254
submitted 1 week ago by ssroxnak@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 78 points 1 week ago

“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

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] Mamdani_Da_Savior@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

A US Air Force recruiter emailed me this morning

I cussed her out, told her to grow a fucking back bone.

Used to never do that to military, now I don't respect them.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] BakerBagel@midwest.social 22 points 1 week ago

Do you feel that having armed military personnel patrolling the streets isn't fascist?

[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago

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?

[-] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 49 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] TomMasz@lemmy.world 36 points 1 week ago

They may feel bad but they'll follow orders. Pardon me if I don't care about their feelings.

[-] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago
[-] network_switch@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week ago

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

[-] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago

Vietnam was made far worse by the Draft. Few government institutions are as evil as a draft.

[-] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago

National Guard: Quit your job. Stay a good person.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I don't really want the National Guard to consist entirely of people enthusiastic about this stuff.

[-] njm1314@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[-] njm1314@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 7 points 1 week ago

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.)

[-] njm1314@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 6 points 1 week ago

https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/07/09/syria-defectors-describe-orders-shoot-unarmed-protesters

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2011/04/syrian-soldiers-reportedly-shot-refusing-fire-protesters/349571/

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.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

Fun fact, you can't just quit. I tried. You can desert, but then you'd risk going to prison.

[-] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Soon enough you can just say you're trans and get out.

If they don't believe you, start acting very outwardly like it.

[-] sausager@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

If you're unsure what to do, Google "Klinger".

[-] rumba@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I'm sorry, but I'm just a little rainbow to be a stormtrooper?

[-] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 2 points 1 week ago

The Corporate Klinger Strategy

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago

https://girightshotline.org/

They have a good section on assisting people file as conscientious objectors.

[-] thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

That was actually the very one I tried to use, it was refused

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago

Or stay and gunk up, otherwise you can get loyalists.

[-] IWW4@lemmy.zip 30 points 1 week ago

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..

[-] MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io 33 points 1 week ago

They wanted to deport all the immigrants and now they have to bring in the National Guard to do the landscaping. 😂

[-] glitch1985@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Please thank them for their heroic service.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

Yeah, imagine signing up for the National Guard and then having these child-fucking Confederates use you as a way of threatening normal Americans.

Any normal human being would feel a great deal of shame.

[-] TotallynotJessica 14 points 1 week ago

As I said months ago, current service members need to plan retirement asap to not be used as fascist tools against Americans. One can't simply quit without consequence, but you can get out sooner than you otherwise would. Get out now before you're deployed to a war.

[-] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 5 points 1 week ago

When Trump's wars happen, and they will happen, he's going to institute a draft, or perhaps even call for mandatory military service, like Israel or South Korea. That way, they get to indoctrinate every single young American citizen before they go into the world as adult citizens.

[-] LoafedBurrito@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] whiwake@lemmy.cafe 19 points 1 week ago

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

[-] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago

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.)

[-] hildegarde 6 points 1 week ago

54 words. The article is only 54 words. What is the point of journalism in 2025 they don't even write anymore.

[-] teft@piefed.social 24 points 1 week ago

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.

Skip to end of carousel

The Washington Post wants to hear from Defense Department civilians and service members about changes within the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military. You can contact our reporters by email or Signal encrypted message:

End of carousel

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.”

[-] sleepydragn1@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

It's longer than that — maybe check the archive.is version?

[-] Jimbabwe@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

If you use reader mode, many articles get chopped down to the first paragraph. Maybe the rest is obfuscated by JavaScript?

[-] hildegarde 2 points 1 week ago

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.

[-] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

They're writing to the attention span of the average internet user

[-] NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

Catering to deeply ignorant people who lose their shit at the first chance they get?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
254 points (100.0% liked)

News

32345 readers
2856 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS