Listen to a genius, kids.

That's an... incredibly naive view of reality.

Yeah, everyone knows you can only prevent war by fighting in wars. War is peace.
- Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum.
- Einstein emigrated in 1933, years before the Holocaust.
Einstein, Tucholsky, Gandhi and Jesus all seem to be very naive blokes indeed.
- Jesus was crucified and spawned one of the most vile institutions in human history.
  Gandhi thought Britain should surrender to the Nazis.
  Very naive blokes indeed.
Unlike yours - euclidean and nonrelativistic.

Largely, we've not been defending ourselves, but rather, maintaining our interests and investments. Who wants to stand behind that other than the misinformed?

People who want to do raping and murdering and be praised for it? Though they could just be cops for that.
- There are still those that believe they're fulfilling some patriotic duty, but that only feeds back into my original statement. The "bad apples" only serve to highlight part of the problem. Culling and replanting the "orchard" is a magnitude of order more difficult.

You can refuse to serve and then they institute the draft. Then you dodge the draft and get elected President.

Only if you're parents are wealthy...
Then you dodge draft and get a ton of your rights denied

If only it was that easy.

It is that easy.
- It would have to be global otherwise someone realizes "hey I'm the only one with an army" and marches it into whatever they claim as theirs.
- Ahhh, that sounds nice to hear, if only it was that easy.
- Not if you're from Ukraine
Bone spurs
What if we found a bunch of really fit women, who took their babylons out for peace?

Yeah, Until some Ork shoots you for fun while you pass them on your bike, in an occupied zone that was once your hometown. Sometimes you HAVE to make a stand to stop wars of aggression.

I see no problem here: I refused to serve in the military and did my service in a hospital instead. The Ukraine war did make me reconsider my attitude towards the necessity of a draft army.
Conclusion 1: I would emigrate and work against my country of origin in a heartbeat if they started a war of aggression (hello Russians) - unchanged from before
Conclusion 2: I would support with my medical and other skills those defending a non-aggressive country I live in
Conclusion 3: I might fight, given no other choice. But I would try everything else first, and I would probably not be good at it (fighting) at all.
- There was a conscientious objector from WW2 that became a medic and eventually won the medal of honour.
  Soldiers need medics and no one can say they are cowards or anything negative.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacksaw_Ridge
- Russian here and here how it will probably go.
  I would emigrate and work against my country of origin in a heartbeat if they started a war of aggression (hello Russians) - unchanged from before
  You will emigrate and either work with a charity organization that helps refugees from the other side (often refusing help to your nationality because they are Orks) or you will start helping the military on the other side, which would seem righteous to you until this military starts to neglect collateral damage.
  I used to work in a charity that helps refugees here in Georgia. I still donate but I was unable to comprehend the very people that we were helping up calling me an occupant.
  When Ukraine started shelling and droning Belgorod, many of my Russian friends stopped military donations.
  I would support with my medical and other skills those defending a non-aggressive country I live in
  That's actually what will happen, yes. Rally 'round the flag effect is real and those of my acquaintances who happened to be communists in Ukraine have been supporting the military and Zelensky given the communism is banned in Ukraine.
  I might fight, given no other choice. But I would try everything else first, and I would probably not be good at it (fighting) at all.
  And you will either end up with PTSD, screaming in the middle of the night, or dead. Don't do it unless you really believe that you are fighting for things that are more important than you yourself.
- Okay, that's fair. I would also never fight in a war of aggression. My Point was more about defensive wars. Maybe I need to clarify this.
My advice? Stay of of Mordor then.

Imagine if the World stopped fighting at the end of WWII and the U.S. stopped making any other atomic weapons. Imagine a global "Peace Treaty".

Imagine if each country spent their military $$ on water, food, housing, and free medical care for their citizens.

Fuck them all!!

The World could've been an amazing village of humans living together as friends and have the freedom to roam the globe without the need for a passport.

One World!

Fuck every military leader and/or political leader that has screwed over the people of the World.

Then one day, putins russia could roll down over the whole of Europe in one big swing.
Someone said "Every country has an army. Their own or someone elses".
Could be better for sure, but it could also be worse.
- I mean, we're discussing a hypothetical utopia. In this hypothetical, Russia wouldn't have an army to "roll down over the whole of Europe".
And you want people to vote for the guy currently supplying and giving cover to a genocidal regime...
- Where did you see him asking people to vote for anyone? I'm tired of this no need to bring this shit into every conversation, lots of people on here don't even live in the U.S. Fuck off

open separately: jpeg

Easy to say when you're American, Russian, or Chinese.

Not so easy when you're Palestinian, Ukrainian, or Taiwanese.

