Nihilianth
Illuminator
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2011
- Messages
- 3,825
A couple of things about this older post: An update since this is from back in February.Good for you, but you're the exception not the rule. Veterans supported Trump in 2024 by a significant margin.
![]()
Military veterans remain a Republican group, backing Trump over Harris by wide margin
Veteran voters have long been more likely to align themselves with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.www.pewresearch.org
Edited to add.....
Around 6% of Americans are veterans which means that around 2% of Americans are liberal veterans. That's a considerable number of people for sure but some or many of them will be unable and/or unwilling to take up arms. For example, Mrs Don's uncle is a Vietnam veteran in his mid-70s. Even if his physical health was good enough to participate in the armed resistance, he's suffered badly from PTSD for more than 50 years and would be unlikely to be able to serve again. I doubt that he's alone.
The idea of an armed citizenship rising up against an oppressive government is a tempting message and echoes the US creation story but tens or even hundreds of thousands of citizens with firearms won't be a match for the police, much less the US military. Successful insurrections these days require support from an external national power I can't see a country supplying the US resistance with military aid.
1) That's only what people who say they are veterans say they have voted.
2) Veterans are generally out-of-shape in some way, and would not make the most serviceable of actual combat-ready soldiers.
3) You were responding to someone who had said that the current military is more liberal than any time in the past. Veterans, soldiers who have served in the past, came from a more conservative military than what is current. The military, overtime, has become more liberal since at least Vietnam.
4) Even if many soldiers and sailors have voted for or supported Trump, that doesn't mean they would be willing or able to obey any orders to attack, kill, or destroy fellow Americans and/or their property. The National Guard has been quite reluctant to do anything in American cities in support of ICE. And certainly, since their deployment later on in this year since you have posted this, they have been pretty quiet IRT all the protests. It's still ICE that has taken front page headlines and video footage of being armed and masked gangsters and terrorists committing crimes. The National Guardsmen just seem to be standing around doing nothing. And increasingly, even the local and state police have been having rising tensions with ICE.
Civil wars, in comparison to normal foreign wars, is very rare historically for a reason. People from the same culture, who speak the same language and with the same accents, aren't typically too keen on killing eachother. Probably easily less than 30% of current active-duty military would be willing to follow illegal orders to kill other Americans.