For like, the war crimes and stuff. Because that seems like quite a significant factor. (Maybe this is common knowledge for people more plugged-in to US politics)
Edit - seems the answer is a resounding NO lol. I should have guessed on account of none of his defenders bringing it up.
Another edit - people, if a veteran-turned-politician said ‘I regret my time in the armed forces, and the shit I saw turned me anti-imperialist’ that would actually count for something. Please stop pretending that it wouldn’t.
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I think he regrets getting that Nazi tattoo. If for no other reason than because of the current discourse.
But him talking about how he would volunteer for various imperialist wars including Vietnam really tells us all you need to know.
And notably that he left out both world wars and the civil war, despite giving patriotism as the reason he wanted to be in the American revolution.
Yeah but there was an even playing field duding those wars, it’s not fun unless you can napalm an entire village from the comfort of your jet
I get the feeling that he might just be kinda dumb.
That’s my most favorable interpretation.
Yeah, the more I think about it the more I think he might actually be telling the truth about the tattoo and he’s a complete dipshit stereotypical crayon eating enlisted marine and he’s so incurious about the entire world he couldn’t be bothered to reflect on it for a single moment in 20 years. Even if all the blackwater shit and masturbating over the massacre in Fallujah wasn’t disqualifying I think this would be.
I see exactly one way how this could still work out. He gets a UAW guy implanted directly into his ear canal.
Without I don’t see him suddenly start making good decisions.
UAW ceti eel
Yeah, but have you considered those are scary wars
For me the unrepentant blackwater vet shit is significantly worse than the tattoo
That and the fact that his radicalisation from it essentially boils down to some idealistic fiscal conservatism.
I didn’t think he was running as a fiscal conservative but I haven’t really been following it. Why did Bernie endorse a guy who wants to slash benefits?
Not fiscal Conservative broadly but specifically in the sense that he’s like, we are wasting money on pmcs, we need to retvrn to making recruitment for the real military attractive and beneficial instead of wasting tax payer money.
He has some statements from I think like 2021 where he asserts that the perception that PMCs are unaccountable death squads is a myth and that they’re basically just a taxpayer grift that does mall cop defensive shit. That’s his problem with PMCs, not that they commit massacres.
Oh I get what you mean, he’s only against imperialism insofar as he thinks it’s a waste of money. If he thought murdering afghans would get him some healthcare he’d do it in a second
Yeah, and that also makes me suspicious that his anti Israel rhetoric has any weight behind it.
The cynical refrain of American Zionists is that spending money on armaments for Israel is a great investment, so why wouldn’t he just change his mind once he gets into office and gets that whole spiel?
Just regress to a standard dem fingerwagger who keeps giving the funding and then insincerely hoping that Israel and Palestine just become friends.
Yeah he is literally making the nick fuentes Americans first argument
He had a Reddit comment from quite a few years ago saying he opposed the occupation but in the comment he was also trying to justify Israeli soldiers firing heavy weapons at Palestinians (because according to him that’s what soldiers do) so I’m guessing he’s a two stater that thinks Israel is a bad as a strategic ally because of their fascism.
If he had any taste for decent foreign policy, even from a liberal perspective, he would be hammering hammering hammering “why is trump going to war in Venezuela?”
But he doesn’t.
He has said that he “loved infantry combat”. Really fucking wild thing to say in my opinion for so many reasons
Yeah idk how old these statements are, but at the time he wrote that, he very clearly viewed war as a game. There’s not only this element of getting a thrill out of putting his life on the line, but also the same excitement about the fact that the life of other people in his unit depended on his decisions, and of fucking course the people he shot are not even mentioned at all. It’s a terminal case of main character syndrome. Real serial killer shit.
If you have ever been like that and do not work night and day to become somebody else than that callous, murderous, vile unperson that went to Iraq and treated it like the world’s most realistic co-op FPS, you are not fit to exist in anything that can call itself a functional society. You are particularly not fit to run for any public office that isn’t president of the assassin’s guild. But this is Amerikkka we’re talking, which is not a functional society in any sense of the word and were every public organisation is a branch of the assassin’s guild.
