The insistence that systemic opacity erases moral awareness is itself a weapon of that system—a seductive lie that confuses compartmentalization for innocence. The drone pilot may not see the toddler incinerated by their Hellfire, but they know the missile’s purpose isn’t philanthropy. Institutional fog does not absolve; it presupposes complicity, relying on participants to accept fragmentation as exoneration. To claim soldiers “lack exposure to consequences” is to ignore the voluminous after-action reports, the veteran testimonies, the very public debates about civilian casualties. Ignorance in the information age is a cultivated posture, not an inevitability.

You romanticize enlistment as purely economic desperation, reducing complex moral agents to survival automatons. But this infantilizes the working class you claim to defend. Yes, poverty funnels people into uniform—but so do recruitment ads selling glory, family legacies of service, even the thrill of weaponized masculinity. To flatten enlistment into mere survival is to deny the interplay of coercion and choice. The 19-year-old joining for college funds makes a different calculation than the contractor re-upping for a reenlistment bonus. Both perpetuate the machine, but only one faces true precarity. Moral scrutiny isn’t cruelty—it’s respect, a demand that we recognize their capacity to question the system that exploits them.

Fractal responsibility doesn’t “atomize” blame—it calibrates it. The mechanic servicing a bomber isn’t as guilty as the general who orders its deployment, but neither is they innocent. Nuremberg condemned industrialists alongside officers because systems require collusion at multiple tiers. Your framework, which quarantines guilt to the top, is a gift to power: it tells the CEO, “Only your underlings will face scrutiny,” and whispers to the soldier, “You’re a pawn, unworthy of moral consideration.” True justice scales accountability to agency—it does not vanish it.

You demand “concrete change” while dismissing stigma’s catalytic role. Cultural condemnation isn’t an end—it’s a means. When society stops valorizing military service, recruitment stalls. When engineers face scorn for optimizing kill-chains, talent fleeds the sector. When the VA nurse is asked, “How many insurgents did you stabilize today?” the mythology of heroism crumbles. Your fetish for “practical” policy ignores that laws follow cultural shifts, not precede them. The Civil Rights Act didn’t spring from legislative goodwill but from decades of stigmatizing segregationists.

Vietnam proves nothing but your own misreading. The error wasn’t critiquing service—it was directing that critique at conscripts instead of the war machine itself. Stigmatizing the uniform, not the wearer, is the goal. When we shame the institution, not its conscripts, we drain its moral capital.

Your “false binary” charge is projection. You—not I—insist we must choose between condemning architects or laborers. I reject this. The drone pilot’s choices matter because the senator’s do. Guilt isn’t zero-sum; it accretes. The ICC prosecutes warlords and child soldiers because both sustain conflict. To absolve one is to empower the other.

Finally, your concern for the “working class” is paternalism masquerading as solidarity. True allyship isn’t absolving the poor of moral reckoning—it’s refusing to let them be cannon fodder. To say they “lack agency” is to doom them to perpetual serfdom. The GI who leaks war crimes, the Snowden who exposes surveillance—these aren’t philosophers. They’re proof that even the desperate retain shards of choice. Your worldview—that only the privileged can afford ethics—is the true elitism.

You call my stance impractical. I call yours complicit. Revolutions begin when the exploited stop rationalizing their exploitation—when stigma becomes the spark, not the suffocation.

[–] coldasblues@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Your argument builds an elaborate philosophical castle on foundations of privileged abstraction. You speak with such certainty about moral obligations while showing profound disconnection from the material realities that shape actual human choices.

This preoccupation with individual moral purity—as if people exist outside systems—betrays an essentially privileged worldview. You characterize military recruitment as a simple moral choice rather than acknowledging it as the end result of deliberate policy decisions that create economic deserts in rural and low-income communities. When the military represents the only viable path to healthcare, education, and stable housing in countless American towns, framing enlistment as a purely moral decision rather than economic survival reveals remarkable detachment from reality.

