Comment by Waterfall | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Waterfall | Hacker News Reader

People think military is cool, even those who are against the military are donned in milspic gear and want to train with their tactics. Twitch makes it cooler. I don't understand why its so upsetting, I thought the military was cool before they were on twitch, before I watched movies on them just because as a kid I thought they were strong ant powerful people that excelled at war, kill or be killed. Military gets great treatment and I don't see what the problem is. Do we consider action figures of GI Joe a recruitment problem?

>I had just reminded viewers of the United States’ history of atrocities around the globe, and helpfully provided a link to the Wikipedia page for US war crimes.

Can you name any military that hasn't done anything wrong? Not unique to any military

>The practices employed on Twitch by military e-sports teams are part of a system by which recruiters target children in unstable and/or disadvantaged situations. Recruiters take advantage of the poor seeking steady income, the vulnerable longing for stability, and the undocumented living in fear because of their citizenship status. Now, at a time when all those factors are magnified by a pandemic that has left half the country out of work and over 30 percent unable to afford their housing payments, conditions are ripe for recruiters to prey on anxious youth.

Prey on anxious youth? Seriously, it's like they assume nobody wants to join the military for any reason, if it wasn't for the pandemic. Giving young disadvantaged kids discipline when their parents don't isn't bad. The article brings up military sexual trauma and suicide as if that is not going to happen anywhere but the military, or if its a normal thing. I have family in the military, in fact that is how my family immigrated to the US due to a great uncle serving in the military.

>“Twitch is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my career, and it’s because you’re live for hours on end, talking to these people in the chat. You develop a community and know your individual chatters. There is an ecosystem in every Twitch channel,” Piker said. “Recruiting in this predatory way is a violation of [the users’] safety.”

Seriously? You can find that kind of community on chaturbate or any of the sex streaming sites.

Disappointing that this is so downvoted. Say what you want about militaries as a general concept, but compared to essentially any prior state/country/empire in the history of the world, the American military is remarkably benign, especially considering their overwhelming military strength in comparison to rivals.

If the Americans had even 10% of the imperialistic mentality of the Roman Empire, British Empire, Ottoman Empire, Japanese Empire, Mughal Empire, etc., the entire world would be a single imperial state.

That certainly doesn't justify the numerous crimes that the American military has done, but context is key, and like should be compared with like.

I don't think that's true. Warfare in general has advanced quite a bit, and expertise exists in many places. You can't really hold an empire with just force these days. The US would crumble under an attempt to take over anything more than North America.

The approach of the modern superpower is much more effective: decentralized power but overall alignment. There's no coincidence to America's approach. It isn't ideological. It's pragmatic.

Maybe that is true today, but:

1) Much of that expertise has come directly from US involvement. See: Western Europe, Japan, Korea.

2) Much of the other expertise developed specifically because of US non-involvement. See: the Soviet Union and the states it influenced and supported. There were even plans to attack/nuke the Soviets, who were the only real rival post-WW2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

Had the U.S. wished to, it could have easily formed an imperial state following WW2. That would have been in-line with essentially every large state in human history. Thankfully, they didn't, and the world is better off for it.

The invention of nukes and a couple failed military campaigns were probably bigger factor.

I actually think America couldn’t have formed an imperial super state. That is really, really hard. Even the pre-eminent superpower of the pre-World-War Era, the United Kingdom, was having her empire fray and tatter before the Wars. The forces at play are too powerful. Rapid collapse would have followed. And that’s even assuming we could have beaten the USSR by 1949 (First Lightning), when opposition nukes enter the picture and the game changes again.

The tools of modern warfare are too widespread and easy to adopt. You can’t do it anymore, the old school empire is just as dead as old school fortresses. Technology has broken it.

I have friends who served in Afghanistan. I’m not unfamiliar with how powerful the US military is. But even that power is too weak.

America’s approach is way more resilient and the control exerted is much easier to retain.

Every empire collapsed. That didn't stop every other large state from creating one.

