People that you've never heard of, people that are in the dark shadows -- US Politics September 2020

I don't know about y'all but I was pretty much a dumbfuck at 18, and if I hadn't grown up in a military family, I don't know that I would've thought enough about the military to have dismissed it as an option.

Troops are not some poor downtrodden group forced into waging war with no other choice. They're an all-volunteer force of primarily middle-class people who use it as a alternative route to prosperity. It's a job, just like being a cop and no more worthy of respect or adulation for it.

― Donald Trump Also Sucks, Of Course (milo z), Friday, September 4, 2020 2:19 AM (thirty-six minutes ago)

trump was ridiculing the deaths of american soldiers who died in world war I, most of whom were drafted. they were literally "forced into waging war with no other choice."

Like if you honestly believe that then you have a warped sense of the limited choices many people have on offer.

I graduated high school and spent the next three years working 55 hour weeks waiting tables instead of killing people, then worked construction for 12, but please tell me more about opportunities and choices.

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/04/18/recruits-to-americas-armed-forces-are-not-what-they-used-to-be

But for the millennial soldiers, reared in an age of American swagger, the opposite is true. Their median family income is more than $73,000, compared with $66,000 for civilians, and recruits are most likely to come from families in the middle of the wealth distribution, with median wealth of $87,000, almost $10,000 more than civilians. Blacks, overrepresented among the poor, and a disproportionately large veteran presence in the 1979 cohort, as Mr Chomsky noted, have dwindled as a share of recruits. Separately, as the armed forces shrank in size and grew choosier, recruits tended to be cleverer (measured by a cognitive skills test) than their civilian peers. Indeed, among the poorest recruits it is the cleverest—not the drop-outs or deadbeats—who are likeliest to sign up.

worth mentioning that the one thing other than the Access Hollywood tape that really hurt Trump in 2016 was the time he went after a Gold Star family

And so all of the dudes that I know who would back up what I'm saying don't exist, only articles from a free-market conservative publication and your own warped perspective.

This fucking guy lol

Is the FP functionality broken while that poll is running?

Asking for a friend.

I'm sure you know many people who fit your description - that doesn't make them the norm. Perhaps, given the group you identify them as coming from, troops who fit that background are more likely to come out disillusioned - you don't meet all the ones who flipped a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan into years working as PMCs (I know several of those FWIW).

You're going to have to explain how the Economist's politics impeach those numbers, which mirror the information from upthread.

I graduated high school and spent the next three years working 55 hour weeks waiting tables instead of killing people, then worked construction for 12, but please tell me more about opportunities and choices.

If you're gonna ride, ride the high horse. Gahdamn.

Depending on what restaurant you worked in, you mighta been waiting tables and killing people

milo gave the restaurant patrons regular cholesterol screenings and Immodium doses on his own dime, iirc.

I don’t see that as a high horse, table got presumptuous about background and that seemed pretty ironic.

folks, milo is a troll.

this is why my phone already knows that whenever I type “it’s important” a good suggestion is “to milo”

the dude doesn’t believe in shit

xpost I mean there are like a couple dozen weak points to exploit but just for a start: have you heard of ROTC?

Yeah, I don't know why I'm doing this.

Anyway the real deal is that the Goldberg story is blowing up and the Trump camp is sweating about it

xpost I mean there are like a couple dozen weak points to exploit but just for a start: have you heard of ROTC?

...yes? I'm guessing you mean "are you accounting for people who joined ROTC to pay for college"?

Which means that someone was willing to enter into a leadership position in the military to get ahead in life - less or no student debt, guaranteed job and benefits, etc.. That's pretty much exactly what I refer to in terms of it being a choice?

I believe there are people still collecting Civil War spousal benefits.

The US Civil War ended 155 years ago. A drummer boy could have been maybe 15 years old, therefore born no later than 1850, 170 years ago. Any spouse that veteran could have married would most likely be at least 15 years old. Therefore, if such a Civil War veteran married this hypothetical 15 year old when aged 80, the marriage would have been in 1945, with the bride born in 1930 and now aged 105. The odds against this scenario seem staggering, but not utterly impossible.

However, for a grandkid of that veteran to be alive today, it would require that our 15 year old bride be successfully impregnated by her 80 year old spouse soon after the marriage, making the grandkid 90 years old today, further compounding the improbability. Finally, for the proposed pissing scenario to be true, we must posit that the ilxor 'Boring, Maryland' happens t live next to very cemetery where that original civil war vet is buried, further compounding improbability to the ends of what this universe can deliver.

