They may feel bad but they’ll follow orders. Pardon me if I don’t care about their feelings.
In the US it was a wave of Vietnam war movies for a while that ranged from feeling bad about themselves for getting PTSD and ones trying to make it seem heroic. Also stuff like Henry Kissinger gets all the blame and practically no one else in people’s discourse. Iraq/Afghanistan haven’t resulted in the same level of woe is me the invader cinema as Vietnam did. Revisionist westerns had a good amount of the terrible toll on the mind of a colonizer as the great tragedy of the western US genocidal expansion
Reading articles like this just really make me lose faith in all of humanity. Maybe it’s a good thing they climate change will decimate humanity, even though you can bet your ass that it will be the assholes that survive
National Guard: Quit your job. Stay a good person.
Fun fact, you can’t just quit. I tried. You can desert, but then you’d risk going to prison.
I don’t really want the National Guard to consist entirely of people enthusiastic about this stuff.
You say that like unenthusiastic people will do anything about it. That’s not how humans work. That one enthusiastic person fires on a crowd of peaceful protesters and all the unenthusiastic people will fire too. Every single time.
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That is literally the opposite of how it works in the end stages of quite a good proportion of revolutions.
At the end of the day, people in any country’s armed forces are just human people at the end of the day, and the US National Guard is quite a lot more human than most. Even in shooting wars against other nations, there are troops who decide to do the right thing. Hugh Thompson for example got a medal for landing his helicopter between Americans and Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, and telling his crew to fire on the Americans if they kept advancing.
The National Guard has fired upon and murdered American civilians multiple times. The us national guard is in no way special. You are peddling a fiction here. The vast vast majority of times Armed Forces will fire upon their own citizens with zero compunction. Often with Glee. Hell if anything by the end stages of revolutions hearts have hardened and they are more likely to fire.
Yes yes, get it all out. There, there. I can tell you’re deeply learned about all of this stuff, it makes me feel a little bad that I came in with some kind of examples or anything, I’m sure there are not any more and it was just some crazy outlier.
Also, if there’s one word that I really commonly hear from people who’ve killed other humans in the military, when they talk about their experience, it is “glee.” They just glee all over the place, whenever they talk about it.
(What other examples are you even talking about? Kent State and what? I feel like I sent you into some kind of fit by bringing up the example that I did.)
I’m sorry what examples did you bring up exactly? You just sent me a link to a Google search in which three of the top results were American officials talking about how they want to fire on protesters. If that’s the level of scrutiny you bring to your research I’m not surprised you don’t know more. For instance the many many times US National Guards upon Union Strikers in our country’s history.
You seem to have some sort of reverence for the US National Guard that has no basis in reality and I really suggest you educate yourself upon the history of our country. The ones that they don’t want you to read. Not the propaganda you seem to have fallen for.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/07/09/syria-defectors-describe-orders-shoot-unarmed-protesters
https://igcc.ucsd.edu/blog/military-dissent-and-protest-when-soldiers-refuse-orders-to-use-force/
Those are on the first page of results I saw. There are lots of examples, it’s a pretty common feature of the end stage of a successful revolution for the troops to see which way the wind is blowing and refuse to fire on the demonstrators.
For me, the fact that Hegseth really wants them to fire on protestors, but instead they’re picking up trash and doing landscaping, indicates that there is some disconnect somewhere. Not that they’re obviously horrible and will fire on protestors with glee, and the fact that Hegseth wants them to do exactly that just hasn’t trickled all the way down to them yet.
I am sure there are some National Guard members who really want to fire on protestors. I think that’s part of the point of bringing groups of them from deep-red states to places that are not their home to be deployed. I’m not saying some shit will not go down. But also, the fact that you’re going back to the 1890s to find your examples kind of undoes your assertion that every single one of them is waiting with glee for their chance to fire on American civilians because that’s exactly what they signed up for. You honestly just have no idea what you’re talking about here, you’re just airing your sort of vibes assessment of what you think military people are like.
By the way personal attacks don’t make you seem more credible Just for future reference.
There is research on this: Generally, when talking to someone online, remaining completely respectful to someone who’s spitting in your face rhetorically speaking actually makes your argument less effective.
I’m still talking factually, sure. I’m actually not making any kind of personal attack, I am just being sarcastic a little. But I am not pretending that I respect your point of view, because your point of view doesn’t deserve respect. You keep getting all emotional and just repeating over and over how you are sure that it works, and I keep sending you examples and citations. We are not the same.
Or stay and gunk up, otherwise you can get loyalists.
“Trending videos show residents reacting with alarm and indignation,” a summary from Friday said. “One segment features a local [resident] describing the Guard’s presence as leveraging fear, not security — highlighting widespread discomfort with what many perceive as a show of force.”
“Gosh, we blindly followed a fascist’s orders and now people don’t trust us anymore for some reason. Nobody could have predicted this!” /s
Too much of the population has been radicalized by the Ultra Extreme Left. Only thing left to do is start cracking down on dissident media and turning up the local news jingoisms to 11.
