they were actually supposed to be fighting in a war, and had been told what they were doing was a military exercise. So it’s possible in some cases that even if a soldier is given an order, they may not realize the extent of consequences of following it.
Yeah! I wanted to keep reading!
You should, it’s a really interesting post. Still available here:
Sorry wrong link, here is the reddit post https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1jsp8d5/us_active_duty_or_reserve_military_have_you_given/
deleted by creator
Why did you delete it? You’re allowed to have a different opinion on things. This isn’t reddit 😉
I think we should all be thinking about this stuff and having honest discussions about it. Even if I don’t agree with you, the disagreement is not meant as an attack on you or your beliefs. It’s just an explanation for why I may have a different point of view.
Thank you, but don’t mind me. I just had multiple tabs open and accidentally replied to the wrong post.
I did think the answer from jms21y in the screenshot was interesting. Years ago, before Reddit existed, I used to post on a message board where there was a great deal of diversity and still people were polite to each other - the rules were strict about that. There were also only several dozen active participants so we all knew each other. Anyway, one of the regulars was an active-duty military guy and his perspective was often very interesting. I think the ideological range of the people I talked to has become so much narrower since then. People (including me) are so much angrier now than even during the GWB presidency.
