As a vet, this is exactly on point
I'm not willing to give my life.
To roughly paraphrase Patton. Don't die for your cause, make some other bastard die for theirs.
That's always been the goal, the point is more one of commitment. How much are you willing to lose to see your end through?
That's not to say that only those who max out commitment are allowed, just that you should know where your limits lie. Have frank discussions about your limits such that your allies can make contingency plans should your limits be reached, as you would do for those that martyr themselves.
beat me to it. if someone is trying to kill you, you kill them right back.
Preferably ahead of them
I am still willing to give my life for what I believe this country stands for. This country stands, and right now those values are st odds with some people and policy's within this countrys government, and part of what this country stands for is standing agianst tyranny, agianst threats, foreign and domestic. No person is above this cardinal rule. We usurped tyrannical rule once before, we will surely do so agian.
I was never willing to give my life for anything and that's still true.
This country stands, and right now those values
Which values? Colonialism? Genocide? White supremacy? Enslavement of the global south? Anticommunism? Burgers?
part of what this country stands for is standing agianst tyranny
Bull.shit. I'm Spanish. Go ahead and tell my murdered ancestors during fascism how glad they are that the US had perfect relationships with Franco. Go ask people in Chile what they think of Pinochet and his US-Sponsored fascist coup. Or go ask the progressive leaders of the middle east like Mosaddegh, who were eliminated from power through destabilisation. And that's fucking nothing compared with what the people of Vietnam, Laos or Korea endured during the most intensive bombing campaigns in human history (Laos was bombed by the US with more explosives than the entire explosives used in WW2). Your country IS THE TYRANT, it doesn't stand against tyranny.
Hope. The US has historically been a rough country for almost everyone. It has also historically been "the land of opportunities." The fact that once again, as in the gilded age, our "leaders" have forgotten the one redeeming quality of our broken old democracy, has once again extinguished the idea of hope.
As Churchill once said, "you can trust that the Americans will eventually do the right thing. They'll just try everything else first." The fact that we don't think that is at all true, isn't good for anyone.
I'm of the opinion that the top half is almost as bad.
We are ruled by very old dragons, possibly even "grand" dragons. What's happening now more closely resembles removing of a mask than a complete 180 shift in policy.
It's still something which deserves to be opposed as strongly as possible. It's just... the honest character of a nation founded on breaking every promise it ever made to the original occupants of this land, fighting a war with itself over the right to own people, joining the colonial game within four years of "the frontier" being closed, refusing to ratify the Treaty of Versailles, bombing Laos and Cambodia just because they're in close proximity to a nation which was the current target of our 75+ year endless war, and violating international treaties regarding ethical treatment of political prisoners in the manner seen in Abu Ghraib or with the "enhanced interrogation" which took place in Gitmo.
This is the bad place.
There's a lot of propaganda to kids, including the idea that the military is purely defensive. Especially pre-Iraq. And then we recruit people straight out of high school. You want to help during natural disasters? Join this organization. Don't worry the president never calls us up to go fight wars...
If we waited until 22 we'd lose a ton of recruits that actually learned history in college and from asking around their community.
Bingo. I call them dragons too. I also think that this is why, unlike in 2020, we aren’t seeing the same level of unrest. The mask being revealed is more of the same for Americans. It only confirms what we already thought we were living under.
So, more of the same, that doesn’t spur our communities to moving. If anything it makes us more cautious. I know in my community I’ve floated social alliances but everyone I’ve talked to is very hesitant and cowed. No one wants to be on a list and no one wants to end their current life over becoming a saboteur just yet.
You’re completely right about American history too. In our foundational case law, Chief Justice Marshal stated it was right to take the Native lands by force because “we” have the “right of conquest.” Looking back at the original treaties and contractual documents and when seeing every one was broken in some way by America— if that isn’t enough to convince a person of the character of the country then I don’t know what is.
The best ideals that we want for this country still exist. They exist inside you and me and in our hope and humanity. The Wheel of Fate always turns. We can and we will turn the wheel eventually in the direction of humanism and progress. We will do this together, and become dragon slayers, if we must.
What tf has the United States stood for, if not colonialism, racism and genocide?
I'm glad USAians are starting to despise their country as much as the rest of the world now that it's starting to happen to them, but please keep the lusting after the good ol days that never existed to the boomers.
Why is lemmy filled with this?
What do you want from this interaction?
Do you want them to feel shame for not seeing the truth you've seen? What are you trying to accomplish?
Things are bad. Things are getting worse. People are learning this in real time, and the endless commentary of "it always has been" and "nothing's new" is not helpful or productive. It doesn't even make sense. People are coming around to your point of view - that things are bad. Maybe, as they learn why and how things are bad, they will learn about some of the things that have always been bad, but they won't learn it from a comment like this.
Things are bad. Things are getting worse. We don't need more cynicism and apathy. We need to help people understand that things are bad, and things are getting worse.
What do you want from this interaction?
Presumably, making people understand that the US (and western Europe) represent the most evil shit imaginable in the past 5 centuries including essentially the genocide of the entire continent of America and the colonisation of the entirety of south america, Africa and most of Asia, and that at no point was it worth dying for.
We kind of hoped we were turning over a new leaf. Nope, same fucking leaf. Same rotting monetary elite underneath it all.
Note that the meme doesn't talk about what the United States stood for
It has also stood for resisters, runaways, rebellion, race traitors, class traitors, communist, unionists, socialists, militant farming communities, civil rights protestors, suffregettes, panthers, occupiers, standing rock, bros and whatever comes next to drag this country into something slightly better and closer to its written ideals.
To me those are not mutually exclusive.
As someone who wrote that check and nearly had it cashed when I was younger, all I want to say is these guys are playing with fire. Right now a lot of people I know aren't seeing the damage from cuts yet and don't care about immigration issues.
But there is a line and once it's crossed things will not be fun for anyone.
Nah, I'm not giving my life. They're going to have to take it from me and I won't go quietly.
This is what capitalism and unregulated speech gets you
Nailed it.
No. This country is not a Nazi country. Take it back.
