So we agree that this is a matter of degree rather than kind.

This whole time you have been arguing, at best, that the degree doesn’t matter (though, you did say once that consuming meat is worse than production, despite the fact that it’s the production that is the problem), and that being a nurse in the private healthcare system in the US is exactly as bad as sniping children in Iraq.

I fail to see much of one between the non-combatant service member and, say, the average US citizen who pays no mind to how their lifestyle and choices impact the world.

One directly contributes to the goals of the most vile military in the world and can’t be substituted by civilians, the other is usually as far removed from contributing to those goals as possible (with the consideration that people in NATO are generally forced to take part in NATO’s economy, but are not forced to be in the military taken into account).

The difference is that I don’t attribute moral condemnation on every person who just so happens to be in the military.

Sure. Some actually do sabotage of the military, like Chelsea Manning.
The vast majority don’t.

The cook serving on a military base is about as responsible for an atrocity that occurs in the middle east as you are responsible for whatever negative outcomes are associated with the way you earn and spend your money.

Lol no. A military cook directly makes sure that the murderers and torturers do not go hungry and are in a perfect condition to murder and torture.

Are you trying to ask what would be the good outcome of a massive labor strike in the US healthcare industry?

No. I asked what would be the good outcome of there being no healthcare workers in the US. The soldiers striking was never in the picture.
The benefits of there being no military in the US are clear and lack cons. The benefits of there being no healthcare workers in the US are dubious.

I get the impression you’re once again trying to excuse yourself of moral blame by saying the producers of animal products are significantly worse than the consumers.

The actual harm in this situation is done to the animals from whom the meat is made. This is done by the producers, rather than by the consumers. Not sure why you think that it’s the other way around.

And no, I don’t believe you have a moral right to be a terrorist.

So, you agree, then, that becoming a USian terrorist for money is inexcusable, and that the rest of the world is in the right to defend itself from them however it sees fit?

I do think the perception matters in these instances.

Haha. No, the severity of the tortures, the killings and the like do not depend on if the shutzstaffel thugs think those are good things.

It’s a testament to the success of the propaganda surrounding public schools that you have conflated the institution of public education with education simpliciter.

As somebody who studies by themselves every day, I didn’t. That’s just how effective education is done at scale.

As for the difference between whims and instructions, they’re effectively the same.

They aren’t. The range of things that a teacher can demand can and is bounded.

We have children requesting to use the restroom, even being denied such a “privilege.”

This is an understandable complaint.

Who are you allowed to talk to and when? The teacher decides. Who can you sit next to? The teacher decides. … Hungry? You can eat at the appointed time and no other.

These complaints are silly. Do you think these are ‘whims’?

Want to associate with someone in a different grade? Not permitted.

In every place where I studied, there were no such limitations, with some even studying together with children from other grades in the same classrooms.

We somehow have accepted that school children ought to be treated like prisoners rather than free members of our society.

Seems like a very personally-charged tangent, but ok.

I envy you if you have seriously never seen liberals say that both NATO and welfare are good.

Unable to dedicate enough time to dissect particular examples, but, for example, places like lemmy.world are full of liberals who will tell you that NATO should keep going and maintain colonial subjugation of the Global South, but to provide its own people with better welfare.

I will be able to provide more examples later if that’s not enough.

It decreases overall

Yeah, so it is not true at least in the case of the USian shutzstaffel, contrary to the original claim.

If “respond to the draft or get arrested” is your interpretation of choice

The US isn’t doing a forced draft. These monsters sign up voluntarily.

So insulting the military can come off as insulting the person rather than the role/entity.

I am perfectly fine with insulting individual unrepentant USian shutzstaffel troops.

Especially for Americans, who do not have much outside of propaganda being fed from every angle and barely an education, many barely read anymore. If they can barely critically think, do you think they’re at fault or are they raised/trained to just believe it? This is the general population, not elite class who have better education purposely.

Propaganda isn’t done sci-fi mind control. These people are adults that supposedly still have brains that can self-reflect and analyse their beliefs. Stop pretending as if they are helpless and not self-serving and monstrous.

The main statistic that I want to point at is a majority joined for money and education.

Which shows that they can’t be defended.

It is so incredibly silly how this ‘they just want to go to university’ (by committing atrocities) retort is being thrown around as if they don’t have the option of simply not attending a university.

You’ve seen it, we’ve all seen it. So why bring up Epstein?

Because somebody thinks that we should treat criminals the same as the military (despite criminals being a lot less harmful than the USian military). Considering that we are for some reason expected to just excuse the soldiers engaging in enslavement of foreigners, that means that so should the criminals.

but that doesn’t relate to poverty stricken individuals who I referenced

Only a small part of the USian shutzstaffel can be described so.

Again, it’s reactionary - you’re using pedophilia crime from the elite to compare to poverty related crime which is galaxies away on a morality spectrum. Killing someone from being on the brink of death for a way to survive is different than owning an island and sex trafficking humans.

You are saying that it’s perfectly fine to sign up to participate in kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and more assorted colonial subjugation of the Global South if one is poor, but that holding such people in contempt is reactionary.

Stop pretending as if they did so to survive. University is not needed to survive, and if you can sign up for the USian ss, you can find a different job.

why mention a upper class criminal again?

Because you just broadly said that criminals should be treated the same as the military when criminals do range from Epsteins who do what the military does to people who are, in fact, innocent.

And yes, you are currently saying that being essentially an Epsteinian lackey and helping to do human trafficking is fine if you are poor, so I am not sure why bringing up him rattles you so much.

