#if you defend people who join the military because they're poor it's because in your heart of hearts you still have this immature fantasy

[northwest-by-a-train]

American Tumblr, circa 1820:

Like, imagine being mad at settlers moving west into Indian land. I am sorry but some of us are poor! And my grandpa was a persecuted minority (Mennonite) so we were never going to make it in New York City like you degenerate privileged coastal elites. It's going to happen anyways, I don't see how me moving into their land with guns and taking ownership of land — land that, btw, they don't even plow, and practice cannibalism on, and many other unchristian practices, but you'll never hear James Fenimore Cooper talk about that, will you ? — I don't see how that makes me a bad person. The truth is just that you hate to see white trash (of pure Frisian stock, die mad about it) prosper and spread the truth of Christ and America over the land. Plus, like, president Jackson isn't that bad compared to the dastardly popish Spaniards out there. Some of you just don't like the real American people, chosen nation of god to rule upon this virgin land, and you blame me for it, when I'm just out there getting this bread 💅

you don't understand i need to go kill brown children/aid in killing brown children to get a college degree im so poor😢 it made me feel sooooo bad though i hate war smh

[fullmetal-scar-simping]

Nowadays I find Mustang and co’s whole thing to be faux-deep. Like it’s supposed to be a compelling story about guilt and how we’re all messy and terrible, and anyone who hates this just can’t handle protagonists being flawed people.

But in practice it’s about how PoC’s brutalization and misery, often at the direct hands of white people, is ultimately meant to be the backdrop behind the white character’s growth and maturity so they can better understand the world now. And if they keep stumbling then PoC have to patiently, passively accept their continued brutalization for the sake of the white character making the right choice for THEIR agency and development.

It’s demeaning as hell, it’s like their victims don’t actually exist other than to be perfect victims without feelings or thoughts who are just punching bags for the white character to feel sad over and maybe wonder about the perspective of, but the narrative itself doesn’t actually wonder.

As an addendum to my ask; I hate how the brutalization of their entire lives and culture is just the price that PoC have to pay for the self actualization and development of a few white characters. Jeez it’s cool that Mustang found a new purpose and meaning in life, too bad his peace of mind came at the cost of so many innocents who deserved that more than him! Like why is Mustang’s growth prioritized over Ishvalan lives, how many had to burn just so he could get the hint?

Very well said. The characters of colour are backdrops both literally and figuratively. The white characters won't worry about the suffering or personhood of the (in this case) Ishvalans. At best they (and the narrative) will project whatever is most useful for the betterment of the white/light skin characters onto the Ishvalans. All while dearly protecting the pro-military-under-correct-leadership message of the manga/show.

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This is going to be a side tangent, but bear with me here:

No doubt you've noticed the phenomenon of tumblrinas flocking to defend USAmerican soldiers and other military personnel the moment anyone (rightfully) disparages the armed sector of the American empire. They'll cry "You don't understand! These non-billionaire young Americans join the military because they were preyed upon by recruiters! They're poor and they were promised an education and a career in exchange for their recruitment! Our education system is bad and never taught them about the military industrial complex! They had no idea what they were getting themselves into!"

Which is all such bold-faced horseshit for one too many reasons.

1) The USA is a military state. It's infamously exorbitant funding towards its various military branches and projects eclipse the GDPs of entire nations. Even the most ignorant American ever knows their military is a big deal.

2) Their entire entertainment industry, particularly the mainstream movie industry, is bankrolled by the American military. All anyone is fed is either at-home copaganda (police) or abroad copaganda (military). It valorizes itself, yes, but it's not hiding that you're going to commit violence on others in order to police the world.

3) American culture is deeply, deeply, DEEPLY nationalist. It exults its own military forces as their true protectors, and the protectors of "freedom" the world over. ('Freedom' is America's fave euphemism for its global dictatorship.) You ever hear a diehard military bootlicker/active duty pig/veteran talk about their time as a professional murderer? Most are pretty stoked to do what they obviously signed up for. I'm not remotely convinced that your average USAmerican teen/young adult has never once encountered this form of jingoism. Many themselves are just are pro-invasion, pro-war as their elders.

4) They train you in combat and the use of drones, firearms, armoured vehicles, etc. Put two and two together. You don't need to be an aged academic to grasp what the fuck the weapons are for. You're signing up to kill people, even if its coated in a paint of "protecting your own people". Generations grown on shit like CoD aren't left scratching their heads about what they might potentially do to people when they sign up.