Rumors abound of Antifa going house to house and force-feeding babies Fentanyl. News at 11. Then don’t miss the Kristy Noem “Safer Under The Flag” Crime Hour, as we discuss what phonecalls you can make and what apps you can install in order to help keep your community happier.
Can you maybe wait until they actually do anything fascist before you condemn them?
I sort of suspect that some of the reason for all the landscaping is that Trump tried to tell the guard to do what he really wants them to be doing, and somebody at some level told him to go fuck himself. It’s not because Trump had picking up trash in mind as what he’d like the armed forces to be doing right now.
Do you feel that having armed military personnel patrolling the streets isn’t fascist?
Depends on what they’re doing. If they’re building up a big groundswell of resentment against Dear Leader, so that when he does order them to build an internment camp or shoot some protestors they’ll be that much more likely to turn their guns in the other direction, then I’m in favor of that. If they were doing what the local cops are often doing, and cooperating with ICE to arrest random people and whisk them away, I’d feel a lot worse about it. Have they been doing that second thing or anything that you know of?
A National Guard official acknowledged the documents are authentic but downplayed their sensitivity, saying the assessments are intended for internal use and were inadvertently emailed to The Post last week. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing an unspecified policy. It is unclear how many people mistakenly received the documents.
…
I’m starting to genuinely wonder if “oops, added a journalist” is the new form of leaking…
Because it just actually happening this much is fucking insane
This was intentional. Nobody writes journalist@definitelynotthemilitaryemail.com instead of specific-name@militaryemailthatwealwaysuse.com
Protect whistleblowers
Nobody writes journalist@definitelynotthemilitaryemail.com instead of specific-name@militaryemailthatwealwaysuse.com
You know that there’s no super duper secret email client, right?
It’s outlook, like for everyone else.
Type 2-3 letters, hit tab… It happens, just not constantly like this.
Whatever works.
Oh shucks. They feel a bit bad about stomping on the necks of The People for a paycheck? You hear that, the jackboots really ARE our friends!
Yeah. Fuck that. Talk is cheap. Actions are what matters.
In another update, the Guard indicates troops “continue efforts to restore and beautify public spaces across the District” and have “cleared 906 bags of trash, spread 744 cubic yards of mulch, removed five truckloads of plant waste, cleared 3.2 miles of roadway, and painted 270 feet of fencing.”
OMG what a total waste of everything.
I have seen the troops wandering around DC and it is just so stupid…
They wanted to deport all the immigrants and now they have to bring in the National Guard to do the landscaping. 😂
Please thank them for their heroic service.
I mean as a service member, you are allowed to obey your oath and ignore the felon in office and his illegal federal takeovers. Fight it in court, you will win as the nazi’s can’t prove anything in court.
Unfortunately, an order to go and walk around DC isn’t a violation of anything. You have to wait until they give you an actually illegal order before telling them to stuff it (well, at least if you want to remain as a free person.)
And by the destrucrion of tye venzualen ship last week, we know theyre going to follow orders first and question it second if ever. That does not bode well.
- The foreign military is pretty different from the National Guard
- Attacking foreign nationals, however much they didn’t do anything to us, is totally different from firing on Americans in Washington DC
Unfortunately they don’t have to prove anything in court because they have the Supreme Court in their pocket. The only way to beat fascism is to kill fascism
54 words. The article is only 54 words. What is the point of journalism in 2025 they don’t even write anymore.
The National Guard, in measuring public sentiment about President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C., has assessed that its mission is perceived as “leveraging fear,” driving a “wedge between citizens and the military,” and promoting a sense of “shame” among some troops and veterans, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
The assessments, which have not been previously reported, underscore how domestic mobilizations that are rooted in politics risk damaging Americans’ confidence in the men and women who serve their communities in times of crisis. The documents reveal, too, with a rare candor in some cases, that military officials have been kept apprised that their mission is viewed by a segment of society as wasteful, counterproductive and a threat to long-standing precedent stipulating that U.S. soldiers — with rare exception — are to be kept out of domestic law enforcement matters.
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Trump has said the activation of more than 2,300 National Guard troops was necessary to reduce crime in the nation’s capital, though data maintained by the D.C. police indicates an appreciable decline was underway long before his August declaration of an “emergency.” In the weeks since, the Guard has spotlighted troops’ work assisting the police and “beautifying” the city by laying mulch and picking up trash, part of a daily disclosure to the news media generated by Joint Task Force D.C., the agency overseeing the deployment.
Not for public consumption, however, is an internal “media roll up” that analyzes the tone of news stories and social media posts about the National Guard’s presence and activities in Washington. Government media relations personnel routinely produce such assessments and provide summaries to senior leaders for their awareness. They stop short of drawing conclusions about the sentiments being raised.