Your accusation that I "infantilize" the working class is particularly telling. I recognize their agency within constraints; you demand they shoulder moral burdens without acknowledging those constraints. Which perspective truly respects their humanity? The teenager from a town with 40% unemployment and no community college isn't making the same "choice" as your philosophical thought experiment assumes. True respect isn't demanding moral purity from those with fewest options—it's acknowledging the systems designed to limit their choices while fighting to expand them.

The fractal responsibility concept you champion sounds sophisticated but proves practically unhelpful. If everyone bears some guilt, then guilt becomes meaningless as an organizing principle. The mechanic servicing aircraft isn't making policy decisions about their deployment. Recognizing this distinction isn't "quarantining guilt"—it's acknowledging reality. True accountability must be proportional to both knowledge and power; otherwise, we're simply reassigning blame downward to protect those truly responsible for policy decisions.

Most revealing is your romanticization of resistance. You cite whistleblowers as evidence that "even the desperate retain shards of choice" while ignoring the exceptional circumstances that made their actions possible. Manning and Snowden had rare access to information, technical knowledge, and positions that enabled their resistance. To suggest their examples prove all service members could make similar choices is to fundamentally misunderstand how structural power operates.

Your insistence that "stigma is a catalyst" ignores the distinction between stigmatizing institutions and demonizing individuals. Effective movements for military reform have always embraced veterans as crucial allies precisely because they understand the system from within. By demanding moral purity from all participants, you alienate the very people whose experience and credibility could most effectively challenge military institutions.

The irony is that your approach, which claims moral superiority, ultimately serves the status quo. By focusing moral scrutiny downward rather than upward, you divert attention from those with genuine power to create change—policymakers, defense contractors, and the voting public that enables them—and instead target those with the least decision-making authority. True solidarity means addressing the conditions that make military service one of the only viable paths for so many Americans, not condemning those trapped within systems they didn't create.

[–] lmfamao@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Your rebuttal is a masterclass in conflating material constraint with moral exemption, blending pathos with logical slippage. Let’s dissect:

The Privilege Paradox
You frame my insistence on moral agency as “privileged abstraction” while positioning yourself as the arbiter of working-class reality. This is paternalism disguised as solidarity. To claim poverty negates moral capacity is to reduce the oppressed to instinct-driven animals, not complex humans capable of ethical reflection. Yes, systemic coercion funnels people into the military—but to say they lack all choice is to deny the countless working-class resistors throughout history. The Black Panthers, the GI coffeehouse organizers, the Appalachian draft counselors—these weren’t Ivy elites. They were poor people who chose defiance. Your narrative erases them to sustain your fatalism.
Fractal Responsibility ≠ Equal Guilt
You misrepresent fractal accountability as “meaningless guilt,” a classic strawman. No one claims the mechanic shares equal blame with the general. We assert they share complicity in differing degrees. Nuremberg’s prosecutors didn’t equate IG Farben chemists with Hitler—they tried both, sentencing accordingly. To dismiss all layered culpability is to endorse the myth that oppression requires only villains, not collaborators.
The Whistleblower Dodge
You dismiss Manning and Snowden as “exceptions” to absolve the majority. But exceptions disprove your determinism. They prove that even under duress, moral choice persists. Were their actions rare? Yes. Difficult? Profoundly. But their existence refutes your claim that systemic coercion annihilates agency. Your logic suggests we shouldn’t praise any act of courage because most people conform—a surrender to moral mediocrity.
The False Binary of Stigma
You pit “stigmatizing institutions” against “demonizing individuals,” another strawman. The two are inextricable. To stigmatize the military as an institution requires condemning its function—which necessitates critiquing those who perpetuate it, however reluctantly. This isn’t about “purity”; it’s about refusing to valorize participation in imperialism. Your plea to “embrace veterans as allies” presumes they cannot be both victims and complicit—a nuance my framework allows. Veterans can critique the machine they served while acknowledging their role in it. See Rory Fanning, who left the Army Rangers and became an anti-war activist.
The Futility Gambit
Your “status quo” accusation inverts reality. By quarantining blame to policymakers, you protect the system’s foundation: the myth of passive foot soldiers. Power doesn’t reside solely in the Oval Office—it’s reproduced daily by millions of acquiescent actions. The Vietnam War ended not just because Nixon faced protests, but because draft resistance, GI mutinies, and desertions crippled the war effort. Change requires pressure at all levels.
The Myth of “Either/Or” Reform
You present policy change and cultural critique as opposites—a false dilemma. They’re symbiotic. The draft wasn’t abolished by congressional benevolence but by mass resistance that made conscription politically untenable. Similarly, defunding the military-industrial complex requires both legislative action and a culture that rejects militarism. Stigma isn’t the end—it’s the spark.
The Poverty of “No Alternatives”
You fixate on enlistment as the “only viable path” for the poor, but this fatalism ensures no alternatives emerge. Why not ask why the U.S. offers more funding for bombers than for rural schools? My critique doesn’t attack the enlistee—it attacks the system that makes enlistment a “choice” at all. Demanding better options requires first rejecting the legitimacy of the current ones.
The Coercion Canard
You conflate coercion with compulsion. Poverty limits choices; it doesn’t erase them. The 18-year-old who enlists to feed their family still chooses to prioritize their survival over others’. This doesn’t make them a monster—it makes them a moral agent whose decision warrants sober scrutiny, not blanket absolution. To say otherwise is to reduce ethics to a vending machine: insert desperation, receive exoneration.