And the most important, glaring point that every single apologist just can't seem to grasp: why in the goddamn should anyone outside of the USA and the West give a flying rat's fuck about whether an American youth can afford college or not based on whether they take up arms against the Global South and SWANA? They think their lives, their nation, their lifestyles trump the lives of the rest of the fucking globe.

To them, everyone else should be ok with having their resources, their land, their people, their labour, and their lives ruthlessly extracted and mass slaughtered because it helps ignorant American cunts afford to be better capitalists/workers (go to school and have a career)! Your average American is convinced they're more oppressed (and naturally more important) than the people in the countries they sign up to subjugate! Slandering the very cogs who sign up to be cogs, who are key to allowing the war machine to continue churning black, brown, and Oceanic lives into mulch for USAmerican prosperity hits American psyches too hard.

Americans are real people, complex and pitiable, noble but exploited. Everyone else are cold hearted barbarians who could never ~understand~ The States (nevermind that the entire world can't go 5 seconds without encountering American marketing, products, news, entertainment media, aggression, etc etc etc, but I digress).

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I bring up this real world example not to equivocate fiction with the very real, deep horrors of unending American atrocities (let us not lose perspective). But rather to illustrate the threads of imperial and military propaganda so imbedded in the mass consciousness of imperial citizens. The logic of existing societal structures informs the stories that get produced by workers, embraced by audiences, and then reinforced by fandom and merchandising. Mangahood fans are very precious about maintaining the illusion of criticality against militarism and genocide because it offers them comfort in being cogs in these real world systems too. (There's blood on the hands of everyone in the West. When it comes to tech, the blood of mining and factories is on the hands of the entire world.)

It's tooootally fine that mangahood dwells only on the humanity of Amestrian pigs for the price of painting a lousy caricature of the Ishvalans on thin paper that backdrops this lousy attempt at an "anti-imperialist" narrative. Because soldiers are people too! And yes, they are. So why are they exempt from from the direct culpability of their actions, their patriotic dogma, their ignorance that "allowed" them to carry out the extreme violence bought them security in their fascist nation's hierarchy? Why should we swallow what fma wants, that the Ishvalans ought to "know their place" and accept that their extermination will better their exterminators? Why should Ishvalans, especially Scar (and whatever other radical/anti-Amestrian Ishvalans that are implied to be around but never seen), be ok with that? Mustang, Riza, Hughes, etc needed to commit ethnic cleansing in order to feel like maybe Ishvalans are people too? That this shit is unethical? That they should have never signed themselves to become professional murderers simply because they "didn't know it would come to this"? Because they were too idealistic and self-serving?

Obviously we want flawed characters. We want narrative tension. We want to explore stories about imperialism. We don't want to pathologize war criminals in such a way that its abdicates the citizen class from their key role in agreeing to commit these acts, or back imperialism more broadly. And I'll never be the sort to champion the wretched notion that "certain topics must never be written about or depicted". But we sure as hell can point out when something that's passed off as anti-racist is in fact the total fucking opposite, especially in the ways it defends dominant racial/national/ethnic groups against the groups they thrive off of oppressing. We need to see through the sleight of hand excuses baked into media, and the ways that fans regurgitate the logic of racist systems as a way to comfortably enjoy said media without grappling with hard truths.

Many want to convince us that the hard truth in mangahood is that fascists and war criminals are human. That your ideals can lead you to do tremendous harm (it does such a lopsided job of this). These stories fail this goal when they strip the humanity of people of colour. And the fans who can't handle critique of mangahood avoid the hard meta-critique that gets made in regards to mangahood's execution of such a story. It wants to present challenging themes but flubs the execution because it always opts for the framing that grants the most grace to the people within institutions that commit genocide.

The truly difficult truth for most fans is everything you wrote so well, anon. Racialized people exist to be the dominant race's personal development. That mangahood plays this trope straight, with greater criticism against the agency and actualization of racialized, oppressed classes. Ishvalan deaths are not a tragedy for Ishvalans, but a tragedy for the Good Real People who carried it out. Killing those teary-eyed Real People in retaliation is a more grave act than killing anyone who refuses to be amalgamated into the nation. (The fear of violent resistance against an imperial nation is core to mangahood.)

Mangahood does everything it can, as a story, to conjure these rote defenses of its primary military figures. Their mass slaughter led to guilt which led to resistance against Bradley, the council, and Father. So why should the Ishvalans be seen in any other light besides a glib plot point? They'll be made anew by their killers soon anyway. Because their killers have grown, as People.

[zoey-angel]

I feel like Israel has managed to, in 75 years, become so successful...

