America reveres its Veterans culturally. Theres no question about that. The fact that he chose to forgo a superficial display for a more humanistic approach speaks to his character.
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2025
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The fact that he chose to forgo a superficial display for a more humanistic approach speaks to his character.
More than that, I think it's a pretty shrewd political maneuvre.
Y'all .ml people would find a reason to get upset if Jesus himself came back and started feeding the poor. Things can be shades of grey and it's okay for nice things to just be nice. You don't have to be upset about everything all the time.
certified lemmy.ml title, right there
certified piefed comment, right there.
What's the deal with Tankies not supporting a socialist pivot in our politics? Have they completely given up on fixing their own house? Do they expect a complete change without all of the progress it requires to get there?
Honoring imperialism is now socialism.
Calling American vets mass murderers is just not gonna fly. Not only because of the cultural context, but also because they're workers who had to do wage labour and therefore they're us.
Veterans Day celebrates the veterans of the US armed forces. Which although includes those who served in WW2, they are still a minority. US armed forces are not simple workers, they work directly to enable imperialism and the current state of affairs.
They also kill a lot of innocents, not for defence, but for US interests. Which I think is not good.
Of course it's not good. There are numerous industries employing workers that produce a lot of innocent deaths domestically and abroad. The vast majority of people working for them are forced to do so by the capitalist system. Most workers in capitalism don't have the luxury of turning down jobs on ethical basis because often the alternative is destitution. Assigning moral blame to workers in such industries plays into the capitalist individualist myth that workers have the freedom to work any job, to refuse the jobs they don't like. And that's anti-materialist, and I think not a productive thing to do. I'd build solidarity and class consciousness instead since that's the only way to stop the gears of the people-crushing machine from turning.
Class solidarity indeed
Oppressive class.
You're a mass murderer too? Damn that sucks.
You can post WOOW and do the thing where you pretend I'm crazy all day but how about addressing the claim that Mamdani is directly honoring imperlialism here
I don't think you're crazy. I don't think calling me a mass murderer for what I said, even jokingly has a positive effect on me or most people reading it in regards to dismantling imperialism. I don't think Mamdani feeding vets is honoring imperialism. I understand how you can see it this way. But it can also be seen as him helping some victims of the imperialist machine. And showing that the imperialist machine produces victims at home, building solidarity with them helps manufacture consent for removing resources from it and directing them towards these victims. Here: "We spend so much on our military, wraps ourselves in flags, only to have it spit our family members and neighbours homeless and sick. We have to feed, clothe, house and care for American vets instead of creating more destitute people."
Replace a US soldier with an IDF soldier, which is functionally the same thing. US soldiers have been killing Afghanis and Iraqis the same way IDF soldiers have been killing Palestinians
'Zohran Mamdani feeds IDF veterans on Israeli veterans day'
The reverance of veterans needs to stop and people need to ridicule it. Of course what Mamadani is doing here is nowhere as bad as actually doing the mass murder Graham Platner style, but if nobody is even allowed to criticize this insanity then the US will never escape it.
The real victims of American imperialism are not the veteran bastards who partook in it but the people who had their countries invaded and families murdered by them. These aren't WW2 veterans anymore, it's the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
The reverance of veterans needs to stop
Yes.
and people need to ridicule it.
I don't think this is gonna happen for a myriad of reasons. This society isn't anywhere remotely close to the permissibility of ridiculing vets. Doing so anyway just looks ridiculous and discredits the person doing it even though they may be coming from an otherwise informed position.
The real victims of American imperialism are not the veteran bastards who partook in it but the people who had their countries invaded and families murdered by them. These aren't WW2 veterans anymore, it's the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
Again, you're making an ethical argument. I agree with it in the abstract. However the material conditions go against individuals in the system agreeing or doing anything about it. Placing the blame on them when all they did is what they were told and pressed to do by the system is doing exactly what works best for the system - misdirecting blame away from it. So I just think ridiculing vets today is just anti-materialist and counterproductive towards the goal of stopping imperialism. I think there are better ways and one of those is what Mamdani is doing. Show the harm to people that Americans actually care about and change the material conditions pushing people into the military machine - by reduce cost of living in his case.
Feel free to disagree. I'm not changing my opinion on this today so there's no point being spending more time on it. I don't think I'll change yours today either. 🤗
I don't mind being the first to be right. All ask is not for progressives to ridicule the truth. "You're right but what you're saying is making Liberals uncomfortable" is not really an argument. This comm was created as alternative to the Liberal echo chamber to begin with.
Zohran reducing the cost of living is fine. Vets reforming is fine too. But giving vets special treatment as if they did the world a service is ludicrous and should be mocked.
People should stop reflexively pushing back against criticism of veterans because they have been indoctrinated with it their entire lives.
Lmao
Mamdani already canceled a week after his historic election
TIL criticism is canceling someone.
Canceled by whom?
OP
Man. This is why I describe myself as a centerist. If this attitude is left then im not it.
Does it look like that's the attitude of the left? This was posted in a community where very leftist content is posted and it's got a score of -25. Plenty of this community content is posted by OP themselves BTW but this take of theirs isn't well received. So not only this opinion doesn't seem to be prevalent among us, it also doesn't even say much about OP's other leftist takes.
Its mostly because of folks like this throwing it around like its an insult. I don't mind being actual center even though im a bit left of and I don't care that our right wing determine im ultra mega super communist alpha X the next generation. I mean im more real center than left I would say in a sane scale.
Looking at your post history, you're def ultra mega super commie by US standards. Joke aside, the left-right spectrum is a bit of a sham. I like to think of it as up-down in terms of class. Once mfker sees things in terms of class and that most of us are working class even if we don't make min wage, eyes get wide open. Most of the ideas for how to help our class get more of what we produce historically come from figures who have been somewhere on the left side of the left-right spectrum. However people from different parts of the spectrum have picked and chosen from those ideas, and the spectrum itself is a moving target. Then you have people who make caricatures of the spectrum in order to slander others... But that's much more difficult to do with class, because class isn't based on ideas. It just is the material reality and all we need to figure it out is to look at it.
Because you think imperialism is fine as long as you get healthcare and benefits from it?
That's fine because in reality our politics is centrist if you look at Europe. Only in America are we considered far left.
pretty much.