Less rainbow imperialism. More of the mask slipping. More and more difficulty for the west to use “human rights” rhetoric as a cudgel without looking oh so two-faced to the entire global south and even many in the core.
I’m not sure if he actually does it though. If he does it’s for his base and some of his wack advisors as he absolutely 100% does not give a shit about trans people one way or the other. His focus has always been anti-immigrant racism.
Look this probably is going to be an unpopular opinion, and I know this is part of a wider attack on trans people which is obviously fucked, but the world would be a better place if literally nobody was in the US military. We mock Israel for their army of idpol genocidaires.
Maybe if we’re lucky he’ll kick women out next, which will eliminate a quarter of their troops. It was basically only allowing women into the military that has saved the all-volunteer US armed forces from the absolute collapse in recruitment.
Edit: reading the other comments turns out this is a cold and popular take. Thank you my echo chamber friends
wait should I enlist just so I can sue when this happens
no because if it doesn’t go through you’re fucked
15,000 out of about 2 million? Are trans people disproportionately represented in the military?
Yes. But the US rate of openly trans people is like 6 out of 1000. The army is 7.5 out of 1000. So it’s not a huge margin when we don’t know how many stealth, closeted or eggs in either population.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7906232/
https://priceonomics.com/how-the-military-became-the-countrys-largest/
“Notably, transgender persons appear twice as likely as members of the general population to serve in the military”
Past reading about this on reddit, it appears a ton of transfems enlisted in the military as an attempt to “save their masculinity” pre egg crack. No idea about trans men
AFAB trans are 3 times more likely and AMAB trans are 1.6 times as likely
It’s difficult to drum up any sympathy for anyone who joins the US military and wants to stay there, trans or otherwise. Not enough animosity for the troops to celebrate blatant transphobia, though.
This is an extremely good policy.
The Trans class traitors and murderers are forced to be normal civilians instead of bloodsoaked fiends and the facade of Rainbow Capitalism will start to crumble, so that anti-imperialist resistance no longer will tend to take a reactionary edge.
This would be a massive blow to pinkwashing and the PR apparatice of the Fascist American state that uses LGBTQ+ people as shields.
It’s win-win. Saves trans lives, starts to destroy Rainbow Imperialism and Pinkwashing, and forces Trans Liberals onto our side
Agreed 1000%.
“Posts”
Keep in mind that there are a ton of bureaucratic, non-combative bullshit jobs in the military as well and I wouldn’t be surprised if this framing leads you to believe that only actively deployed troops will be affected
Aside, but this is also a good example of how consent-manufacturing isn’t always intentionally nefarious but sometimes the result of incurious journalists (more and more these days)
I don’t think Trump genuinely believes in or cares about the cultural issues that he instigates. He’s going to do random, relatively minor bs like this at home while actually starting WW3 somewhere in the Pacific. And just like his last term, the media and collective public will entirely focus on the distractions and not the main things he is doing.
Trump overruled the Miss Universe organization to let a trans woman compete in 2012. He is a giant fucking lib but an even bigger grifter
The media want WW3, so why would they attack Trump for that when that’s the only time he “acts presidential” is when he’s ordering assassinations against Iran or military shipments to Taiwan
Or say they support him acting presidential and stately for terror bombing another country for bullshit reasons
This would be great if he would just kick out the cis troops first.
Yeah I support banning trans people from the US military. I also support banning cis people too
Making trans people with combat knowlodge unemployed for a transphobic reason doesn’t seem like a good idea.
chuds in the US military will never do something good, there’s a whole thing about homeless “veterans”, never saw them revolt
Besides WW1 vets. Many post-vietnam vets turned in far-right terrorists. Oklahoma City bombing is an example of this. I guess the only recent cool veteran was Chris Dorner.
Even then Chris Dorner was more Cop than Troop and was upset about other cops being racist to him more than anything.
It’s as stupid as expecting SS officers to be leftist revolutionaires post WWII, no mf
The Bonus Army did, and the feds gassed them in the middle of DC.
Bonus Army was filled with ex-conscripts. Modern veterans were all volunteers, so they are bootlickers or selfish opportunists at heart without any type of solidarity. They lack the ingredients for an uprising
Lol beat me to it
We actually did have unemployed (a lot of homeless as well) veterans revolt back in 1932 during the Great Depression, demanding early payment of their service bonus certificates.
About 43,000 of them camped with their families on the White House lawn for a while, and the president at the time, Herbert Hoover, sent tanks and bayonets in and they killed a few people and injured dozens. Patton led the charge and Eisenhower wrote the military report endorsing the action (though he claims he told Patton not to do it). It was called the “Bonus Army” if you want to do some more reading.Some of them were also suspected of being involved with the Business Plot, which would have ushered in a Nazi dictatorship. Luckily they approached the wrong general to carry out the plot, but the plan was to use the Bonus Army to do it since they found enough sympathizers to go along with it.
Who knows, though. Had they approached officers in charge of the Bonus Army directly, maybe they would have been rebuffed all the same.
That’s wild, I’ve never heard this side of the story!
