"I’ve seen a ton on the facebooks about “thanking veterans for their service.” As a veteran let me just be very straightforward and honest with you. We didn’t “serve our country”; we don’t actually serve our brothers/sisters or our neighbors. We serve the interests of Capital. We never risked our lives or spent months on deployment away from our family and friends so they can have this abstract concept called “freedom”. We served big oil; big coal; Coca-Cola; Kellogg, Brown, and Root and all the other big Capital interests who don’t know a fucking thing about sacrifice. These people will never have to deal with the loss of a loved one or the physical and/or psychological scars that those who “serve”, and their families, have to deal with for the rest of their lives. The most patriotic thing someone can do is to tell truth to power and dedicate yourself to building power to overthrow these sociopathic assholes. I served with some of the most real and genuine people I’ve ever met. You’ll never see solidarity like the kind of solidarity you experience when your life depends on the person next to you. But most of us didn’t join for that; we joined because we were fucking poor and didn’t have many other options."

An anti-capitalist veteran (via offensivecross)

This is the exact reason I will never serve in the armed forces, and will never be the “I don’t support the war but I support the troops” type of person. I know I will get a lot of shit for this, but this post illustrates how I have always viewed the armed forces. A last resort for those who didn’t have any real direction, or stable source of income. The last sentence of this person’s post says it all. “We joined because we were fucking poor and didn’t have many other options.” When people say they “don’t support the war, but I support the troops for keeping our freedom safe” I can’t agree, and this is exactly why. Because the majority of military people I have talked to have confessed that the only reason they joined was because they felt like they had nothing else going for them and it was a cop out. An easy way to have a steady paycheck and source of income. Not because they loved their country, not because they wanted to protect the constitution.

In essence what I am trying to say is that patriotism is bullshit. Now more than ever. When members of the armed forces(the people fighting for America, and American freedom) openly admit that it was a cop out for lack of a better source of income it has to be common sense that liberty and patriotism is also a cop out for feeling that just because we are born into a certain country we are superior. We are all humans, we are all Earthlings. Let’s end bullshit wars, let’s end the need for military, let’s end the need for poor, directionless kids to enlist in a corporation that might just cause them to lose their limbs, or even worse their lives. Let’s start living, Let’s start loving.

——Brett Reeves (Call the pentagon on me if you feel I’m being seditious)

(Source: elitc, via lady--stardust)