• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    To me, throwing vitriol at people because a decades-long campaign from the most powerful people on earth succeeded feels so similar to blaming the enslaved for not freeing themselves.

    It becomes more complicated when the campaign was created by propagandists from the 1940s and simply echoed through time by increasingly credulous buffons with more and more money.

    At the same time, the “enslaved” keep signing up to join the military and the police, so that they can leverage their position to get access to the things they are trying to deprive everyone else of.

    So it’s a cycle of self-imposed violence and poverty. And it is one that people accept reflexively because it hurts other people who are lower than them on the social order.

    Not simply an issue of ignorance but of cruelty.

    • rmrf@lemmy.ml
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      13 days ago

      At the same time, the “enslaved” keep signing up to join the military and the police, so that they can leverage their position to get access to the things they are trying to deprive everyone else of.

      At least in my hometown, people are trained from birth that joining the military is a high honor and one of the bravest and least-selfish things one can do. There’s a reason the military aims more recruiting effort towards teenagers than any other demographic, with 40% of the entire military (not just of new recruits) being under 25: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK547615/figure/fig_3_2/?report=objectonly

      So it’s a cycle of self-imposed violence and poverty. And it is one that people accept reflexively because it hurts other people who are lower than them on the social order.

      Partly, yes. Keep in mind my original comment was in response to another, not a holistic self-standing claim. My opening sentence was a comparative, not a declaration of absolute fact.

      Also to be clear, my use of enslaved was in reference to slavery in the USA, not the military which is an entirely volunteer (yes, the word volunteer is a heavy lift) force.