• Veterans Speak Out Against the Militarization of Sports
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Veterans Speak Out Against The Militarization Of Sports | Only A..
I am of the personal opinion that merely having served in the military doesn't make you a hero. A veteran is not a hero. The surviving Wehrmacht are also veterans. The United States Armed Forces have committed some of the most serious attrocities and war crimes in modern times. Joining up with them doesn't make you a hero - your actions might though.
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Roger
That's "Roger, Moderator".
I've never been a fan of patriotism, myself. I think it's entirely rooted in emotions and clouds people's judgement as to their country's bad deeds. I certainly think we can discuss empirically how some countries are better than others, but patriotism is far too often just living vicariously through others' deeds and it can lead to a lot of warmongering.
Just that photo alone has got to be one of the cheesiest things I've ever seen
this, a lot of people say that shit just to make themselves feel good and to show other people that they care without actually caring
It’s certainly not as bad here in Australia as it is in America, but yeah it happens here too. It seems that whenever a political party wants to get its approval numbers up, there’s often a ‘we must support the veterans!’ aspect, almost as if veterans are treated less as people and more as a marketing slogan. And many people will just mop that shit up. That’s not to say that I don’t support taking care of our veterans. But it’s kind of sad that I do have to explicitly say that, because it seems to be taboo for anyone to criticise the almost absurd love affair that many countries have with their veterans, regardless of how genuine that love actually is.
sorry but where were you guus last year when the current majority political party conflated constitutionally protected protesting with being against veterans?
I think it's about identity, people craving belonging to a bigger thing, the stronger the image the stronger the feeling of belonging. Respecting the actual soldiers (for fellow citizens in general) isn't a core part of it.
This mindset of heroism also makes a lot of people waste their time, in my opinion. They decide that joining the military out of high school to serve their country is a great idea, and then 4 years later they wind up not really doing anything and getting mediocre (often not saved) pay, mediocre benefits, and massive losses to opportunity cost. If you join nowadays it should be for a specific purpose imo, like skills learned in the airforce are what allowed my parents to leave the trailer park life, and for some people in shitty areas the ASVAB may be their only ticket out of poverty. But otherwise? You'll likely be better off doing something else. I also feel like it often winds up undermining what's good about countries in the first place. America isn't "great" because of symbols like the flag, but when people turn to worshiping their country, it's usually to symbols instead of values.
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