The general they approachedbwas Smedley Butler (I forgot to mention). He wrote War is a Racket, which you’ve probably heard of or read.
1932, that’s older than Joe Biden Also it’s ignoring an important part, most U.S. army members aren’t from poor families anymore, most can afford not killing kids for a job.
They were also conscripts from WW1, not volunteer mercenaries who joined up with glee to kill Muslims
On the other hand, it seems like a tactical victory for communism
at the very least a great opportunity for agitprop
Fucky, you beat me to the punch
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Good because this will probably weaken the military along with his purges. If it makes the military less competent, I’m for it.
I sincerely disagree. 15,000 members of the US Armed Forces do not move the needle on the US’ imperial might (which ultimately is predicated on financial domination and vassals, not military prowess). 15,000 marginalized people within the armed forces, however, represented a prime tactical advantage for a revolutionary political movement. See: Aaron Bushnell.
Obviously we can talk back and forth all day long about how the US armed forces can never be truly radicalized because of their position as footsoldiers of capital, but the hard material reality is that the American left is deficient in firepower but the military is full of possible fellow travelers. Remember that the Chinese Red Army was mostly made up of Nationalist deserters. How do you expect to be successful without a significant fifth column?
US military is already admittedly understaffed. It’s a particular problem in the Navy and Air Force. They haven’t been meeting recruiting targets well at all and the article I read said they missed last year’s target by 45,000. If these people are all just gun-toting boots then yeah it doesn’t impact how things work. But if some amount of them are specialists it could cause severe strain and negligence in various parts like their ships not being repaired properly, their aircraft having problems, just all kinds of things that impact the machinery of the war machine itself that keep the more technical aspects above a bunch of people who handle M-16s and hang out in Japan or Germany.
I do not think the conditions yet exist for these people to be truly revolutionary. Remember they signed up for this. They weren’t conscripts and comparing this to China’s situation in their civil war is like comparing apples to horse-shoes. Those people in China’s nationalist army were revolutionaries of a kind who wanted independence and self-determination for their country, many of them were misled into a certain kind of nationalism but upon discovering communism they were amenable to it given it fit their passions and goals and met them much more effectively because communism was a message of hope to these people given their history, that of their parents, etc. It allowed them to save and liberate their people, promised to rejuvenate their nation and has succeeded. What passions and goals does resisting the US government meet for people who joined up because they’re willing to enable killing brown people for healthcare or college and other highly individually centered selfish goals? What’s the similarity there?
They’ll be upset yes and that’s good. I’m glad there is tension there as should we all be glad that the empire isn’t able to effectively do rainbow imperialism with people like Trump taking off the mask so much. But I don’t think so upset they’ll be revolutionary. Americans are incredibly atomized and 15,000 is frankly a drop in the bucket. Could some of them eventually become part of something? Sure but they don’t represent any kind of collective force that’s going to pop up in any meaningful numbers to defend the marginalized when Hitler-lite (D) takes office and tunes the repression machine higher. I mean right now we’re in the middle of a genocide and the response is to crush college protests, to criminalize dissent against the zionist entity and classify it as racism and the response to that is liberals smugly blaming the left and saying we deserve it and collective feelings of despair and powerlessness.
Things are going to get much worse in the US before that revolutionary potential arrives and I don’t think it will be these people frankly. I think they’ll be in their 40s at least before that moment arrives and it will be some new group of people in or recently in the military when things hit the fan that will turn their guns around. I think between that moment arriving and now we will have a war with China and the way things are going maybe with Russia more directly too.
You have a very important point, war with China is much more proximal than revolutionary war. That changes the calculus. I think I stand by my belief that a fifth column is a required part of a successful leftist revolution against a militarized imperialist state; however it might be of greater utility for progressive forces outside the US for a large number of military specialists to be laid off without replacement. We’ll see.
Remember that the Chinese Red Army was mostly made up of Nationalist deserters.
Well yes, but as socialists we should be strategically in support of universal conscription. A volunteer army is not likely to produce these results…
Especially a volunteer army that is essentially a bunch of mercenaries serving to get college or $50,000 or whatever. A lot of them aren’t even signing up because of some misguided patriotism or whatever at this point.
I’m fine with a tiny 15,000 of those “possible fellow travellers” getting a good dose of reality to leave the Wehrmacht- and ideally in the process, the contradictions and lies or the empire also being pushed forward a bit moreso into the minds of any such others with the same potential (human decency/empathy).
Also, IMO- it does not do our community (the trans community) globally or even within the US/west any favors IMO, to have token Uncle Toms joining in the empire’s war machine, whatever their motivations. Just like Isntreal flying the trans or rainbow flags is no benefit- or like how Obama’s election did no favors to the black and African communities within the US or outside it (as an Asian seeing what he did to Africa’s most developed country and black wealth/homeownership in the US I have said I hope I don’t see some Asian POTUS), etc.
lets not do clean wehrmacht but in the USAF now.
Didn’t a big poster start a struggle session and eventually got banned for defending the “troops are workers” position?
