By CRS
If your response to the army preying on poor communities and communities of color, using poverty as a new draft, is to use that to legitimize the existence of the institution as an escape from poverty rather than to call for abolition of using poor kids as cannon fodder for the wars of the rich, you might have some fucked up priorities.
The US military is an imperial one, the army of global capital. Don’t join it. Don’t defend it. Especially under president trump where they have gone from killing 80 civilians a month under Obama to now under Trump 360 a month or at least 12 a day. If you care about black and brown lives here what about the people of Somalia, Yemen, and Syria?
As for the ban on transgender individuals this is certainly about more than just the military. It is an attempt to dehumanize trans people while appealing to Trump’s reactionary base at a time when his support is cracking even from sectors on the right. But the response from those opposed to such targeting of marginalized groups should not be praise for the army or diversified imperialism. We need resistance not cooption. This praise of militarism is funneling energy back into a system that causes tremendous amounts of suffering around the world.
As a final note I also wanted to add that this is why I do not see Trump and those around him as idiots. This pronouncement seems perfectly crafted to benefit reactionary forces both in the left-of-center and the right-of-center camps – one side steeped in explicit anti-trans bigotry and the other cheerleading for rainbow imperialism and the US military. The effect of this is to attempt to close off structural criticism gives an opening for arch imperialists to posture as a progressive force.
If you enjoyed this article then you should also check out “Dyke March Chicago Rejects Zionist Pinkwashing.”