Disclaimer: I don't spell/grammar check and everything I do is a first draft.
Elemantary - Dear Watson said:
Mycroft Holmes said:
Elemantary - Dear Watson said:
and without knowing it, built into a fighting and killing machine...
I know, it's like so out of the blue; the army trains people to kill? Jeez government, not everyone is Nostradamus, they really should educate people better about what exactly this 'military' organization does.
And again.. taken out of context...
Again?
And how was it taken out of context? How could anyone join the military and not realize that they are going to try to craft you into a more effective killing machine psychologically and physically? You would have to be pretty dumb to not figure that one out.
Elemantary - Dear Watson said:
You obviously don't understand what it is like, going through the training, and knowing that you are now a soldier... You don't notice the change until after training, how it effects the way you think and act...
Though you happen to be true with your assertion I've never been combat trained, that's a pretty big leap to go from "guy sarcastically/insultingly says of course the military teaches people how to kill." Assume much?
I know quite a bit about it from other sources, several friends in the military(Including one who now works for the Xe/Academi/Blackwater PMC), both my grandfathers were combat pilots. Pilots of course don't really apply psychologically in the same way as when shooting another plane down a mile away is considered close, so you never really see them. I do plan on reading Dave Grossman's On Killing at some point; though I haven't had a chance to actually read it yet I'm quite familiar with it's thesis. Understanding the dynamics of violence and how they effect people is actually one of my biggest specialties, and I make it a habit to watch most everything about it from The Hurt Locker, to Restrepo, to the various documentaries from VBS tv; as well as reading lots of books on the subject.
Everything effects how you think and act. Absolutely everything you will ever do. Some things change it more than others and some things can change it in dangerous ways. Which is why one should never rush into such things. There's a terrible change in the way one views other human life that occurs with most people who go through it. But there's also a sense that one is helping that you're out there doing good. That feeling of purpose and place, that you know exactly what you're doing every day. There's also the higher stakes that makes life all the brighter and more intense but it makes so many other things seem dull and unimportant by comparison. That combat level height of intensity that comes crashing down as their bodies try to recover. When they become estranged from their spouses because everything seems strange to them now back home, when they stand in that store aisle looking at the hundreds of brands of cereal completely overwhelmed by the experience and completely uncaring about it because life on this lesser level is like white noise.
But that sense of purpose that sense of helping don't have to come at the price of the so often perverted sense for the value of human life. Read The Moral Equivalent of War by William James.
Elemantary - Dear Watson said:
When you have done it, and are at the same level of understanding as us, then your point could be valid, but until then nothing you say or do effects any of what we do.
Several Things:
1) Again assumption that I haven't done so, based off absolutely nothing. Don't 'argue' against an imaginary person. Argue against me.
2) My point is that before making a major life decision like planning on killing people professionally one should probably take a few seconds to realize that the military is very obviously going to try to turn them into a killing machine. And its going to irrevocably change who they are on a foundational level.
3) I will never join any military force for a great many reasons. Despite any intentions they may or may not have, the US military is not a force of good on any level. They have been thrown into a metaphorical meat grinder over and over for the past 40-50 years for the benefit of corporate America and a few politicians.
4) Everything I say effects anyone who reads it, you included. It can push you further from my opinion or closer to it. It can teach you about psychology of people in general, about the psychology of people on the internet, a new word, a new understanding of argumentation. To pretend like you aren't effected by the world around you is ridiculous.
5) How does personal experience give one an exclusive right to comment on an issue? Is 95% of the US population not allowed to have an opinion on the Iraq war because we have never been there? Am I not allowed to say that black people have the right to vote, because I'm not black and therefore I can't comment on their issues? Or is your point that I can't comment on this issue because you disagree with my imagined opinion? Because I'm pretty sure that's a big logical fallacy. People talk about subjects without first hand experience all the time and "you don't know what it's like man, you haven't seen what I've seen" is not an acceptable debate technique unless the debate is frivolous and not logic-based(Eg. presidential debates.)
Elemantary - Dear Watson said:
Being trained as a killer isn't the same as being trained to write an essay, or do some equations, it has a lot more serious effects on the mind. It takes a lot of mental preparation to be ready for a situation where you may have to kill someone
Wow, you really got me on those points I never said that you just inferred out of nowhere?
Elemantary - Dear Watson said:
so show some fucking respect to the lads and ladies who have gone through that
I give respect where it is due. If someone does not realize, on some level, that they are going to be psychologically conditioned to kill people when they join the army; then they are pretty dumb. I feel sorry for anyone affected certainly, but respect is something different. A victim does not instantly garner respect simply for being a victim, I respect people for who they are beyond or in spite of being victims(in this case of essentially legal psychological abuse.)
Elemantary - Dear Watson said:
and are going through that to protect your interests
The US military has absolutely never supported a single one of my interests. I have no interest in policing the world. I have no interest in decimating the economies of small nations and forcing them to lower tariffs to turn them into dependent states for the economic benefit of American corporations. I have no interest in starting street battles in foreign countries where we kill innocent men, women and children for vague reasons that are the ideological equivalent of Philip K Dicks scramble suit. I have no interest in having the rest of the world hate us because of all the innocent people we kill, and because we foist our own ideals on everyone like its impossible to have a separate viewpoint than that of the US government. I have no interest in the deaths, the maiming, the psychological problems of America's youth; America's poor. I have no interest in a ballooning deficit as we spend an ever increasing budget on the Military Industrial Complex. I have no interest in all the political ruination, the political corruption that comes with that MIC.
And no I don't have any interest in killing foreign invaders nor do I have any interest in having stopped Adolf Hitler. Both can be(could have been) stopped with a millionth of the deaths caused through proper application and training in nonviolence. The state however will never effect any such training because it removes their power, and the politicians aren't there to protect the interests of the people, they are there to power trip and play like satraps for as long as they can with as much power as they can gather.
Elemantary - Dear Watson said:
You never know if the day is coming where they will be saving your life from a much closer to home threat
If a threat comes to the US they will not be saving my life, they will be putting it in danger.
Elemantary - Dear Watson said:
And from a fellow Sherlock Holmes fan... tut tut...!
Actually my name is the super-computer from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein, I've only recently(last few months) started reading Sherlock Holmes while I've used this name for nearly 5 years.
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