Conclusion: The Luxury of Low Expectations

Your entire argument rests on a patronizing premise: that the working class is too besieged to bear ethical consideration. This isn’t solidarity—it’s condescension. True allyship means holding people capable of moral courage, even (especially) when systems seek to crush it. To lower the bar for the oppressed is to deny them full humanity. Revolutions aren’t won by those who see only constraints—they’re won by those who, even in chains, find ways to rattle them.

[–] coldasblues@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Your argument presents an elegant theoretical framework that fails to engage with actual lived reality. You've constructed an elaborate philosophical position that works perfectly in the abstract but crumbles when confronted with how power and choice actually function in people's lives.

When you accuse me of "conflating material constraint with moral exemption," you're setting up a false dichotomy. Acknowledging how systems limit choice isn't denying moral agency—it's recognizing its realistic boundaries. The working class isn't a monolith, and resistance movements throughout history represent exceptional circumstances, not the norm. For every GI coffeehouse organizer or draft counselor you mention, thousands more faced no meaningful alternative to service. Their existence doesn't invalidate systemic analysis; it highlights how rare successful resistance is within oppressive structures.

Your fractal accountability concept remains problematic not because it acknowledges varying degrees of complicity, but because it offers no practical framework for determining where responsibility meaningfully begins and ends. The Nuremberg comparison actually undermines your position—those trials focused primarily on leadership and those who enacted atrocities, not on every person who participated in the German war machine. They recognized that meaningful accountability requires proportionality and focus.

The whistleblower examples continue to miss the point. Manning and Snowden don't simply represent "rare courage"—they had specific access, technical knowledge, and supportive networks that made their actions possible. Their existence doesn't prove universal moral agency; it demonstrates how exceptional circumstances sometimes create openings for resistance. Most service members lack comparable opportunities for meaningful dissent.

Your rejection of the distinction between stigmatizing institutions and individuals reveals the fundamental flaw in your approach. Effective movements for military reform have always distinguished between systems and those caught within them. Veterans who become anti-war activists don't typically start by condemning their former comrades—they focus on the policies and leadership that created unjust wars. This isn't about "valorizing participation"; it's about strategic effectiveness in creating change.

What you frame as "fatalism" is actually pragmatism. Recognizing the severe constraints on working-class choices doesn't mean accepting those constraints—it means understanding what we're actually fighting against. Rather than demanding individual moral perfection from those with the fewest options, we should focus on dismantling the systems that limit those options in the first place.

