As title, if you have post or link any useful resource you have
So, veteran here. I’ve tried to talk people out of joining the military or at least trying to avoid jobs with high probability of seeing combat. Usually the result is they just start prying about what combat is like and make statements about how much they want to experience it.
Another tack I haven’t tried but it might be more effective, is to describe how miserable it is to have the stench of a burn pit wafting over you, always wondering if the distant gunfire will move in your direction, being stuck manning a 24/7 watch where if even one person who can do that job dies or is otherwise incapacitated you will be stuck doing 12hr shifts instead of 8. Then you get back home and have to fight tooth and nail for benefits from the country that fucked your life up in the first place.
War is hell, coming home is hell, forcing that on someone can only be justified if they are literally at home fighting off an invading force.
forcing that on someone can only be justified if they are literally at home fighting off an invading force.
Empire propaganda must be real good if this commenter has to say this out loud
It’s not the propaganda that’s good, SunZu.
It’s the poverty. Tens of millions of young people in this country have no other way out of debt or to move upward economically.
It IS the propaganda that makes people decide that the military is a way out of poverty and not just another trap OF poverty. If there weren’t recruiters in every poor neighbourhood’s school, people might decide that joining a mission or Greenpeace or digging wells in Africa for a charity is their “only way” out of poverty.
forcing that on someone can only be justified if they are literally at home fighting off an invading force.
I believe abolish someone rights is never a good thing. If you are fighting against someone that wants to take these away you have even more reason to respect these rights and stand for them.
It’s amazing the shit rich old people can convince poor young people to die saying
edit: meant to say ‘rich young people on computers thousands of miles away cheering on other people’s deaths’
I invite all of you chickenhawk nazi lovers to go die charging a trench in the place of someone who doesn’t support your cause and doesn’t want to die.
The issue, from what I can tell, is that the question you’ve asked here doesn’t match the argument you just had in comments of a post about about the Ukraine war. The argument you were trying to make is not “war bad”, but specifically that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is bad. You were additionally arguing that it is morally reprehensible for other countries to provide economic support to Ukraine rather than leaving them to “defend themselves”.
There’s a few important details that such an argument (intentionally) ignores.
- This invasion was not a choice between war or no war. It was simply a decision between locations that battles take place. It is entirely legitimate for Ukraine to pursue a counteroffensive strategy into russian territory if it believes it to be a more effective military strategy than defensive attritional warfare within their own borders.
- The fact that combat is taking place in Russian territory doesn’t change the fact that the war itself is a defensive war against an aggressor with overtly territorial/imperialist goals.
- As far as I am aware, the units involved in the counteroffensive are exclusively non-drafted volunteer units.
- Cessation of funding to Ukraine would lead to their imminent loss. The fact that they have been able to innovate cheaper strategies like domestic drone usage doesn’t change the fact that war is extremely expensive and technology dependent, and their economy is dwarfed by that of Russia’s.
The combination of your proposals that Ukraine should not proactively fight back, and that they should lose access to the resources that would allow them to continue to defend their territory end us meaning that Ukraine would not be able to effectively defend itself.
From reading your comments alongside this post, it seems that the title should actually be “how do you make someone understand that rolling over and dying is good”, to which the answer is “oh fuck off mate”
The question asked in the thread title is really simple and you should try to stay on topic.
The argument you were trying to make is not “war bad”, but specifically that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is bad.
You were additionally arguing that it is morally reprehensible for other countries to provide economic support to Ukraine
You are twisting what i’ve said. I encourage you to read other people post better because i never made such claim.
From reading your comments alongside this post, it seems that the title should actually be “how do you make someone understand that rolling over and dying is good”, to which the answer is “oh fuck off mate”
If you believe that not being drafted by force and ordered to invade another country is the equivalent of rolling over and dying you are probably victim of the propaganda. As other have suggested here i advise you to watch drones videos from this war where they roll over and die
Let’s go look at your comment history and check, shall we?
Defending yourself and launching invasions or orchestrating soldiers are two different things
It’s not defending yourself if you have an army! What a great take 👍
it sounds like the government is giving out plans and commanding the army. The government of ukraine and people from ukraine are two different things. When people ask what’s the alternative to send billions to the ukrainian government what they need to understand is that people can defend themself even without an authority on top of them playing war games with soldiers and possibly forcing conscript to go on missions
Oh, why did Ukraine never consider magically winning the war by sheer willpower instead of this “having an army” nonsense, smart!
I’m not twisting anything. Context matters, and the context of your post was you throwing a tantrum after around 10 different Lemmy users calling out your bad takes.