If somebody proudly uses their status as a veteran of both the united states military and blackwater for social clout during a political campaign then no they are not repentant at all for their direct complicity in the white-supremacist mass-murdering us invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan.
He covered the Totenkopf with a Fenrir. Still a Nazi thing.
And he isn’t actually critical of imperialist mercenary activities, including his own part, as he doesn’t advocate against them in any way. But even if he did he’s still a Nazi.
Libs would have serious issues with an ex-military dem pol who was at all negativist about their military service. They want the person to be gung-ho about what they did. Whatever they did. As TheBroodian said - Platner “loved infantry combat” which is perfect.
The way he talks about Fallujah you can tell he’s got his hands on his dick.
He should be able to show it himself if he really was. A person who repents shows it by the result of their actions. What he’s shown me is that he’s the same person he was in the past, an immature person, someone who makes decisions out of peer pressure. Unfit for a leadership position, easily corruptible, no principles.
I would have find it profoundly comedic how ill equipped politicians tend to be, if it wasn’t for the vast amount of beauty and joy of the world, being lost, due to the cowardice of losers like him. The world could be so much more beautiful.
I have no idea but most probably not. He displays “combat veteran” proudly on his Twitter bio.
Edit: according to wikipedia he did three tours of Iraq and one of Afghanistan before working for Blackwater. That does not sound like repentant behaviour.
He displays “combat veteran” proudly on his Twitter bio.
This tells you all you need to know really.
He was chud-coded from the start.
I don’t trust anyone that uses progressive talking points but just doesn’t seem like someone I’d want to be in the proximity of.
His actions don’t reflect it.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Nope.
Every argument I have seen so far in regards to this is the standard class reduction fare where him vaguely fighting for healthcare at home is him making up for mass violence abroad.
Are Zionists repentant for their genocide?
No because repenting is bourgeois idealism. Material actions are the only ones that matter.
Ok… so materially he isn’t a soldier anymore, and that’s what counts? Come on
Materially, he’s saying that the killing machine is inefficient and that inefficiency causes problems for soldiers and jobs that are created from furthering imperialism and he would make the imperial machine better while not hammering on a consistent anti-war messaging that wholly denounces the current imperial aggression in Venezuela.
What good is repentance? How many people does feeling really sorry help? We can’t read one’s heart and many find themselves diverging from what they think they believe when put to fire.
people, if a veteran-turned-politician said ‘I regret my time in the armed forces, and the shit I saw turned me anti-imperialist’ that would actually count for something. Please stop pretending that it wouldn’t.
It would count for little. Saying things is actually pretty easy despite how belligerent people can get about it. How is he furthering the cause for anti-imperialism from there? It might count for more if it was one of the central struggles for the campaign he’s running, but again it’s relatively easy and marginally advances the line. There are plenty of vets that say that sort of thing and leave it at that.
Materially, he’s saying
This is the rhetoric he is spouting, I was accepting your premise here:
people, if a veteran-turned-politician said ‘I regret my time in the armed forces, and the shit I saw turned me anti-imperialist’ that would actually count for something.
That rhetoric counts as some type of material action in this case. Which I think is the case in a campaign as it counts as agitprop. It’s a different action than him talking on Reddit or something.
If you want I can edit the sentence to say, “he is propagandizing,” which is a more precise statement as it is the conditions in which this saying occurs that matters here, so I can see why my flippant usage of words was a problem.
Edit: Want to also add, I don’t see how else your edit could be interpreted besides arguing that there is a benefit for one agitating against imperialism is good. Why is it good? I presumed it was because it pushes against imperial propaganda in a way that can manifest in the real world, because I don’t see how else it would matter.
I’m not saying you can’t have meant something else but I’d have to give you a different argument for a different argument.
No, I was the one being flippant. And this argument is kind of silly because I’ve ended up defending a hypothetical version of the man, which I take full responsibly for lol.
To answer your question, ‘what good is repentance?’ Well, his rhetoric and policy positions would be different if he were repentant — that’s what I meant by the term, but some seem to have taken a different meaning from it, which I guess is also on me 🤷
Oh that I agree with!
I think the idea of repentance is often typically something I’ve seen associated with guilt or remorse but not something that begets action so some of us don’t necessarily associate it with that.
Recidivist more like