Besides the technology of weapons, a big change here is that the economics of running an empire was completely changed by industrialization.

Every empire since the year dot captured land, with peasants farming it, who could be taxed, to pay the soldiers, to capture land... that was the business model. A little profit was left over to pay for cities, palaces, pyramids, etc.

This flow of money from country to towns was reversed by the industrial revolution. Within almost every country now, the cities are taxed to pay the rural voter base (or to pay off the rural might-be-revolutionaries, in places with less voting).

Not the only thing going on, of course -- changes in weapons matter to the balance, as mentioned. So does the rise of literacy & nationalism, which made the idea of rulers who are too distant (by ethnicity, language, or religion) from the population base (as they were in empires, almost by definition) into a rallying point. And thus raised the cost of holding land.

>Roman Empire, British Empire, Ottoman Empire, Japanese Empire, Mughal Empire

Imagine, for a moment, that each one of these had nukes. What's the probability they'd use them to make a point as an aggressor/opressor? Even risking MAD?

Considering the actions of all of the empires I listed, I'd say: absolutely likely that they would use any and all weapons available.

Also: MAD only exists if you let your opponents acquire nukes too.

The US definitely would have used nukes, especially in Vietnam - I believe that the reason the US President is the one with the nuclear suitcase and who it the end decision maker (probably something more people are nervous about now) is because when Truman learned about the nuke project (I'm not sure he had been aware of them until he became president) and used them he was afraid the military would use even more. Former SecDef Perry does a lot around nuclear nonproliferation and has good free courses, a podcast, and a book https://www.wjperryproject.org/

Probably the same, with the same knowledge available. If you just gave a Roman Emperor unlimited use of nuclear weapons, sure, he might go ham. He didn’t even know the extent of the world. But you don’t get nukes without awareness of what a nuke is.

Given everything, I think the highest likelihood outcome is that they behave similarly.

I think it is true.

You're right that you can't hold an empire with only force, but I would argue that was just as true during the days of the Roman empire as it is today.

Sure, the Romans used (for the time) overwhelmingly advanced technology and amazingly brutal tactics to conquer Gaul and Britain, but they maintained their hold over those territories by culturally assimilating the native populations. Gallic and Britanic Romans spoke Latin, wore Roman dress, and even followed Roman sanitary customs -- there's a reason there's a town called Bath in southwestern England.

That culture continued to exert influence long after Rome fell as a central military power.

The only reason that the middle east is in such dire situations is because we refused to do what crueler militaries would do, which is crush opposition, what Assad would do, what Saddam would do. They may be cruel dictators but they brought stability and the ability for people to live within those rules. The US's military has and probably will do cruel things too but not to that degree.

This is really glorifying dictatorships, people who live within the rules are still targeted and killed if that happens to benefit the dictator or those in his favor.

No its not. The people of these countries would rather have a dictator who brought stability than chaos. That is true worldwide, for example in Russia. There is hardly a country with constant anarchy for long consistent periods.

I've found this is to be a common sentiment from people who've lived in 3rd world countries especially during times of conflict. Anyone born in America, or any peaceful first world country would have a hard time understanding how this could be a desirable situation.

Even though I suppose many do find it 'cool' and the military probably likes to use that ... as someone who spent time in the service, I wish they would focus more on the 'dutiful' aspects of it all. I felt cool for about 10 minutes the first time I held a weapon, then it was definitely a 'responsibility'. That said, not sure how great it would as recruiting tool to focus on issues of community responsibility and duty.

I think that is what the national guard does but I am not sure. Many people join for a few years and leave. The coolness was just my perception. Depending on what job such as arabic translator it could be seen very much as responsibility.

If you replace military with street gang in this post, it works just as well.

>People think street gang is cool, even those who are against the street gang are donned in street gang gear and want to train with street gang tactics.

Can you name a street gang that pays your college?

The van Buren Boys. (Not directly)

I stand corrected, there are indeed some compensation perks compared to street gangs. But the converse is also true, street gangs have some advantages in compensation (eg don't pay taxes from criminal activities proceeds).