If you believe not being drafted blah blah blah
That’s not what I said at all, mere moments after you accused me of “twisting” what you said. What I said, louder for the people in the back is BEING UNABLE TO FIGHT BACK IN THE ENEMY’S TERRITORY, BEING DISALLOWED TO RECEIVE FOREIGN AID AND BEING DISALLOWED TO FORM AN ACTUAL ARMY is the equivalent of rolling over and dying.
The “invasion” of Russia isn’t an invasion though. They have no desire (and no capability) to actually take land.
It’s a war Russia started by invading Ukraine. Of fucking course it’s reasonable to expect Ukraine to counterattack.
You can’t simply hit someone unprovoked and then get mad when they hit back.
Or course drafting is controversial but it’s much less so when the purpose is to protect your country and home compared to what Russia is doing with their drafts where the only purpose is to kill and invade Ukraine.
If Russia surrendered with reasonable terms, Ukraine would obviously exit Russia. They have no desire to keep it.
The “invasion” of Russia isn’t an invasion though. They have no desire (and no capability) to actually take land.
Russia propaganda be saying the same thing, for them it’s a “special operation” and not an invasion. The conversation you are replying to makes reference to another thread in which “orders to invade russia” were mentioned.
Or course drafting is controversial but it’s much less so when the purpose is to protect your country and home compared to what Russia is doing with their drafts where the only purpose is to kill and invade Ukraine.
So let me ask you something: if you were born in russia and kazakistan declares war to russia would you be fine with you and your friends be drafted by force and sent to the front fighting under the command of putin and its mobsters? Perhaps not everyone is willing to die burned alive in a trench, be it for the russian or ukrainian government.
If Russia surrendered with reasonable terms, Ukraine would obviously exit Russia. They have no desire to keep it.
Ukrainian people perhaps no. Worldwide governments seem to have an interest in this war because they are doing everything to fuel it.
Whether it’s a good thing or not depends entirely on your philosophical views. There is no objectively correct answer, and which arguments may convince someone very much depends on the values and perspectives of the person you are trying to convince.
How do you make someone realize that their philosophical views are bad then?
Sorry, I’m completely immovable on the stance that war is bad. Never once has mass human slaughter made the world a better place.
I understand that, like everything, there are those who disagree. Moral relativism aside, those people are wrong, in the sense that I have zero tolerance for supporting campaigns of mass death.
We don’t have a way to do this. I don’t think we ever will. Wish the answer was different.
The one thing I will say is that logical argument is extremely ineffective for changing people’s views. Personal, emotional stories are best. The issue is that war and the draft is already highly emotionally charged, so it’s gonna be hard to find something that will strike a nerve with someone who hasn’t already come around on it.
First you set up a news agency. You tune into their fear of inadequacy. You craft stories and spin truths to Make sure that they’re good and scared of the future of them and their family. You keep slowly chipping away until they have no problem with suspension of disbelief. You make sure that day and their friends all have the right tools to indoctrinate each other. Then you get small and big business on board by offering them tons of money to help keep everybody good and scared. You craft laws and put people in the right places in police organizations to make sure that the people you’re trying to scare them with are seen as the Boogeyman. Sure, it’s not technically forcing but it’s forcing…
OP, nobody in that thread yesterday was saying it was a good thing. When a country gets invaded, your responses are always going to be a matter of lesser evils. Apologies for Godwin’s-Law-ing this off the bat, but it wasn’t great that the Allies drafted hundreds of thousands of people and invaded Nazi Germany. It was still better than every other option.
Godwin’s law itself always confused me. Of course comparisons with nazi Germany are overused, but it’s literally only 80 years ago. The fact that it could happen such a short time ago means that many of the same dangers, same lessons learned are very likely still completely applicable today. The human behaviors that led to Nazi Germany are still there, in/outgroup thinking, fear of foreigners/others, etc etc etc
So yeah I don’t think “Godwin’s law” existing as a concept should stop valid comparisons.
It doesn’t! It’s just a comment on how overused the comparisons are on the internet. To quote Godwin himself:
Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.
You can’t make a person understand anything. If the very simple explanation of “draft the unwilling and send them to die” doesn’t convince them, they don’t want to be convinced. I couldn’t name a single person who thinks that’s good, just maybe some folks who would say it’s sometimes a grim necessity. And I guess I’m in the latter camp, but shit would have to be dire.
Yeah like somebody else said, you’d have to challenge their philosophical believes that leads them to hold this opinion first.
And that in turn requires argueing them from a position not based on “I disagree, and my opinion is the correct one”, but on philosophical, logical and argumentative flaws in their believe system. Which is not easy to do. At all. It’s in fact very hard, made harder by the fact that our brains can see information, actively realize this information is correct and contradicts something we thought of earlier, and yet also discard said information and stick to the existing mental model instead. Meaning that even if you do everything correct, they might go “Yes, that’s true” and then nothing happens, out of no ill will.
