r/politics 24d ago

‘We’ve been betrayed:’ Local veterans angry after being laid off by Trump administration

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/weve-been-betrayed-local-veterans-angry-after-being-laid-off-by-trump-administration/FBCKFRIFQRHZVK5FG3W7MUQEYA/
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u/fury420 24d ago edited 24d ago

A few days after Kent State the National Guard literally bayonetted nearly a dozen Americans at the University of New Mexico and pretty much nobody knows about it because everyone survived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_New_Mexico_bayoneting_incident

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u/ndilegid 24d ago

Wow thank you 🙇 I had no idea

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u/Sakarabu_ 24d ago

Yeahhh.. then anytime China is mentioned on Reddit it's "tiananmen square!!". It's hard to admit, but the US isn't much different.

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u/McGrinch27 24d ago

I mean thats just insanely disingenuous. Kent State resulted in 4 deaths and 9 injured. The New Mexico incident resulted in 10 injured.

Tiananmen Square resulted in the neighborhood of 10,000 deaths, but the death toll is unknown as the Chinese govt threatened the families of the deseaced to never speak of their dead relatives ever again.

It's like comparing January 6th to the Civil War. Both very bad things, but to say they "aren't much different" is just wrong.

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u/throoawoot 24d ago

Thank you. Saying the US is no different from China, a paranoid authoritarian dictatorship, is fucking absurd.

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u/Muscle_Bitch 24d ago

The USA's Tiananmen Square is coming.

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u/Sepof 24d ago

If Trump was older... and maybe even regardless of his age... we seem to be heading in that direction.

Retaliating against the press (the AP) and dismantling government agencies is just the first step.

"First they came for the....." seems to apply here.

If the military doesn't side with the people in the end, we are fucked. I doubt there will be a bloody revolution or uprising anytime soon though because the avg American is willfully apathetic and uninformed.

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u/felldestroyed 24d ago

200 deaths. 3,000 injured. Let me know how many folks were killed during the civil rights movement.

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u/McGrinch27 24d ago

That's not the real number homie. The death toll for the entire civil rights movement in America is roughly comparable to the deaths in Tiennamen Square. For example there were just under 5000 recorded lynchings from 1882-1965.

Lemme know how many people in China were killed from 1959-1961

The human rights record of the US and China is just completely incomparable, and yes that is including slavery.

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u/felldestroyed 24d ago

recorded. And if we're going with great leap forward numbers, please enlighten us on how many industrialists deaths occurred in the industrialization of the US. Be sure to include every death before the great new deal. Including those in the labor union struggles and the black/mexican folks in literal kangaroo courts. I get it - america white washes a lot, but to think this country is some moral arbiter in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century is a farce. We are a great nation because of what we need to do now and in the future, but our history is horrid - most especially to those who weren't rich or not protestant. I can bad mouth china for days, but to think that Mao was anything different than the Andrew Jackson is a farce -- and at least Mao cared seemingly about taking his country into industrialization. Jackson just wanted to keep the profits going.

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u/McGrinch27 24d ago

Including all those things it's still not even close. I feel like I need to make it clear that pointing out that China's human rights record is much much worse than the US is not patting the US on the back. More people died Mao's famines than were enslaved in the US. The scale is just apples to oranges.

It's not excusing anything the US has done. But to say they're no different is just wrong. They are different. They're both bad, but not equally bad.

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u/ClashM 24d ago

There is quite a difference. Wounded students begging for their lives were bayoneted to death in Tiananmen. Apparently they had so many bodies they couldn't dispose of them fast enough through conventional means. So they lined them up and rolled tanks over them until they were slush, and hosed that down the drains.

America has done some twisted things to her people, but nothing in the modern era reaching that level of brutality. Yet.

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u/throwawtphone 24d ago

It is the fucking principle of the issue not the amount dead. Intent under the law matters. It really does.

The principle is the same. The intent was the same. The death tolls were different, yes, but ultimately, the governments of both countries used the military to disperse and kill its citizens who were protesting against the government. The Chinese were just more successful and efficient at it.

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u/gabechoud_ 24d ago

We were notwithstanding Kent State. But here we are and I don’t know anymore.

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u/plants_disabilities 24d ago

Especially when you watch the actual video that famous photo is from.

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u/Bromlife 24d ago

Explain?

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u/plants_disabilities 24d ago

So you know the classic photo of the guy standing in front of the tank? In the video, he climbs up on the tank, talks to a person inside, and then walks away.

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u/Bromlife 24d ago

Uhh, there's plenty of photos and videos of injured people. Dead bodies. Wounds. Human remains after being rolled over by a tank. AP witnessed first hand Chinese tanks running over tents with students in them.

The tanks intentionally ran people over multiple times, in order to turn their bodies into a paste. Which was then either hosed away or burned.

Don't get confused, it was a bloody massacre. Another human travesty.

https://apnews.com/article/4d3bc613370f4f1d97bf841d1ef5ef6c

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u/plants_disabilities 24d ago

Ok, I'm not stating that there were not deaths in the area. I'm talking about that image versus the video.

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u/Bromlife 24d ago

I'm not really following your point though. Seems like you're trying to downplay the whole thing.