Your position ultimately demands moral heroism from those with the least power while offering little concrete vision for how to create the alternatives you claim to want. The question isn't whether people retain some theoretical sliver of moral agency despite overwhelming constraints—it's how we build movements that actually create more just systems rather than merely condemning those trapped within existing ones.

[–] lmfamao@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Your rebuttal rests on several conflations that demand clarification.

You claim systemic analysis and individual accountability are incompatible, but this is a false divide. To recognize how poverty funnels people into militarism does not require absolving their participation in it. Acknowledging coercion is not exoneration—it’s contextualization. The working-class recruit and the defense contractor both perpetuate the machine, but through differing degrees of agency. Moral scrutiny need not be all-or-nothing; it can—and must—scale with power and choice.

The dismissal of historical resistors as “exceptions” misunderstands their purpose. Exceptions disprove inevitability. They reveal cracks in the system, not its invincibility. To say we shouldn’t celebrate Underground Railroad conductors because most enslaved people couldn’t escape would be absurd. Their rarity doesn’t negate their moral significance—it underscores the brutality of the structures that made rebellion so perilous.

Your Nuremberg analogy falters upon closer inspection. While leadership was prioritized, the trials explicitly rejected the “just following orders” defense, convicting bureaucrats, doctors, and industrialists who enabled atrocities. The lesson was clear: systems of oppression require collusion at multiple levels. To focus solely on policymakers is to ignore the ecosystem of complicity that sustains them.

Regarding whistleblowers: Manning and Snowden were not elites. They were low-level operatives whose choices, while exceptional, disprove the notion that dissent requires privilege. Most service members encounter ethical red flags; few act. This isn’t to condemn all who stay silent, but to reject the claim that silence is inevitable. Moral courage is always a choice, however costly.

You argue that effective movements focus on institutions, not individuals, yet history contradicts this. The civil rights movement didn’t just target Jim Crow laws—it shamed segregationists, boycotted businesses, and made racism socially toxic. Cultural stigma and policy change are symbiotic. To exempt individuals is to sanitize activism into a bloodless abstraction.

Your “pragmatism” conflates strategy with fatalism. Yes, we must dismantle systems that weaponize poverty. But refusing to critique those systems’ participants isn’t pragmatism—it’s resignation. The anti-war movement didn’t end the draft by politely petitioning Congress. It normalized resistance: burning draft cards, sheltering deserters, stigmatizing recruitment centers. Cultural shifts are strategy.

Finally, your concern for “alienating allies” presumes veterans cannot handle nuanced critique. Many already do. Organizations like Veterans for Peace or About Face openly reckon with their past roles while condemning militarism. True solidarity trusts people to grapple with complexity—it doesn’t condescend by shielding them from tough questions.

In the end, your framework mistakes compassion for evasion. Believing in systemic change doesn’t require absolving individuals—it demands we hold both the cage and its keepers to account. Revolutions aren’t built on pity for the exploited, but on faith in their capacity to resist, even within constraints. To lower that bar isn’t kindness. It’s despair.

[–] coldasblues@sh.itjust.works -1 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Your argument constructs a philosophical framework that appears coherent in theory but fails to translate into practical reality. Let me address several key misconceptions:

First, you consistently mischaracterize my position as complete moral absolution rather than proportional accountability. I've never claimed that systemic analysis requires exempting participants from moral consideration—only that responsibility must scale realistically with power, knowledge, and genuine choice. The difference between us isn't whether individuals bear responsibility, but how we calibrate that responsibility within systems deliberately designed to constrain choice.

Your invocation of historical resistors proves my point rather than refutes it. Yes, exceptions disprove inevitability—but they also demonstrate the extraordinary circumstances and consequences involved in resistance. Underground Railroad conductors risked execution to smuggle people to freedom. Draft resisters faced imprisonment. Manning served seven years in confinement. These examples don't show that moral heroism is a reasonable expectation; they illustrate its profound cost within oppressive systems.