At this point my rational mind stops wondering if such a thing could be true and my capacity for belief is reduced to a point smaller and less energetic than a Higgs Boson.

Can we just start a "Milo and his Broadbrush - Change my mind" thread to silo this shit

That’s a nice thought.

judging by Trump's twitter feed right now I think he actually knows how bad this is

He's gonna offer up Eric as tribute to the Coast Guard or something.

Ah yes, because every kid grows up knowing about US war crimes and is desperate to pull a Lynndie on some hogtied Iraqi. Gtfoh

If you don't know an army is for killing people then I don't think you can be helped.

If you don't know that US military and its admirers are still living off the high of defeating Hitler and safeguarding FREEEEEDOM throughout the world then…

xxxxxxxpost
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/last-person-receive-civil-war-pension-dies-180975049/

In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.

clearly only a war-crazy neoliberal hawk could possibly object to this perfectly acceptable behavior

the army isn't just for killing people

A TikTok video shows U.S. soldiers deployed to Syria asking locals if they've recently seen their favorite porn star around 😬 https://t.co/skooW15oF1 pic.twitter.com/5DM8ijucaK

— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) September 3, 2020

Thanks Bnad. I knew I'd read something about it but was too pissed off at Milo to go search.

Glad Trump camp is shitting themselves over this. It feels like something that could stick just enough and at the right time that it turns more folks who might have been wavering away from him.

Obviously his die-hards will simply dismiss it as fake, but tbh I enjoyed a perverse thrill at the notion of Republican voters having to examine their America Fuck Yeah Troop worship because their big wet boy is Never Wrong.

Every once in a while I check out Ask Trump Supporters, and this story in particular warranted a visit. Go figure, a lot of the responses (last night) were along the lines of "unattributed sources? BS." And then someone said the AP backed up the claims, and the Trump Supporters said "oh, so, the Atlantic can be BS but anonymous sources in the AP is somehow better?" And so on. The point being, or a point being, is I have no idea why no one has agreed to go on the record with this story years after the fact. Maybe they still work at the WH? But why did the story about an event years ago come out now? If it is someone that has stuck around this Asshole for years, but only decided to tell this story now ... why? Why not just come forward and give it the weight of an attributed name? FWIW, a couple of the Trump Supporters on the page did say if true, the story is disgusting and indefensible, but etc.

Obv. I fully believe the story, which is totally in character. Trump is such a worthless pos that in his bizarro world the idea of him not saying or doing something like this is much less likely than the story being true. This came right after the story of him no longer meeting the return of dead soldiers for vain/dickish/venal reasons, and the WH afaict didn't push back on *that* one.

do the people on pro-trump reddit ever have any comments on reddit posts like this? i guess every single one of the things in that post was a lie, too

(for those who don't click, it's like a list of 10000000000000000000s of "insensitive" things trump has said about military, generals, POW/MIA, etc)

obviously most of the people on Ask Trump Supporters are long gone, just long gone, in terms of reality. but i wonder if maybe it would break through to the "couple of the Trump Supporters on the page did say if true, the story is disgusting and indefensible, but etc."

Are there any recent demographics on the various branches of the military? Anecdotally, it seems the Air Force and maybe Marines are whiter and more middle class than the Army and Navy?

I can't wait until after the election, should he lose, when the press keeps reporting on all of his batshit tweets as if he were still president and him and his supporters still dominate 90% of the news.

Yeah, he and his family are not going anywhere. Just wait for four years of "maybe I'll run again, we'll see..."

From the little I care to analyze the Ask site's users, many of them just don't care what Trump says about anyone or anything. Many of them don't even like Trump. They just really like the 2nd amendment or really hate abortion. And even when quotes are attributed they tend to move the goalposts. Otoh, they recognize that when every last Trump Fart is blown up into a scandal, then the real scandals tend to have less impact, though their own ideas of what constitutes a scandal is apparently different than mine. I suppose they have one point, that if Trump is a piece of shit, and everything he does is shitty, then hearing people deriding his shittiness as such, day in day out, gets a little exhausting (I mean, no kidding; the first thing Biden should do is nothing, for at last a week). Hence the more seemingly reasonable people on the forum at times don't even try to defend him. Their take, afaict, is yeah, he's a piece of shit. So? I don't vote for presidents based on their personalities, perceived intelligence, or whatever. It's a disturbingly, destructively cynical position to take, and one that Trump Inc. definitely takes advantage of. I'm not sure what the solution is to cynicism that runs that deep, any more than the solution to what makes anyone want to carry around a machine gun.

whaddya gonna do when someone weighs supporting a catastrophically idiotic and incompetent president with 250K deaths (excess mortality) and counting on his watch, VS ....i want to have a gun

Glad Trump camp is shitting themselves over this. It feels like something that could stick just enough and at the right time that it turns more folks who might have been wavering away from him.

