• zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    And plenty of others grew up in the same environment and didn’t do this.

    Plenty of others got explosive ordinance dropped on their heads or shrapnel wounds that crippled them for life.

    This guy got targeted for recruitment by a military gang, and took the bait, because even bait looks good when you’re starved.

    You think he was having debates on the quad with his friends over the merits of ideology? You think he was holding up a copy of State and Revolution in one hand and Mein Kampf in the other, with ample opportunity to pick a side?

    If you have some bottomless christ-like empathy for your enemies, then good for you I guess.

    I don’t see this kid as an enemy. I see him as a victim. No different than a black kid shoved into state prison for years. Or a hick from the sticks who enlisted to the American armed forces.

    I was 19 during 9/11, and I absolutely had the “should I join the military?” moment. I had a conga line of people to talk me out of it. He didn’t.

    • Swoosegoose [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      I don’t see this kid as an enemy. I see him as a victim. No different than a black kid shoved into state prison for years. Or a hick from the sticks who enlisted to the American armed forces.

      Unlike the dead nazi these hypothetical people wouldn’t be ethicly cleansing eastern Ukraine if they weren’t getting killed by the Russian army. But also fuck the troops including the hypothetical hick

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        these hypothetical people wouldn’t be ethicly cleansing eastern Ukraine if they weren’t getting killed by the Russian army

        It isn’t as though the Russians are above a little ethnic cleansing. Just ask the Chechens. We’re back into fash-infighting. Am I supposed to cheer for a former Donetsk resident who was born into a burgeoning civil war aflame with right-wing propaganda at every angle because he got popped by a Russian soldier with equally awful politics doing ethnic nationalism on his side of the newly carved border? Or should I take the Reddit route and clap like a seal any time “Based Ukrainian Liberators Saw Off Man’s Dick While Calling His Girlfriend On His Own Cell Phone” trends on some war-porn sub, because said dickless Russian can be tied back to some anti-LGBT post?

        Its all fucking awful. And there are going to be an ample number of survivors of this war who regret every moment of it. Many of them are going to have some pretty cringe tattoos they picked up in the trenches. Why should we be happy when toxic racist ideology foments war and said war kills the folks that adopted said ideology?