The Nuremberg comparison actually strengthens my argument. While the trials rejected the "just following orders" defense, they primarily focused on those who created and implemented policies, not every participant in the German war machine. This demonstrates precisely the kind of proportional accountability I advocate. The trials recognized that systems of oppression require complicity at multiple levels while still distinguishing between architects and participants.

Your claims about whistleblowers continue to conflate theoretical and practical agency. Yes, Manning and Snowden were "low-level" in organizational hierarchies but had extraordinary access to information and technical capabilities most service members lack. Their actions required specific circumstances that aren't universally available. Most importantly, both paid severe prices for their choices—consequences that make such dissent practically impossible for many.

The civil rights movement example actually demonstrates strategic targeting rather than blanket condemnation. Boycotts and direct actions focused on specific businesses and visible perpetrators, not every participant in segregation. The movement understood that changing systems required pressure at strategic points, not diffuse moral judgment of everyone involved.

Your reduction of my position to "politely petitioning Congress" is a strawman. Effective movements have always balanced institutional pressure with cultural change while recognizing that meaningful transformation requires more than moral condemnation. The anti-war movement didn't end the draft through individual stigma alone but through coordinated political pressure that made the policy untenable.

Your framework ultimately mistakes moral absolutism for moral clarity. True solidarity doesn't require lowering the bar; it demands recognizing both the reality of constraints and the possibility of resistance within them. It focuses energy on dismantling systems that limit choice rather than expecting heroic moral purity from those with the fewest options. This isn't "despair"—it's strategic focus on where change actually happens.

[–] lmfamao@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Let’s take a different tack, because it seems like you’re not fully comprehending how much your arguments have not only shifted drastically since the beginning of this exchange, but are crumbling under their own contradictions.

Let’s hold your words side by side, while maintaining context:

You initially claimed: "Acknowledging how systems limit choice isn’t denying moral agency—it’s recognizing its realistic boundaries." Yet later, you dismissed whistleblowers as exceptions: "Manning and Snowden don’t simply represent 'rare courage'—they had specific access… that made their actions possible."

So which is it? If systemic constraints merely 'bound' agency, why frame resistance as requiring "extraordinary circumstances"? You can’t simultaneously argue that choice exists within constraints and that dissent is so exceptional it proves nothing.

You insisted: "Responsibility must scale realistically with power, knowledge, and genuine choice." But when pressed, you narrowed this to: "Nuremberg focused primarily on leadership… distinguishing between architects and participants."

Except Nuremberg did prosecute mid-tier actors—a fact you ignore to protect your hierarchy of guilt. You demand "proportionality" but define it to absolve all but elites.

You accused me of "mistaking moral absolutism for moral clarity" while arguing: "Effective movements… focus on policies, not individuals." Yet earlier, you praised the civil rights movement for "strategic targeting"—which included boycotts that shamed individual businesses and exposed specific perpetrators.

You vacillate between "systems matter, not people" and "sometimes people matter" to dodge scrutiny.

You framed enlistment as survival: "The teenager… isn’t making the same 'choice' as your philosophical thought experiment assumes." But when I noted enlistment often involves cultural factors (glory, legacy), you pivoted: "The working class deserves… recognition as moral actors."

So which is it? Are enlistees helpless victims of circumstance or moral agents capable of questioning systems? You toggle between these to avoid conceding that poverty limits—but doesn’t obliterate—choice.

You cited Nuremberg to argue "accountability requires focus"—yet ignored that the trials explicitly rejected "just following orders" even for low-ranking SS. You cherry-pick history to sanitize complicity.

You claimed: "Real change comes through political organization… not moral gatekeeping." But later admitted: "The anti-war movement… normalized draft-card burning." So suddenly, cultural stigma is part of "pragmatism"? Your definition of "practical" shifts to exclude critique when inconvenient.

Conclusion: Your argument isn’t a coherent stance—it’s a series of tactical retreats. When pressed on agency, you cite constraints. When shown resistance, you dismiss it as exceptional. When confronted with history, you cherry-pick. This isn’t systemic analysis—it’s intellectual arbitrage, exploiting ambiguity to evade hard truths. It seems that consistency is the first casualty of your philosophy.