I feel like this story is definitely going to hurt his standing among the people he needs most. as much as people love to claim that nothing can possibly hurt his rock-solid support there have been a few things that have noticeably caused his poll numbers to drop, in 2016 the big ones were Access Hollywood & insulting the gold star family - both instances where even Republicans felt the need to distance themselves. that said all that support comes right back in 2-3 weeks as they find ways to rationalize it so idk if this'll have much effect on the election, though obviously the Biden campaign is gonna hit this real hard

Every once in a while I check out Ask Trump Supporters, and this story in particular warranted a visit. Go figure, a lot of the responses (last night) were along the lines of "unattributed sources? BS." And then someone said the AP backed up the claims, and the Trump Supporters said "oh, so, the Atlantic can be BS but anonymous sources in the AP is somehow better?" And so on. The point being, or a point being, is I have no idea why no one has agreed to go on the record with this story years after the fact.

it helps to have a highly politicized DOJ that is more than willing to end the careers of anyone who says anything bad on the record

Yeah, he and his family are not going anywhere. Just wait for four years of "maybe I'll run again, we'll see..."

nope it's going to be Ivanka that runs

the entire family is *the runs*

If Trump loses, it's hard for me to imagine anyone in that family trying a political run. First because why would they? Being rich and not running for office is a lot more fun. Second because I think that brand will be electorally tarnished. I suppose Ivanka or Eric could move to a red state and make a run, but I'm not sure they'd actually be welcome.

Sorry if there's a better place for this, but—
I'm in NYC, can't vote, but have a car, and thinking seriously about driving people to the polls in... Georgia? Virginia? Pennsylvania..?
Has anyone here done this or have any recommendations for well-run orgs that are doing it?

my mom has done this in (western) pennsylvania; i'll try to find out what the org was

That seems like a great idea!

republicans and conservatives didn't care at all about his very prominent comments on mccain, the khan family, etc. here's like the first 1/15th of that list i mentioned somehwhere earlier, #onethread

says Americans who died in war are "losers" and "suckers."

“Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers” he said about a U.S. military cemetery

called John McCain “a fucking loser” when asked to lower flags to half staff

called President George H.W. Bush a loser for being shot down during WWII

“That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?” Trump said of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

asked his staff to not include wounded veterans because amputees make him uncomfortable

“I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Trump said to Gen. John Kelly about dead veterans, while visiting Kelly’s son’s grave at Arlington

Trump knew since Mar 2020 that Russia paid bounties to kill American troops. On July 29, Trump defended Russia arming the Taliban against the US saying the US once did the same thing

In May '20, the White House ended National Guard deployments one day before they could claim benefits

The Trump admin seized 5mil masks intended for VA hospitals. Kushner distributes these masks to private entities for a fee, who then sells the masks to the government

Trump fired the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt after he warned superiors that COVID19 was spreading among his crew

After Iran's retaliatory strike, 109 US troops suffered brain injuries. Trump dismissed these as "headaches"

On July 20, 2017, in room 2E924 of the Pentagon, Trump told a room full of Generals, "You’re a bunch of dopes and babies"

Said 26,000 military sexual assaults were to be 'expected' bc America lets women serve

Invited the Taliban to Camp David on the anniversary of 9/11

Claimed that his military budget made up for his lack of military experience

Claimed if a Humvee was hit by an IED, soldiers "go for a little ride upward & they come down."

Pardoned multiple war criminals, which betrayed the men of the 1st Platoon who helped convict him for violating long standing military values, discipline, and command (May&Nov, 2019)

Trump mocked Lt. Col. Vindman for his rank and uniform. He threatened said purple heart officer resulting in the Army providing him pr--------

it goes on and on. after all that, why does him adding another line item to that list make a difference?

what if he said the Confederacy was a bunch of losers

well i saw the tweet yesterday from a Trumper saying that their dear lead was sent by god and many of them believe that, so there really is nothing you can tell them at all that will change their stance on him.

You've got to admit, if a religious person believed Trump was sent to bring about the Rapture, It's hard to argue with that.

Every Hegelian worth their salt knows you can't have Christ without the Antichrist. *taps head*

math checks out

"god used many flawed men to serve his needs throughout the bible"

i heard some true believer say this the other day somewhere