“Trending videos show residents reacting with alarm and indignation,” a summary from Friday said. “One segment features a local [resident] describing the Guard’s presence as leveraging fear, not security — highlighting widespread discomfort with what many perceive as a show of force.”
A National Guard official acknowledged the documents are authentic but downplayed their sensitivity, saying the assessments are intended for internal use and were inadvertently emailed to The Post last week. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing an unspecified policy. It is unclear how many people mistakenly received the documents.
Spokespeople for the Army, which is overseeing the deployment, did not provide comment.
Social media posts about the military mission in D.C. summarized on Friday were assessed to be 53 percent negative, 45 percent neutral and 2 percent positive, the documents say.
While officials have insisted that troops are not policing, their actions have sometimes blurred the lines between soldiering and law enforcement, including detaining criminal suspects until police have arrived. One soldier has been credited with helping the apparent victim of a drug overdose by giving them Narcan, officials have noted.
For most Washington residents and tourists, though, the troops often are most visible at Metro stops and federal monuments, looking bored and absorbing both praise and insults from passersby.
Friday’s assessment highlights “Mentions of Fatigue, confusion, and demoralization — ‘just gardening,’ unclear mission, wedge between citizens and the military.”
The National Guard was ordered to this mission and does not have a responsibility to make it palatable to the public, said Jason Dempsey, a former Army officer who studies civil military affairs for the Center for a New American Security. But, he said, military leaders should think about how deployments with political undertones could have implications for recruiting and sustaining the force.
The themes raised in these assessments, Dempsey said, also should give pause to American citizens. National Guard troops are overseen by governors, who almost always provide their approval when those forces are mobilized for federal service overseas or within the United States. But the mission in Washington, and an earlier deployment to Los Angeles, both occurred against the consent of civil authorities in those jurisdictions.
“When elected representatives say, ‘We do not want them,’ but the federal government sends them, and then you see these kinds of numbers,” he said, “it does raise existential questions for the health of the National Guard, for how America views its National Guard and how America uses the military writ large.”
Such concerns also were spelled out in a separate cache of internal documents that outlined another Trump administration initiative: the creation of a “quick reaction force” of National Guard troops to respond to civil unrest anywhere in the United States. In that case, first reported by The Post as Trump’s D.C. deployment got underway in mid-August, military officials voiced concern about “potential political sensitivities” and “legal considerations related to their role as a nonpartisan force.”
Trump has since signed an executive order directing formation of the quick reaction force.
In examining public opinions online, Guard officials last week highlighted the sentiments shared by people who self-identified as veterans and active-duty troops, who, the documents show, say they viewed the deployment “with shame and alarm.” The assessment also homed in on how people are reacting to various court cases challenging Trump’s domestic military deployments.
A federal judge last week ruled Trump’s mobilization of nearly 5,000 U.S. troops to Los Angeles in June was an illegal use of military force to conduct law enforcement. An appeals court later granted the Trump administration’s motion for a stay in the case until its argument could be heard in greater detail — allowing the military mission there to continue. About 300 National Guard troops remain in the area.
The D.C. deployment, which includes troops not only from the District but from eight Republican-led states as well, is the subject of a lawsuit by city officials who argue that Trump broke the law by putting Guard troops into law enforcement roles. The public reaction being monitored by military officials focuses on “debate about the legality of the mission, whether it’s needed and if it has been successful,” one assessment reads, noting that there is ongoing criticism of the mission as “federal overreach and politically motivated.”
Others viewed the ongoing lawsuit in Washington as “unreasonable,” the assessment shows.
The National Guard has sometimes struggled to highlight significant impact from their presence. The public summary from Tuesday, for instance, noted a sole example of troops providing undescribed support to police at Union Station when a person was “acting aggressively.” The person was ushered out the door, the Guard noted.
In another update, the Guard indicates troops “continue efforts to restore and beautify public spaces across the District” and have “cleared 906 bags of trash, spread 744 cubic yards of mulch, removed five truckloads of plant waste, cleared 3.2 miles of roadway, and painted 270 feet of fencing.”
Those statistics may be among the most consequential takeaways of Trump’s use of the military in D.C., Dempsey said, and should prompt scrutiny of whether this mission was ever necessary in the first place.
“That is such a suboptimal use of military training that we should all be asking, ‘Why are they here?’” Dempsey said. “If they’re picking up trash, they’re not here for a security emergency. There’s no clearer metric than that.”
Washington Post only loads a portion of the article unless you are logged in. You need to go straight to the archive for Post articles.
you’re right.
However, when I visited the page it gave absolutely no indication anything was missing. The page looked complete. It had the comments section directly after a single paragraph.
It’s longer than that — maybe check the archive.is version?
If you use reader mode, many articles get chopped down to the first paragraph. Maybe the rest is obfuscated by JavaScript?
Reader mode doesn’t do it. Apparently washington post has ghost paywalls where you have to pay them to learn that most of the article was missing.
Catering to deeply ignorant people who lose their shit at the first chance they get?
They’re writing to the attention span of the average internet user
