I'm worried that's an idea delusional enough to catch on, lol. But honestly, I think there would be a lot of benefit to some sort of national service work requirement. Perhaps bundled with college tuition or something. After all, many Americans are first exposed to other races and cultures for the first time in the military. If we could take the "we're all here to kill people" and replace it with "we're all here to help people"? Yes, please. I know there's no chance in hell something like non-warfare national service gets instituted anytime in the near future. It'd be slandered as "total communism", and there'd be almost a kernel of truth to the accusation, for once.
My grandfather's family in Northern Michigan were literally kept from starvation by Civilian Conservation Corps projects that would be shrieked down today as communist. After he, my extended family and others benefitted from this type of program, they proceeded to spend the next 70 years doing everything they could to make sure that sort of thing could never happen again. When in human history has an entire generation hated their children so badly.
I know you know why this is happening, but for posterity, one of my favorite Beau videos ever recently addressed it:proceeded to spend the next 70 years doing everything they could to make sure that sort of thing could never happen again
Finland offers conscription like that, with a choice between armed/military service and civil service. EDIT: Or just make people do stuff on zooniverse for 6 hours a day. Come on, man, don't be insulting.If we could take the "we're all here to kill people" and replace it with "we're all here to help people"?
You didn't ask for this. I'm sorry. Ukraine is so fucking far from over, but it's a related set of omelettes, b/c fascism. To publicly de-fang two arguments I've very recently heard from two very different people: 1) "Military service is slavery!" No, it's not. Military service, in this day and age in America, is a voluntary contract between an individual and the federal state. Slavery, by definition, is essentially entirely involuntary (fuck off w/ "indentured servitude" shit arguments). Military service is individually consensual. 2) "Mandatory public service would be slavery!" No, it's not. Ideally, any mandatory public service (like, what, 1 year? 2 years?) would be the result of a majority of citizens agreeing to institute the policy upon themselves, their children, etc. etc. Although the agreement is made above the level of the individual, the collective has spoken in their belief of acting in the best interest of the collective. Public service would be collectively consensual. If you can't understand how belittling either of those arguments comes across to the all-too-typically-economically-disenfranchised descendants of slaves, that's funny! That's hilarious, to me. Like "making jokes about children getting shot" levels of humor. Which I have totally done, even on this website recently! We have so much in common. Let's destroy society together.
Since I think we're on two completely different wavelengths here, I'll defer to your deeper understanding of the USA. However, to clarify, what I thought insulting was the rather straightforward implication "[US] military is all kill and no help," which isn't fair.
What I should have also said is that you, Devac, are neither of the two people who expressed either of those arguments, but they were made to me on the same day as our exchange. I should have lead with that, hahha, instead I just got on a soapbox with zero warning. Prognosis: general anger, I guess (and sorry again). We help sometimes, but even in modern history, this country has made mistakes enough for me to feel like there is some ambiguity in the net benevolence of the U.S.'s impact on the rest of the world at times, but Ukraine's situation seems relatively cut and dry. And tragic. I think about it every day. It wouldn't be a proxy war I'd encourage unless the people were so keen to defend their sovereignty and if it didn't have major geopolitical ramifications. Heh, also I saw a clip the other day from Russian (/state) TV where a pundit said something like "America calling Putin a fascist? Putin? What about Trump? How can you not understand that Trump is an even worse fascist??", and I was like cool whataboutism, but also, hilarious, the op-ed author they're railing against (Tim Snyder. it's always Snyder) has said almost the exact same thing. Apiring-to-be-even worse fascist* is the only correction I'd make. Then, I start wondering about the relatively small, but probably growing segment of the Russian population who can still successfully navigate the information hellscape, and realize what a terrible time that's gotta be. I feel for 'em.
Weird. I'm getting gmail notifications, I got one for your reply. Swear I'll get to gamma ray calibration soon :).
Sorry, to resolve some ambiguity, especially in my last paragraph above, the "you" is veryyyy hypothetical/rhetorical. Not a you, you. A distant "you"/someone.