[–] coldasblues@sh.itjust.works -1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Let’s take a different tack, because it seems like you’re not fully comprehending how much your arguments have not only shifted drastically since the beginning of this exchange, but are crumbling under their own contradictions.

Let’s hold your words side by side, while maintaining context:

You initially claimed: “Acknowledging how systems limit choice isn’t denying moral agency—it’s recognizing its realistic boundaries.” Yet later, you dismissed whistleblowers as exceptions: “Manning and Snowden don’t simply represent ‘rare courage’—they had specific access… that made their actions possible.”

So which is it? If systemic constraints merely ‘bound’ agency, why frame resistance as requiring “extraordinary circumstances”? You can’t simultaneously argue that choice exists within constraints and that dissent is so exceptional it proves nothing.

You insisted: “Responsibility must scale realistically with power, knowledge, and genuine choice.” But when pressed, you narrowed this to: “Nuremberg focused primarily on leadership… distinguishing between architects and participants.”

Except Nuremberg did prosecute mid-tier actors—a fact you ignore to protect your hierarchy of guilt. You demand “proportionality” but define it to absolve all but elites.

You accused me of “mistaking moral absolutism for moral clarity” while arguing: “Effective movements… focus on policies, not individuals.” Yet earlier, you praised the civil rights movement for “strategic targeting”—which included boycotts that shamed individual businesses and exposed specific perpetrators.

You vacillate between “systems matter, not people” and “sometimes people matter” to dodge scrutiny.

You framed enlistment as survival: “The teenager… isn’t making the same ‘choice’ as your philosophical thought experiment assumes.” But when I noted enlistment often involves cultural factors (glory, legacy), you pivoted: “The working class deserves… recognition as moral actors.”

So which is it? Are enlistees helpless victims of circumstance or moral agents capable of questioning systems? You toggle between these to avoid conceding that poverty limits—but doesn’t obliterate—choice.

You cited Nuremberg to argue “accountability requires focus”—yet ignored that the trials explicitly rejected “just following orders” even for low-ranking SS. You cherry-pick history to sanitize complicity.

You claimed: “Real change comes through political organization… not moral gatekeeping.” But later admitted: “The anti-war movement… normalized draft-card burning.” So suddenly, cultural stigma is part of “pragmatism”? Your definition of “practical” shifts to exclude critique when inconvenient.

Conclusion: Your argument isn’t a coherent stance—it’s a series of tactical retreats. When pressed on agency, you cite constraints. When shown resistance, you dismiss it as exceptional. When confronted with history, you cherry-pick. This isn’t systemic analysis—it’s intellectual arbitrage, exploiting ambiguity to evade hard truths. It seems that consistency is the first casualty of your philosophy.

Your argument has shifted dramatically throughout this exchange, revealing inconsistencies that suggest this isn't about philosophical clarity but about justifying judgment from a safe distance.

You've alternately portrayed soldiers as both helpless victims of circumstance and fully accountable moral agents whenever it suits your argument. You dismiss resistance as "exceptional" when it contradicts your determinism, yet cite those same exceptions as proof that everyone should be held to that standard. You cherry-pick historical examples while ignoring their full context.

But let's set aside the logical contradictions for a moment and address what's really happening here.

The extreme language about soldiers "enjoying murdering civilians" and "joining up to shoot people" reveals this isn't about ethical philosophy - it's about dehumanizing people you've never met. Posting these views in spaces where actual veterans are unlikely to respond doesn't demonstrate philosophical courage - it suggests you're more interested in judgment than understanding.

Real moral courage would involve speaking directly with veterans about their experiences rather than constructing elaborate theories about their motivations from a distance. It would mean acknowledging the complexity of human choice without surrendering to absolutism or total relativism.

