| Council Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: The great, dead heart of suburbia Gender:  Posts: 1,541 Country:  Level up: 3%, 194 Points needed |  |  Quote:
Originally Posted by OhDear  Anti, When I was a whole lot younger, I was married to a man in the military. And we lived near the base. And in the laundry-mat and at the rec center, guess what kind of reading material was there, laying around for the perusal of whoever? A sheet called The Spotlight. It was an awful, awful paper. Filled with hatred. It was anti-semitic, anti-African American...all the stuff of white supremacy. And there were magazines called Soldier of Fortune. And there was some little publication that was put out by the JohnBirch Society. There were other papers there too. And I remember all the ads in them that amounted to hiring hit men. And there were how-tos for building land mines, for stockpilers waiting for some kind of apocolypse. For being selfish and greedy. And I don't want to be sensationalist in this, but I think that is where I saw an ad too for how to eat your neighbor!  I am sure that there are many many in the military that are honorable and loving to all people. But this virulent strain of hatred and the exclusion it breeds has been in the minds of many in the military for some time. But again, if they are now reporting it as noticeable, I would be interested to know how much more it is getting a foothold in the armed forces. OD | Oh, agreed, there is definitely a particularly bad strain of racism in the military. it's very defined, and it's been that way since the army was desegregated. I think out of all government institutions, the army is no doubt the one that is the most poisined by hatred. I don't think that a majority in the military will take their prejudices to the level of violence (otherwise the Aryan Nations would be the equivalent to a political party), but I do think it's a serious problem. That little anecdote actually sounds like the problem is much worse than what I thought. "Every time I hear the phrase 'Christian nation' I run to my car and blast a Slayer album at full volume." - Me |