Jews wanted to show the world their worth after being so badly dehumanized and oppressed, made a remarkable home for themselves:

Third leading country for startups worldwide according to statistica (right behind the USA and the UK), and the only country with a population of less than 10 million in the top 10 Countries by Total Startup Output in 2023, according to startupblink

Just... A whole powerhouse of innovation, a strong country established in less than a century.

And now, its so well established, that people can point fingers at jews fully believing they're colonialists and oppressors. They ditched the victim mentality and nobody remembers...

That my grandparents were holocaust survivors, who kept expired food in their homes and couldn't throw it away because food was precious to them and they refused.

That my parents couldn't afford a catering for their wedding in a simple synagogue, because their grandparents were murdered and their homes seized by polish families, their families didn't have a dime to their names

That my friend's grandparents from Yemen built their own tin hut to live in, in a new refugee camp with many other Yemen jews. Their home doesn't look like that anymore.

That my sister in law's parents escaped here from southern Russia, unable to find work as they couldn't speak the language, had to build their way up from the simplest jobs although they used to be a lawyer and a doctor, because they would rather scrap by here than die there.

But they also forget that Israel was a democracy from the very start.

Meanwhile, islamophobs are incapable of seeing palestinians as anything other than poor victims who can't stand on their own two feet. They can! Like in any nation, there are smart and resourcefull Palestinians, successful and kind people who would, if given a chance, thrive and build and innovate, run a democratic government and work for their own wellbeing.

The fact that Gaza is the way it is, is because of Hamas. Israel pulled out years ago, and yes, there are military clashes every few years which leave Gaza in shambles. Do you think Palestinians don't know this? Do you think they can't foresee the damage that conflict will cause? But they CAN'T speak up. Hamas is LITERALLY a terrorist organization which WILL murder its opposition, no matter their ethnicity.

Hamas is one of the claws of Iran. Its leaders all remain safely in their villas abroad, fanning themselves with their riches while Palestinians are used as human shields. Iran is fighting the west right now, not specifically Israel, but it focuses on Israel as an ally of the west. This is also why Hamas is standing with Russia now. They're all opponents of the western nations, and will join forces as they see fit.

I know that people believe Hamas speaks for and defends Palestinians, because Hamas is made of Palestinians who are exercising violent Jihad, but that is an idea promoted by those with personal interest in the bloodshed (those who fund Hamas weaponry, take your guess at who that is) and NOT a good representative of palestinian people as a whole, who don't want to keep being hindered by all the violence.

A lot of innocents are dying from the bombings, which is why the idf decided to enter by ground, meaning it will have better access to the tunnels Hamas hides in, find the hostages, and will be able to attack more precisely without causing collateral damage. This is better than what was before. Additionally, Israel is still under rocket fire consistently, which the idf needs to disable before pulling out.

If the idf did pulls out right now before upperhanding hamas, then Israel will just sit there under rocket fire. Worse still, a lot of Palestinians died for no reason, only for those remaining to still live under the reign of Hamas, waiting for the next conflict to occur and unable to regain their footing. These are talented and clever people who deserve peace. Deserve a real democracy.

And well... I know a large amount of pro-palestinians demand Israel is destroyed entirely, say that all Jews must evacuate the land, "from the river to the sea" but honestly... That IS ethnic cleansing saying "this person is the wrong ethnicity to live here", not something acceptable to say under any circumstances (would you tell an asian american to "go back to where you came from" because they're not white or indigenous? keep your head straight, don't walk so far into the left wing that you end up on the right wing, people should be able to live where they feel their home is regardless of their birth circumstances)

This said, even if Israel was wiped out, Hamas would still be an issue. Iran is still too far involved. People with money and guns stealing precious resources from the rest of the population will not stop.

The solution must be two-state, with governments who actively work to maintain peace and care for their people. Demanding less of palestinians is betraying them, don't try and paint the picture that they're unable to make a peaceful life for themselves because their grandparents were driven out of land 75 years ago, and that "all they're capable of doing is violence".

[hussyknee]

Not gainsaying this poor man at all who has had to tell grown adults during the worst week of his life that war isn't the MCU vs the Chitauri. But I don't understand what this whole "justification" nonsense is about.

Is war justified? Is murder in any cause except direct self-defence justified? Is giving someone a weapon and telling them to go out and kill people justified? Why is anyone trying to justify violence instead of asking what needs to be done to end it?

