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.
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.
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.
This is the rhetoric he is spouting, I was accepting your premise here:
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.