My intention was to draw attention to the ethics though.

You might like the Mexican thread. They call the government/narcos just a bunch of thugs or the appearance of legitimacy. Protection rackets and all.

Yeah I also thought they went pretty over the top, I also don't know why the demographics of Twitch would map to "poor seeking steady income, the vulnerable longing for stability..." I mean are the poorest kids in the U.S. and those in unstable environments really on Twitch for hours on end? Maybe, but those seem like exactly the kids who wouldn't have as good access to wifi and computers as slightly wealthier families.

Depends where you live, I know someone who joined to remove a DUI, my cousin was not poor and just wanted discipline before joining a biotech phd program with the military paying for it. Poor kids are not online for hours on twitch, they are caring for their other siblings while their parents are at work, and probably playing or helping with homework, not watching hours of their favorite US military streamer play CoD.

You can remove criminal offenses? Wow, I think I'd seen that in movies (or maybe that Simpsons episode about Seymour Skinner?) but didn't realize it was really a thing

The judge let him go because he told me he needed a licence for driving the amphibious vehicle and he wouldn't be able to do it if he got a DUI so it was dismissed, but hes told me about screaming camel spiders I googled and called him out on. I don't think he lied about that one though but I'm just rehashing what he told me.

I think the US army (or maybe modern armies) might be the only army I know of that actually tries not to be evil officially. Compared to armies of the past where there was no pretense. Not saying it's any different in practice but....

> as a kid I thought they were strong ant powerful people that excelled at war, kill or be killed

That is because most popular depiction of military amount to propaganda and is designed to make you feel good about military. It does not show the ugly or boring or realistic parts of it.

You pretty much never see movie from point of view of civilians living in the place where military operates. Military would not be so cool looking there.

Even death in combat or mistreating civilians is depicted in a way that makes you want to join fight. More realistic (and less popular) depictions don't have thay effect.

What you wrote is just propaganda internalized.

You're saying it's weird that kids like tanks, supersonic aircraft and and nuclear submarines? Technology is cool. You didn't think the blackbird was really cool? I never thought only the US military was cool, powerful machines facinate boys without propaganda. I liked monster trucks and crushing machines too and I bet lots of other boys did too despite their non military function.

But as a kid I also read books about civilians in war time. I seen photos of bombed cities and read memoirs of people who went through it. Journals would have that every year at milestones.

There were those sad movies about kids in war time too.

No, the war was not unambiguous cool good as far as I remember. I never perceived it as cool technology only, it was never framed to me that way.

My grandma used to say that war is horrible. The grandparents generally did not liked it and did not liked movies with shooting and bombing. They added details only later, the stuff they personally seen, when I was adult, but when I was kid they would at least generally say it was bad.

What is the war you talk about? I was always interested in cool technology, not war. Often, the military had cool technology. I remember reading a book, how things work and it explained lots of things to me, like how airplanes fly, so I wanted to look up the fastest one and the blackbird was really cool. I love machines and used to take apart clocks to (try to) fix them too. I wasn't interested in guns despite them being in every military game, they just exploded a bullet from a shell in various ways.

Some things had a horrible magnificence like when the US bombed Los Alamo's US soldiers and the men in a documentary talked about how beautiful it was, or the terrifying effect of white phosphorus.

After writing this, I think I liked the idea of the power and leanness of the military ( wanted their gear because milspec means hardy), but also thought they had the coolest toys to play with.

The whole point of military it to do war and keep themselves ready for war. There is no military without war or threat of war.

And there is no war without massive suffering. Pretty much any of them displaces people, interrupts food distribution and generally makes people living in that area suffer.

Pick up the one you want, you find all that.

Military would not be necessary if there was no conflict. And I doubt you can find humanity without conflict.

> "I seen photos of bombed cities and read memoirs of people who went through it."

I have too, which is precisely why I'm greatly in favor of an extremely strong military. Sovereignty is a privilege enjoyed only by those with the means to enforce it.

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