When violence is seen through a moral lens instead of a systemic one, you end up ignoring the power dynamic to pledge your support or condemnation of individual acts of violence. At best that's just a futile performance of sanctimony , and at worst it makes people weigh the lives of human beings in balance against each other. That is depraved. Killing people is wrong no matter what uniform you wear, full stop. There are no good guys in a war because the minute you find a justification for seeking out a living breathing person and ending their life, you become monstrous.

But between the murderers whose people are engaged in ethnic cleansing and the murderers who saw their entire community systematically massacred over the course of their whole life, it is the height of injustice to lay the full weight of condemnation on each the same way. Israel created Hamas, and anyone left alive in Gaza is going to join Hamas, and nobody with a human heart should be able to fault them.

There is obviously a warped peanut gallery who see murder and torture and turn it into a fantasy football game. But when people sitting cushily at home who have never been attacked on their own soil in their lives ask, "Do you condemn Hamas?" they're not asking, "Do you grieve the lives and suffering of Hamas's Israeli victims?" What they mean is, "Do you believe that it is understandable for people to turn into monsters when they are traumatized beyond belief with no reprieve and have nothing left to lose?" They don't want to hear "yes" to that, because the idea that you are to blame for the violence you instigate is entirely unpalatable to colonial anxiety.

To be quite honest, this whole discourse is exceptionally surreal coming on the heels of "Barbenheimer", where the majority of the West vociferously defended one of the most horrific acts of genocide in the history of warfare in 2023 Anno Domini, and turned it into a meme with the pink doll movie. Who are now watching families being blown to pieces in a fish bowl and want to know if we condemn their surviving members for joining a militia that attempts to visit the same on the other side.

This is where preoccupation with the morals of murder gets you. It's all about finding which military death cult they can valorise with a clear conscience instead of accepting that they are all part of the same horrific, unending, unjustifiable cycle of violence and trauma that can only be stopped by restorative justice.

[the-voice-of-night-vale]

I'm on Sydni's side here. That anon had No reason to call Sydni's reasons for disliking Aden Diver "" icky "". If you want to talk about assholes, let's talk about the people on this site who police people for having harmless, JUSTIFIED opinions on actors (who are never gonna read this).

People on this website dislike better actors (see: John Boyega) for worse reasons (see: the fact that he's black), and that's okay apparently, but all of a sudden Sydni posts an opinion and they're the asshole, theyre the one making it a ":/" environment. You wanna know why I don't like Atom Diaper? Because he defends Kyle Ron and the first order, despite the obvious Nazi parallels, and equates the first order and the rebellion because "both killed people :(" and joined the military for revenge after 9/11. So miss me with caring about that bland actor.

No offense, anon, but if Sydni wants to make their blog a ":/" environemt, because they're upset about tlj, how it treated its characters of color, how it treated Kyle Ron, or about how much they dislike Afid Ryder (or literally any other reason for that matter) ?? That's their choice! If you don't like being around that sort of thing, but enjoy the rest of the content? Ask them to tag it so you can blacklist it. Or, unfollow them. You're responsible for your own internet experience, not anyone else.

Sydni doesn't have many people in their life they can be honest to, especially offline. This is their personal blog, they never promised it would be free of opinions that not everyone would find palatable. Sometimes this is the only place they can rant and express themselves. So, like, stop being a dick and policing them, maybe?

tl;Dr, Sydni is more than justified to dislike anyone they want, and voice that opinion however they want, and they don't deserve to have all these whiny stan anons (stanons? Idk) in their ask box talking about how poor avid diner doesn't deserve the hate :((. If everyone can like what they like and post what they want, then stay the fuck out of his eir inboxes trying to make them feel bad about it.

Leave Sydni alone for fucks sake you weirdos

you can hate whoever you like since this is Your Blog but why do you get so pissed when people question what you say? you're 100% allowed to have whatever opinions you have but just because people ask you about them and maybe disagree doesn't mean they're attacking you. it kind of makes for a :\ environment (this isn't me trying to attack you or anything seriously i love your blog a lot)

you’re right. i was an asshole when i didn’t really need to be. i was in a bad mood, i thought the ask was more aggressive than it actually was. i still don’t understand why my reasoning for hating adam driver required a callout or was “icky” but that’s not an excuse for me to be a bitch. 

so i’m sorry i was an ass and i’m glad you pointed it out to me. it’s not good to let ppl be dicks on tumblr since it’s such an anonymous place even when you post on your own blog. i’m gonna delete the ask bc i don’t want me being unnecessarily shitty to be on my blog but i am sorry if i did do something that made my blog not a good environment which is what i always want it to be.