Look this probably is going to be an unpopular opinion, and I know this is part of a wider attack on trans people which is obviously fucked, but the world would be a better place if literally nobody was in the US military. We mock Israel for their army of idpol genocidaires.
Maybe if we’re lucky he’ll kick women out next, which will eliminate a quarter of their troops. It was basically only allowing women into the military that has saved the all-volunteer US armed forces from the absolute collapse in recruitment.
Edit: reading the other comments turns out this is a cold and popular take. Thank you my echo chamber friends
It’s very funny when chuds complain about women in the military when you’re 100% right about them never reaching targets with just men and it was a practical solution to shore up the power of empire without offering higher pay and shit.
Cuz it turns out it’s a tough sell to ruin your knees and be scared of fireworks till you die for a college scholarship and you couldn’t save as much pay as you initially planned because you had to live off post because there’s black mold in the barracks and a whole host of other shit
So, dear chuds, by all means do whatever reforms you want that will ultimately make the military perform worse
They’re getting rid of their only competent troops lmao
thats my president
Good because this will probably weaken the military along with his purges. If it makes the military less competent, I’m for it.
I don’t think it will do anything negative just like rainbow capitalism didn’t do anything positive.
I sincerely disagree. 15,000 members of the US Armed Forces do not move the needle on the US’ imperial might (which ultimately is predicated on financial domination and vassals, not military prowess). 15,000 marginalized people within the armed forces, however, represented a prime tactical advantage for a revolutionary political movement. See: Aaron Bushnell.
Obviously we can talk back and forth all day long about how the US armed forces can never be truly radicalized because of their position as footsoldiers of capital, but the hard material reality is that the American left is deficient in firepower but the military is full of possible fellow travelers. Remember that the Chinese Red Army was mostly made up of Nationalist deserters. How do you expect to be successful without a significant fifth column?
I’m fine with a tiny 15,000 of those “possible fellow travellers” getting a good dose of reality to leave the Wehrmacht- and ideally in the process, the contradictions and lies or the empire also being pushed forward a bit moreso into the minds of any such others with the same potential (human decency/empathy).
Also, IMO- it does not do our community (the trans community) globally or even within the US/west any favors IMO, to have token Uncle Toms joining in the empire’s war machine, whatever their motivations. Just like Isntreal flying the trans or rainbow flags is no benefit- or like how Obama’s election did no favors to the black and African communities within the US or outside it (as an Asian seeing what he did to Africa’s most developed country and black wealth/homeownership in the US I have said I hope I don’t see some Asian POTUS), etc.
15,000 marginalized people with military training that just got betrayed by their own government can, also, represent a tactical advantage.
True, but it’s not like they’re organized. If this was happening 10 years from now with an actual organized left that could quickly take the opportunity I’d more readily agree with you. Taking the opportunity away from us to turn these people into allies preemptively is surely a negative.
It does beg the question of where they’ll go from here.
Those 15,000 aren’t just combat roles and grindable meat; a lot of them are in support and technical roles. There are a lot of roles in which removing 1 person creates a sizable inconvenience for many and can harm operations. You are correct that trans people are overrepresented as saboteurs in the military, but almost all of those people joined pre-transition and seeing the contradictions of US empire radicalized them. The trans people who have transitioned and then joined are more often than not dyed-in-the-wool believers in the US empire who don’t have the same opportunity for radicalization.
Not only depriving the military of those skillsets and capacities, but absorbing them for ourselves
Didn’t a big poster start a struggle session and eventually got banned for defending the “troops are workers” position?
Yeah, 7deadlyfetishes, but I’m taking a very different position here. He more or less came at it from a position of tailism, that the left ought to try to appeal to troops to bring them in. I think something very different, the left still ought to be the vanguard in front, I’m just saying that dismissing the utility of the troops that might be politically aligned with our cause is a mistake. We shouldn’t sacrifice even 1 bit of our correctness for the sake of appealing to fascists, troops, cops, etc etc. But you really mean to tell me with a straight face that the correct move, tactically or strategically, is to turn away any would-be collaborators within the institutions we oppose? When they might want to do exactly the same thing we want to do?
US military is already admittedly understaffed. It’s a particular problem in the Navy and Air Force. They haven’t been meeting recruiting targets well at all and the article I read said they missed last year’s target by 45,000. If these people are all just gun-toting boots then yeah it doesn’t impact how things work. But if some amount of them are specialists it could cause severe strain and negligence in various parts like their ships not being repaired properly, their aircraft having problems, just all kinds of things that impact the machinery of the war machine itself that keep the more technical aspects above a bunch of people who handle M-16s and hang out in Japan or Germany.
I do not think the conditions yet exist for these people to be truly revolutionary. Remember they signed up for this. They weren’t conscripts and comparing this to China’s situation in their civil war is like comparing apples to horse-shoes. Those people in China’s nationalist army were revolutionaries of a kind who wanted independence and self-determination for their country, many of them were misled into a certain kind of nationalism but upon discovering communism they were amenable to it given it fit their passions and goals and met them much more effectively because communism was a message of hope to these people given their history, that of their parents, etc. It allowed them to save and liberate their people, promised to rejuvenate their nation and has succeeded. What passions and goals does resisting the US government meet for people who joined up because they’re willing to enable killing brown people for healthcare or college and other highly individually centered selfish goals? What’s the similarity there?
They’ll be upset yes and that’s good. I’m glad there is tension there as should we all be glad that the empire isn’t able to effectively do rainbow imperialism with people like Trump taking off the mask so much. But I don’t think so upset they’ll be revolutionary. Americans are incredibly atomized and 15,000 is frankly a drop in the bucket. Could some of them eventually become part of something? Sure but they don’t represent any kind of collective force that’s going to pop up in any meaningful numbers to defend the marginalized when Hitler-lite (D) takes office and tunes the repression machine higher. I mean right now we’re in the middle of a genocide and the response is to crush college protests, to criminalize dissent against the zionist entity and classify it as racism and the response to that is liberals smugly blaming the left and saying we deserve it and collective feelings of despair and powerlessness.
Things are going to get much worse in the US before that revolutionary potential arrives and I don’t think it will be these people frankly. I think they’ll be in their 40s at least before that moment arrives and it will be some new group of people in or recently in the military when things hit the fan that will turn their guns around. I think between that moment arriving and now we will have a war with China and the way things are going maybe with Russia more directly too.
You have a very important point, war with China is much more proximal than revolutionary war. That changes the calculus. I think I stand by my belief that a fifth column is a required part of a successful leftist revolution against a militarized imperialist state; however it might be of greater utility for progressive forces outside the US for a large number of military specialists to be laid off without replacement. We’ll see.
Somehow I don’t think those 15,000 trans people in the USAF are majorily frontline infantry
If they’re technical support personnel they’d be even more valuable fifth columnists.
I’ll admit that what others in the thread said is true, trans troops are troops first and marginalized second, but if we categorically dismiss the tactical utility of potential collaborators we can’t succeed.
Remember that the Chinese Red Army was mostly made up of Nationalist deserters.
Well yes, but as socialists we should be strategically in support of universal conscription. A volunteer army is not likely to produce these results…
“Posts”
Keep in mind that there are a ton of bureaucratic, non-combative bullshit jobs in the military as well and I wouldn’t be surprised if this framing leads you to believe that only actively deployed troops will be affected
Aside, but this is also a good example of how consent-manufacturing isn’t always intentionally nefarious but sometimes the result of incurious journalists (more and more these days)