Honestly not sure how easy it is to actually stay out of the military when there's compelled service in any country. Draft evasion often carries significant risk.
I appreciate the sentiment, but results will vary.
- Honestly not sure how easy it is to actually stay out of the military when there’s compelled service in any country.
  Don't know about other countries, but in Apartheid-South Africa it was a very difficult thing if you were male, white and not rich. When I was a kid in small-town South Africa there was a conscientious objector living on our street. He was disabled - they had beaten him to such an extent that he was brain-damaged.
  For the rich it was pretty easy - just ask Elon.
Russian
Palestine doesn't have a mandatory draft tho?
- I think it's more the idea that nonviolence isn't saving them. You can swear off violence, Israel will kill you and your family anyways.

Send my ass to prison. Fuck going to the military

Canadia is like, right there.
- Also true. Very practical

Einstein… sounds like a Hamas name, right?

If there is a draft for some oil resource war then I'm out of the US.. We have all the tools to replace it I'm not fighting for some mega corp's right to exploit the environment

If only enviroment...

People dont have as much agency as he thinks. And game theory(a relatively new concept for his era) dictates that the one who convinces/forces more of their people to fight, is the one who wins.

Let's say that your entire country, every single person, refuses to go to war. And the country next door has a mere 100 people who are willing(or otherwise) to go to war. Now your country is part of their country and those 100 people are in charge.

In a world where noone wants to fight, those who are willing(or forced) to fight, rule everyone else.

And to bring this concept into the modern era, it is near impossible to post antiwar posts in Russia, because of state control of the internet and the cultivated perception that everyone who is antiwar, is antirussian and a traitor. This is literally the law there.

Yet in the liberal western states, you are free to do that. So what is the result of this difference? People in the West are less willing to go to war. Now you might think that is a good thing but ultimately this benefits Russia, who is then free to take over their smaller neighbours. This is just interference, marketing for Russia's war machine, even if it doesnt feel like that.

People in the West are less willing to go to war.
The fact that the west was, and still is, the most prolific war mongerers of the post-Enlightenment era blows your hypothesis out of the water as soon as it tries to float.
- The fact that the west was, and still is, the most prolific war mongerers of the post-Enlightenment era blows your hypothesis out of the water as soon as it tries to float.
  How about we talk about the last 30 years then. What wars have europeans participated recently? Yugoslav wars? Afghanistan? Iraq?
  Yugoslav wars were about ethnic cleansing between different ethnic groups who wanted to go their own ways. Afghanistan was because of 9/11, the taliban refusing to offer Bin Laden and the american thirst for revenge. Iraq was extremely controversial in Europe, pretty much every state opposed it, even if some european governments supported it, the majority of their people opposed it(huge protests).
  Even the US, the imperium, which is usually doing imperial things, havent been doing much imperialism recently, after Afghanistan. And because of Afghanistan and Iraq, meaningless and immoral wars for most people, the US has trouble recruiting military personnel nowadays. Thats how democracies work, eventually the truth rises to the top.
  The Ukraine war is one of the most clear cut wars since the Iraq invasion. And the West has the opportunity to be on the right side for once. Let me remind you that historically neutral countries like Sweden, joined NATO and countries like Germany are quickly re-arming for the first time in almost 100 years.
  Because till recently, Europe was "let's all hold hands together", living in their own dream bubble about how war is not only bad but also insane. Putin reminded them that "sanity" is not a requirement for governance.
  If the West is so war mongering, why did the West not spend more on military in the last 20 years? Why did the West wait till the Ukraine invasion to start pumping untoled trillions into the military industrial complex?
  The only event with bigger impact on military spending was the collapse of USSR. For decades, Europe(and even the US) was taking advantage of the peace dividend. That doesnt sound too war mongery to me. And suddently, with just 1 Ukraine invasion, the West doubled and trippled its military budget.
  So is the West war mongering or is Russia that caused an insane re-armament because of the Ukraine invasion?
  And in before "nato expansion", blah blah. Sovereign countries have the right to join any alliance they want. Nato didnt invade those countries and force them to join, those countries literally "blackmailed" to join. Poland threatened to get nukes if they werent allowed into NATO.
  If Mexico joins an alliance with China, would you approve an invasion of Mexico by the US? I wouldnt.

Iirc we used to have some kind of deal to cut down nuclear weapons but that those numbers have climbed up.

And now I'm hearing people say there's no risk in the West attacking Russia because "their nukes haven't been maintained."

Soldiers are a "solution" to a problem they themselves cause.

If there were no soldiers, we wouldn't need any either.

So any person who wants to become a soldier is just a fool. There are of course those who have no choice, but the ones who do and still chose that life definitely are idiots.

So any person who wants to become a soldier is just a fool.
Or they're desperate. I can't speak for other countries, but in the U.S., if you grow up in poverty, the military is one of the only ways out. Especially if you don't have the academics or athletic talent to earn a really good scholarship.
It sucks.
I don't know about you, but my country borders Russia. What do you suggest I do when the first tanks roll across the border, the first glide-bombs start raining down on the city, and the first occupiers come to take my father, mother, sister and girlfriend for "interrogation" in a cellar? I could choose to run away.