Again, I understand your sediment. I’d just rather work towards deprogramming others who may be leaving the military or whatever relation to it with some grace in conversation (mostly in real life as this is what online banter is nowadays and probably always has and will) rather than attacking and letting the right (that can be reasoned with, I know some can’t be reason with) grow larger due to more alienation.

Don’t have a problem with that. And, if they do come to the understanding that what they did was bad, they will also understand the ire they were getting.

Put it this way: military recruitment is almost always inversely proportional to the economic wellbeing.

At least In the US, that is very much not true. The poor are actually underrepresented in the USian military. It is the well-of quantiles in the middle that are overrepresented.

Also, no, you are not forced to join the USian military.

You hear a lot of NATO liberals saying that the plunder from Africa, Asia, and elsewhere should go to welfare. This even happens on these sites.

You have to be living under a rock to not hear liberals day exactly that.

Completely disagree. There’s an important caveat: Necessary consumption of products is the furthest one can be from participation.

We already know that you pretend that buying a product made by NATO is just as bad as being a torturer in Abu Ghraib.

Simply consuming things is, indeed, either the furthest one can be from relevant participation, or not far off. The fact that you keep equivocating that with going overseas to murder children simply betrays that you do not see people outside of NATO as people.

Also, you even think that consumers of meat are more at fault for producing meat than the people involved in producing meat, which is extremely silly.

That’s okay. I don’t necessarily expect someone to condemn themselves.

Cute, especially considering that I do not live in “the western world” (i.e. the Imperial Core), and neither does most of the world whom you claim it’s okay to invade. “It’s just as bad to buy meat as it is to orchestrate Highways of Death”, lol.

What would make you hate a force for decolonization and workers’ rights?

If you can sign up for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people in the Global South for the Epstein empire, you can find a different job.

Also, did they suddenly forget what their military does? And also failed to think of the people on the receiving end of what this military does? How is this in any way an excuse?

Most of the German military had nothing to do with the atrocities committed during the war

Holy hell, a clean wehrmachter in the wild in 2026.

It’s pretty silly to claim that most of the German military had nothing to do with, for example, the Lebensraum, which included such things as the invasion of the USSR.

Go ahead and show anything that says people who join the US military are well off.

Can’t do that right this moment, but what income quantiles do you think are the most represented in the USian genocide machine?

I don’t think you know what everyone or really what most people in a modern military do.

Do you claim that your military was not involved in the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Palestine, as well as many other places? Or do you concede that I do, in fact, know what your military has been doing?

Anything I would sabotage that would satisfy you would kill a few hundred and affect hundreds of thousands due to nuclear fallout.

So, you couldn’t even openly refuse to follow orders from a military that is engaged in a genocide? You couldn’t leak any information to your empire’s victims? You couldn’t assault your officers or other thugs? Nothing?

You are saying this as if combat is the only bad thing your empire does, as if colonial subjugation, kidnapping, torture, and the like are not, and as of things like military logistics are not done in service of those goals.

A combo of lifting equipment without proper gear because the military wants you to do things now rather than take longer to get personal safety equipment and mental health from working in one of the most stressful fields in the US military.

Hope you regret joining the genocidaire gang.

Like I said, the majority of my 5000 coworkers and I never saw an enemy combatant except maybe the pilots.

You are saying that as if combat is the only bad thing your empire does.
Notably, an Abu Ghraib torturer didn’t have to see any combatants, either.

So, were you paid to do nothing, or were you paid to contribute to the most vile military in the world? In the latter case, did you engage in sabotage against your military, or did you do what the military estimated would be the best for it that you do?

I am already doing more than you by not signing up to torture children in the Global South

By that same logic, however, pretty much everyone in capitalist societies are also contributing to the “subjugation of non-white people.”

Nowhere near to the same degree, however. Your attempts to equate these things is extention silly.

I’m failing to see how the military is somehow directly responsible for the person I was originally responding to living under a capitalist system whereas they are not.

Do you also fail to see how the USian soldiers are responsible for, for example, the tortures at Abu Ghraib? I guess you don’t see that as any different from being a cashier in the US in terms of awfulness.

Mind you, non-capitalist communities have firefighting and even militaries. Neither occupation is inherently capitalistic.

However, non-capitalist societies of today are not responsible for the colonial subjugation of the Global South. Not sure why you are ripping them into this.

Regarding the healthcare industry in the US, it’s a profit-seeking venture. Anyone who participates in it voluntarily (e.g., doing software engineering for healthcare companies) is directly involved in one of America’s most backwards sectors of the economy.

Ok? Do they do anything comparable to bombing schoolchildren in Iran? What would be the good outcome of none of those people participating in the USian healthcare system?

Why would I have to attack the meat producers first?

The fact that you blame consumers of meat and the like - and not the producers, i.e. the people actually doing the bad thing - for the production of meat and similar things is also very silly.

Also, do you agree that the rest of the world has a moral right to kill NATO’s ss troopers, or do you think it would be great if I kidnapped, tortured and killed your family for money?

For the average person in either role, both are just a job.

We are not talking about their own perception of what they do.

You just happen to prefer one to another, personally.

What is word is that you do not prefer cooking meals for schoolchildren to making sure NATO’s occasions, genocides and the like are completed.

Unless, of course, you somehow think it isn’t fascist for the state to decide the curriculum that every child is forced to learn, segregate children based on age, …

Ah yes, education. What horror. Very comparable to killing children overseas. /s

and coerce them into obeying the whims of whatever state employee happens to be their teacher.

Obeying their whims, rather than actual instructions - yes. And such teachers are, indeed, bad and should be punished. Do you think otherwise?

Consumption of products is the furthest one can be from participation in such things in many cases, or not far off.
Unlike working in a NATO military.

Honestly ridiculous how you try to equate these things.