The working-class teenager who enlists because their town offers no economic opportunities deserves neither complete absolution nor blanket condemnation. They deserve the dignity of being seen as a full human navigating impossible choices within systems designed to limit those choices.

Your position offers nothing constructive - no path forward, no vision for change, just judgment without understanding. It creates no space for redemption, growth, or transformation. It simply categorizes people as either morally pure or irredeemably complicit.

True justice requires holding power accountable while creating pathways for healing and change. It demands we recognize both individual responsibility and structural constraints without using either to negate the other.

Instead of crafting elaborate philosophical frameworks to justify hate from a distance, perhaps consider engaging directly with those whose experiences differ from yours. Veterans' organizations, peace activists who served in combat, community organizers in military towns - these voices might complicate your narrative in ways that lead to greater understanding rather than simplistic judgment.

The path beyond hate isn't found in philosophical abstraction or moral absolutism. It's found in the difficult, messy work of seeing others' humanity, even when their choices differ from what you would make in their position.

[–] lmfamao@lemm.ee 1 points 22 minutes ago* (last edited 22 minutes ago)

Your latest missive pivots rather dramatically from the pretense of philosophical debate to a flurry of ad hominem attacks and mischaracterizations. It seems when the foundations of your argument grew shaky, you opted to critique the architect rather than the architecture. Let us dismantle this new edifice of deflection, brick by rhetorical brick.

The Mirage of Inconsistency: You accuse me of shifting sands, yet it is you who seems unable to grasp nuance. To state that agency exists within profound systemic constraints is not a contradiction; it is the very definition of navigating oppressive structures. Resistance being difficult or rare due to these constraints does not magically erase the possibility or the moral weight of choice – it merely highlights the cost, a cost whistleblowers like Manning and Snowden demonstrably paid. To hold both truths – constraint and agency – is complexity, not inconsistency. Similarly, acknowledging proportionality in guilt (Nuremberg) while insisting responsibility extends beyond the absolute apex is not contradictory; it’s precisely how sophisticated legal and ethical systems function, something you conveniently ignore by focusing solely on the very top tier of defendants. Your demand for simplistic binaries forces you to see contradiction where there is only layered reality.
The Phantom Quote & The Ad Hominem Shuffle: You attribute phrases to me – "enjoying murdering civilians," "joining up to shoot people" – enclosed in quotation marks, implying direct citation. Let the record show: this is a fabrication, a straw man sculpted from bad faith. My critique targets the function and outcomes of military institutions and the roles within them – the deployment of lethal force, the upholding of imperial interests, the predictable generation of civilian casualties. To conflate this structural critique with accusations of individual bloodlust is a deliberate, and frankly desperate, misrepresentation. Your subsequent pivot to my supposed motivations ("judging from a safe distance," lacking "courage" to speak to veterans) is a textbook ad hominem fallacy. The validity of a critique of systemic violence does not hinge on the speaker's personal proximity to its agents. One need not personally interview every CEO profiting from exploitation to critique capitalism, nor every soldier to critique militarism. The system, its logic, and its effects are the subject, not the individual psyche of every participant – though the system certainly shapes that psyche.
The Patronizing Plea for "Humanity": You position yourself as the champion of the working-class enlistee, painting them as purely reactive victims navigating "impossible choices." While acknowledging the brutal reality of economic conscription is crucial (a point I’ve consistently integrated), your framework uses this reality as a shield against any ethical scrutiny. You offer a vision of "dignity" that amounts to infantilization – treating individuals as incapable of moral reasoning under pressure. True dignity lies in recognizing their capacity for choice, however constrained, and demanding systems that don't weaponize poverty against them and others. Your call to "see their humanity" rings hollow when it serves primarily to silence critique of the violent systems they are compelled (or choose) to serve. Empathy should not require ethical blindness.
The Illusion of "No Path Forward": You lament that my position offers only "judgment." This willfully ignores the tangible effects of cultural shifts driven by critique and stigma. Reducing the social license of militarism, questioning the automatic valorization of service, challenging the normalization of state violence – these are paths forward. They erode the foundations upon which recruitment, funding, and political support for perpetual war are built. Policy change rarely happens in a vacuum; it often follows a profound shift in public consciousness, a shift fueled by the very "moral gatekeeping" you disdain. To demand neat policy proposals while dismissing the cultural work that makes them possible is, again, a strategic evasion. Accountability itself is a constructive step.