Manhattan Project.

That "truth" obviously depends on which side it is that is recruiting one:

if cells in your body who are being run by viruses "take up arms", they are taking up arms against your life, for virus's dominion.

if ideological-supremacism gets people to take up arms for their cause, they are arming to war against real peace.

if cells in your body who fight infection get other cells to "take up arms", they are fighting together against pathogen's dominion.

if people take up arms against ideological rabies's highjacking of our world, or of its dismantling/exterminating civil-rights, then they are fighting for the existence of civil-rights & actual/possible peace.

Ukraina's fighting for its life is right, Russia's fighting to genocide Ukrainians isn't.

.: whether one's taking up arms is morally right or not, has exactly to do with one's opposition-to, or accommodation-of, or even helping-of, the kremlin's genociding-mission.

Same goes for Hamas's deliberately sacrificing the Palestinian people for sake of getting Israel's nihilistic sadistic psychopathy to show enough that the entire surrounding region will ( within a decade or so ) prefer "martyrdom" while annihilating Israel, than to tolerate Israel, genocider who claims "God", to continue to exist.

Hamas & Israel both demonstrate DarkHexad: Narcissism / Machiavellianism / Sociopathy-Psychopathy / Nihilism / Sadism / Systemic-Dishonesty..

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-02-04/ty-article/.premium/israeli-army-its-admits-staff-was-behind-graphic-gaza-telegram-channel/0000018d-70b4-dd6e-a98d-f4b6a9c00000

Israel's full allegiance to DarkHexad is visible in what IDF was carving in God's eye, with that operation.

Israel's longstanding declaration that it will nuke ALL its neighbours if any ONE overruns it, a nuclear-mass-shooting, is itself proof of its DarkHexad nationalism, which claims that God authorizes it ( the Ezekiel 39 "justification" for genociding Palestinians now, the rest later, e.g. )

Nobody should bother pretending that our countries haven't done exactly the same commitment-of-evil that these 2 examples are doing:

the deliberately-infecting entire shiploads of fabric, with smallpox, before sending them to the Americas, to holocaust the Indigenous peoples, our "Residential School" genociding of their lives ..

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hopi+alcatraz&t=fpas&iax=images&ia=images

is pictures of men whose "crime" in our law was that they wouldn't agree, in writing, with their children being taken, at gunpoint, by us, & put in residential schools .. so we rounded 'em up at gunpoint, & shipped the survivors of our enforcement off to Alcatraz..

That was every bit as evil as what the kremlin-war-on-Ukraina or Israel's genociding now do.

History is unspeakably ugly.

The Catholic inquisition's torture-murdering war against primarily women, & secondarily Jews, "in our Lord, King of all Jews"'s name, had nothing whatsoever to do with the religion of the woke socialist convict/felon that Yehoshua "Jesus" benJoseph was, in their bible.

Africa, whose 2 million year history of tool-using hominids, nearly-all of its history is unrecorded, but the European slave-industry was fed by Arabs & Africans, in Africa, who were leveraging their local authority, turning those who weren't "with" them into "profit"..

the evil committed by the Aztecs, some tiny fraction of it recorded, when records began being created..

the "conquistadors" & their evil against Indiginous peoples..

It's inseparable from our race's history

It isn't that "taking up arms" is wrong, it is that either:

taking up arms for ideological-supremacism, XOR
refusing to take up arms against ideological supremacism

both help ideological supremacism.

Helping ideological supremacism is an active crime against civil-rights being able to exist.

it is a crime against right Principles.

As Martin Luther King Jr pointed-out, silence, itself is the crime of accommodating evil, when evil is acting.

( the "bystander effect" of accommodating a crime against someone, which depends on the culture & the individual-development vs collectivity of the bystanders, is also in the domain of this question, obviously ).

Governments can and have just branded people and organizations as terrorists to justify conflict. That is typically why third-world countries like Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. have been so heavily devastated by the west. Stopping "Nazi terrorists" is why Russia is invading Ukraine right now as well.
Be careful of when a country's media starts throwing out the label "terrorist regime" to describe countries that would be convenient to invade. "Terrorism" is just as much made by fear, instilled by a country's media, as it is the practice of creating fear directly.

I'm not going to listen to some pervert

OK there ‘cumskin_genocide’…
- He was also a racist.

Comes from a guy who fled hos country due to nazi raise up and militarization of the government only to have his country freed by military force.

Geniuses are contained to their field. Use Neil Degrasse Tayson as reference.

The militarization wouldn't have happened if they followed the words in the image.
- Sure. But someone did the original sin.
  It's a bad quote suited for a 4 year olds mind. Some people fight for the thrill of it, other had to do it because they was forced to move due to ecological circumstances.