Kill them! Kill them all!

[Timsup2nothin]

Soldiers are just humans. They get swayed just as easily as anyone else. And the sort of government that tends to use its troops to suppress civilians tends to correlate with the sort that practices state religions, personality cults and other such things.

No, they actually don't get swayed as easily as anyone else. Individually they are just humans, but the military culture is not an individual thing. The concept of following only lawful orders is beaten into every recruit from day one. To change that would require getting instructors who had been processed that way to agree to a different process going forward, and that's a huge challenge.

So, yeah, a government that tends to use its troops to suppress civilians can certainly continue to do so easily enough, but switching from a military culture of lawful restraints to one that allows for that isn't easy.

 

[Cutlass]

Funny enough the people who support no limits to government power when it comes to military adventurism but usually are the same people who shout the loudest for small government and less regulations for big corporate adventurism.

No government to help people, unlimited government to harm people.

 

[Estebonrober]

https://nypost.com/2018/11/25/us-ag...rants-in-start-of-border-clashes-with-mexico/

Beautiful optics for america home of the brave. Nothing as much fun as pictures of american officers gassing children.

 

[FriendlyFire]

No government to help people, unlimited government to harm people.

Dont forget they scream like stuck pigs when to comes to farm bailouts and subsidies.
Also when ICE comes along to round up their cheap workforce

 

[Dekker]

We should give France it's statue back.

 

[Commodore]

And…?

Well, no one died from getting CS gas and beanbag rounds fired at them, which would not have been the case had we decided to fire our standard-issue ball ammunition at them. So your attempt to equate the use of riot control methods and weapons to the use of lethal force is patently ridiculous. Can riot gear kill someone? Sure. But so can just about anything if used the right way. However, riot gear is not specifically designed to kill so outfitting soldiers with said riot gear sends a pretty clear message that you do not intend to use lethal force.

 

[Kyriakos]

You know, all this mess would have been avoided if mexico would pay the ten billion dollars for the wall.

 

[Silurian]

Mexico should offer to build the wall, but ten miles north of the present border.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

We should give France it's statue back.

You should. It is a symbol of white supremacy.

 

[Broken_Erika]

You should. It is a symbol of white supremacy.

Anemic Power!

 

[El_Machinae]

The Centrist in me realizes that about 16% of the population actually voted for a politician who promised a 4 billion dollar wall. Like, that one sixth of the population actually wanted the wall. It was quoted for them at 4 billion dollars.

That was during the primaries, after the primaries it's harder to measure, because people were voting out of Republican solidarity or out of anti Democrat sentiment.

Given how little four billion dollars is, all told, and how important it was to such a sizeable chunk of the population, I would have been tempted to give him four billion dollars. Not a penny more, of course, and let him fail at that

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The Centrist in me realizes that about 16% of the population actually voted for a politician who promised a 4 billion dollar wall. Like, that one sixth of the population actually wanted the wall. It was quoted for them at 4 billion dollars.

That was during the primaries, after the primaries it's harder to measure, because people were voting out of Republican solidarity or out of anti Democrat sentiment.

Given how little four billion dollars is, all told, and how important it was to such a sizeable chunk of the population, I would have been tempted to give him four billion dollars. Not a penny more, of course, and let him fail at that

The problem being that the people who are so "I want the wall" would take that four billion dollars as a concession that a wall that works is a legitimate priority and when it turned into a money pit they'd never allow you to hold that 'not a penny more' line.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

No, they actually don't get swayed as easily as anyone else. Individually they are just humans, but the military culture is not an individual thing. The concept of following only lawful orders is beaten into every recruit from day one. To change that would require getting instructors who had been processed that way to agree to a different process going forward, and that's a huge challenge.

So, yeah, a government that tends to use its troops to suppress civilians can certainly continue to do so easily enough, but switching from a military culture of lawful restraints to one that allows for that isn't easy.

Tell that to every military coup ever. Soldiers tend to be more loyal to their officers than anything else. And no amount of legalese is going to override that or their own self interest to stay as a part of the enforcement as opposed to being enforced upon.

And that's in addition to the fact that tyrannical governments don't just spring up out of thin air. They start as legitimate (or illegitimate) political movements that slowly convert enough of the population to finally achieve control. So much of your people and military are already going to be compromised by the time it comes to shoot civilians.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Tell that to every military coup ever. Soldiers tend to be more loyal to their officers than anything else. And no amount of legalese is going to override that or their own self interest to stay as a part of the enforcement as opposed to being enforced upon.

And that's in addition to the fact that tyrannical governments don't just spring up out of thin air. They start as legitimate (or illegitimate) political movements that slowly convert enough of the population to finally achieve control. So much of your people and military are already going to be compromised by the time it comes to shoot civilians.

Once again, you really have no examples. Show me a military coup that overthrew a long term rule of law. Every military coup I can think of swapped one despot for another. Tyrannical governments don't just spring up out of the air, they are the norm. In most places they are all that there has ever been.

 

[Ajidica]

Once again, you really have no examples. Show me a military coup that overthrew a long term rule of law. Every military coup I can think of swapped one despot for another. Tyrannical governments don't just spring up out of the air, they are the norm. In most places they are all that there has ever been.

Chile, 1973.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Chile, 1973.

So, we're defining "long term rule of law" as something in the neighborhood of thirty years. Good to know. Based on that, I retract all arguments.

 

[Ajidica]

I mean, how long of a period do you want?

The May 1958 crisis in France could also easily be considered a military coup.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I mean, how long of a period do you want?

Well, the conversation was about US troops when this:

No, they actually don't get swayed as easily as anyone else. Individually they are just humans, but the military culture is not an individual thing. The concept of following only lawful orders is beaten into every recruit from day one. To change that would require getting instructors who had been processed that way to agree to a different process going forward, and that's a huge challenge.

was said. So for purposes of arguing against that how about an example where the long period is on the order of two hundred years?

 

[PPQ_Purple]

So for purposes of arguing against that how about an example where the long period is on the order of two hundred years?

Show me a soldier that has 200 years of service and I'll take your argument as valid. Otherwise you'll have to accept that a military has a couple years, maybe a decade at most to form someones opinions on how to behave. And most carrier soldiers tend to be people aged 18-25 when they are most vulnerable to radical ideologies.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Show me a soldier that has 200 years of service and I'll take your argument as valid. Otherwise you'll have to accept that a military has a couple years, maybe a decade at most to form someones opinions on how to behave. And most carrier soldiers tend to be people aged 18-25 when they are most vulnerable to radical ideologies.

Most susceptible to ANY ideology, and the ideology they get is the one referred to...which is the one that has been maintained through two hundred plus years of "lawful orders from the duly elected civilian commander in chief are what runs this show." Unless you find a way to disband the military and start from scratch you're not going to overcome that.

What we have to watch out for is militias, which can be made up of people willing to follow any order from a charismatic leader with an ideology they feel like they can share. That isn't the military.