Yeah, 7deadlyfetishes, but I’m taking a very different position here. He more or less came at it from a position of tailism, that the left ought to try to appeal to troops to bring them in. I think something very different, the left still ought to be the vanguard in front, I’m just saying that dismissing the utility of the troops that might be politically aligned with our cause is a mistake. We shouldn’t sacrifice even 1 bit of our correctness for the sake of appealing to fascists, troops, cops, etc etc. But you really mean to tell me with a straight face that the correct move, tactically or strategically, is to turn away any would-be collaborators within the institutions we oppose? When they might want to do exactly the same thing we want to do?
I agree with you. Besides, I think disenchantment can be a powerful motivator for somebody to go through a change in values, and start to act in reparation of their victims. It happened in South Africa, it’s happening in Colombia, and it is a very important part of moving past damaging conflict.
Somehow I don’t think those 15,000 trans people in the USAF are majorily frontline infantry
If they’re technical support personnel they’d be even more valuable fifth columnists.
I’ll admit that what others in the thread said is true, trans troops are troops first and marginalized second, but if we categorically dismiss the tactical utility of potential collaborators we can’t succeed.
If they’re technical support personnel they’d be even more valuable fifth columnists.
On reflection I see my point was confusing, that’s what I was getting at
Those 15,000 aren’t just combat roles and grindable meat; a lot of them are in support and technical roles. There are a lot of roles in which removing 1 person creates a sizable inconvenience for many and can harm operations. You are correct that trans people are overrepresented as saboteurs in the military, but almost all of those people joined pre-transition and seeing the contradictions of US empire radicalized them. The trans people who have transitioned and then joined are more often than not dyed-in-the-wool believers in the US empire who don’t have the same opportunity for radicalization.
Not only depriving the military of those skillsets and capacities, but absorbing them for ourselves
There is no outlet to absorb these people though. They just go back to capitalism rather than joining the bolsheviks
Not en masse no, and I think developing the capacity to do so is gonna be an increasingly good bet as things get more tense, fractious and doomy
Which is exactly why I think it’s a bad thing that this is happening now. If this happened because they represented a threat in the order of the US military then it’d be a good thing, they’d join the communists. But the fact that it’s just happening as a random action to pander to chuds is, in my estimation, an unforced W for American empire and the rare accidental strategic good move, denying the enemy (us!) a valuable advantage in the future.
15,000 marginalized people with military training that just got betrayed by their own government can, also, represent a tactical advantage.
True, but it’s not like they’re organized. If this was happening 10 years from now with an actual organized left that could quickly take the opportunity I’d more readily agree with you. Taking the opportunity away from us to turn these people into allies preemptively is surely a negative.
It does beg the question of where they’ll go from here.
It hasn’t happened yet.
Not a lot of time to get organized, but not impossible either… not that I expect anyone to even try.
I don’t think it will do anything negative just like rainbow capitalism didn’t do anything positive.
less labour-power in the military is good actually, and if it has a chance to cause internal conflict, even better.
but backwards“first they came for the trans soldiers and I did not speak out because I was not a trans soldier… Then they came for me (a soldier) and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
first they came for the trans soldiers and I did not speak out because I was
not a trans soldieran egg
I was going to post something like “yay no :flag_trans: imperialism”; but this is going to mean 15000 more unhoused people isn’t it?
Let’s be honest, they would end up being homeless after the US military uses them to genocide the third world for a few years and then casts them aside like a used husk.
it’s also a bad sign for us generally when they don’t even want to try to convince us to do rainbow imperialism or buy things, which is where it seems to be going
people
They’re soldiers in the US military, I wouldn’t go as far as to call them that
Aaron Bushnell was a trans person in the US Air Force and she was 50 times the leftist I am.
okay, so just because of 1 good soldier that means the rest aren’t bad? are you goig to cry next about “fallen troops” in the next U.S. imperialist war because they could’ve been a comrade?
The army of worldwide genocidaires just has a few bad apples
No, the complete opposite. The world would be a better place if every single American servicemember was jailed or shot. I’m saying that categorically dismissing their tactical utility is a mistake, and that if you want the American left to have any political power at all you need to capture and make effective use of the group that actually has the guns. That doesn’t change their moral character, they’re still child murderers. But a child murderer who’s willing to sabotage a weapons shipment is a child murderer who has the capacity to undo a fraction of the harm they’ve caused.
Exactly, this is just idealism
Bushnell was trans?
It’s not speculation, it was confirmed in this post
If I recall, there was some speculation but they never explicitly said it or came out before martyring themselvesEDIT: Okay, nevermind
Streamed as “LillyAnarKitty” so there’s been a lot of speculation.
She martyred herself out of guilt from being in that institution. That’s the difference between her and the rest of the troops. Until they prove otherwise, a troop is a troop.
That is a 1 in 1,400,000 occurrence. The war criminals outnumber the self immolators 10,000,000 to 1, so I’m not concerned about the near-non-existent chance that someone decent gets cut. Also, keep in mind that Bushnell wasn’t out and therefore wouldn’t be cut by this decision. Both major trans saboteurs were pre transition when they joined as it is a different experience.
50 times 0 is still 0 tho
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