In conclusion, your argument has devolved from debating principles to impugning motives and constructing straw men. You oscillate between portraying soldiers as helpless pawns and moral agents depending on which framing best deflects criticism. You demand empathy as a substitute for accountability and mistake pragmatic analysis of constraints for a denial of all agency. This isn't a robust defense; it's a tactical retreat into sentimentalism and misdirection.

The path beyond the horrors of imperialism and state violence isn't paved with comforting evasions or the blanket absolution of all who participate under duress. It requires rigorous critique of the systems and a clear-eyed understanding of the choices made within them – scaled by power, yes, but never entirely erased. It demands we hold faith in the capacity of all people, even the oppressed, to engage in moral reasoning and, sometimes, courageous resistance. Your framework, which offers paternalistic pity instead of demanding accountability and radical change, ultimately serves only the systems we both claim to oppose.--

[–] lmfamao@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago

Your rebuttal rests on a series of selective interpretations that obscure the interdependence of systemic and individual accountability. Let’s clarify:

You argue for “proportional accountability” but define it so narrowly that it functionally absolves anyone outside leadership roles. Nuremberg, however, explicitly rejected this hierarchy of guilt. While prioritizing architects, the trials also prosecuted industrialists, bureaucrats, and doctors—not because they held equal power, but because systems of oppression require collaboration at multiple levels. Proportionality isn’t about exempting participants—it’s about calibrating scrutiny to their role. Your framework risks reducing accountability to a binary: architects bear guilt, while participants bear circumstance. This isn’t nuance—it’s evasion.

Resistance is costly, yes—but so is complacency. The Underground Railroad conductor risked death, but we don’t retroactively excuse those who didn’t resist; we honor those who did. Their courage doesn’t demand heroism from everyone—it exposes the moral stakes of participation. To say “most couldn’t” doesn’t negate the imperative to act; it indicts the system that made resistance lethal. Dismissing dissent as “exceptional” rationalizes passivity.

Your claim that whistleblowers like Manning and Snowden had “extraordinary access” distorts reality. Manning was a low-ranking analyst; Snowden, a contractor. Their roles weren’t unique—their choices were. The My Lai massacre was halted not by a general but by Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot who intervened. Moral courage isn’t about hierarchy—it’s about recognizing ethical breaches and acting, however imperfectly. To frame their actions as outliers is to ignore that systems crumble when enough cogs refuse to turn.

The civil rights movement did target institutions, but it also stigmatized individuals—Bull Connor, George Wallace, and the white citizens who upheld segregation. Rosa Parks wasn’t a passive victim of buses; she was a trained activist making deliberate choices. The movement understood that systemic change requires both policy shifts and cultural condemnation of those who enforce oppression. Boycotts didn’t just bankrupt businesses—they made racism socially untenable.

You frame systemic reform and cultural critique as opposing strategies, but they’re symbiotic. The draft wasn’t abolished through congressional debate alone—it collapsed under the weight of draft-card burnings, desertions, and a generation rejecting militarism. Stigma isn’t a substitute for policy—it’s the cultural groundwork that makes policy possible.

Your “realistic expectations” argument conflates constraints with absolution. The teenager enlisting to escape poverty still chooses to join an institution they know causes harm. To say they have “no choice” denies their moral agency. Solidarity isn’t excusing participation—it’s fighting for a world where survival doesn’t require complicity in empire.

Finally, your “pragmatism” mistakes resignation for strategy. True change requires uncomfortable truths: systems and individuals must both be challenged, complicity persists even under constraint, and moral clarity isn’t about purity—it’s about refusing to normalize oppression.