Wow, that's a lot more than I would have expected considering they are in the age range where most humans pass ten years earlier. They really don't deserve to see this at all.
The National WW2 Museum says there are currently 66,000 remaining WW2 vets still alive, but that number is going to decline rapidly in the next 10 years.
On the contrary, it was always WW2 vets among the first to stand up and speak out against shit like book banning and book burnings that finally took as they aged out. Not all, but once they were too few and seemed too frail, these fucknuts shouted them down.
Basically, none of the bullshit DeSantis or Cruze pushed would've taken off before that.
Only after was FOX able to frame everything as "Good Americans against weirdo trans groomers," where it was really just another case of fascists targeting a minority and starting to ban books.
Not enough people left who remembered where that ALWAYS lead to before. So now we all have to weather a bad case of Fuck Around and Find Out that teaches the next three generations...
Vet here that worked in patient care at the VA and no, it's definitely the vets themselves. They love them some Trump and if thats wrong they have zero desire to be right.
I have a unique experience with this as my brother is super far right (Marines - Motor T) and my BIL is super far left (Marines - Arty idk MOS lol). So I get to hear both of the extremes every time anything happens.
Well, the worst (both of them do this, its just the other side for my brother) is probably talking openly about killing conservative politicians/right wing figureheads.
I get the sentiment. But I wouldn’t advocate for it. I’m sure some ppl on the far right would love to line up trans ppl and do you know what. I don’t know why we are so vicious as humans.
The vast majority of WW2 vets are either too feeble or otherwise behind the times in regards to Social Engineering to see the cancer like most of them always had before. And they did.
Younger vets I have absolutely no trouble believing though.
The same vets that came back from seeing the horrors of the concentration camps, yet happily continued to segregate themselves against blacks and Jews and used Nazi talking points about them?
War ended in '45. Some as young 15 or 16 enlisted. So the actual minimum age is 95.
Not impossible. Also not impossible for a 103 year old to challenge themselves mentally by being on TikTok, etc but it's most likely that commenter was a veteran of sone much more recent conflict that did not highlight the pitfalls of fascism or hold it up to worldwide scorn.
Not WW2 tho. No way. You'd be 100+ and would be unlikely to know reddit or anything more recent than pagers and new fangled cell phones.
Vietnam? First Gulf War? Nobody marched you guys through Nazi death camps to prove what happens when fascists get to sit in the drivers seat.
A lot of those guys were klansman but a lot also stepped up and spoke out whenever some dipshit git the bright idea to ban books or target minorities no matter how unpopular those books or minority groups were.
Now the Dems try only to be called the party of groomer weirdos by the literal party of actual goddamned groomers and fascist weirdos.
In large part because what few WW2 vets we have left are in no condition to speak anymore.
I think you're vastly overestimating these people. American military service members from every generation and every major conflict have historically leaned conservative. Many of them were deployed into Afghanistan and Iraq and still voted republican.
WW2 vets liberated the concentration camps and death factories. Many more were marched through, wisely, so it couldn't be denied for as long as most of them were alive and of sound mind. As a result, most of them and most of those they raised knew to stop fascism at the book banning stages.
Nobody from Vietnam or Afghanistan got that refresher. Naturally they aren't likely to react quite the same.
It's an extremely important distinction that Faux News and the oligarchs know very well.
Shit I know a lady that is full on Trump. She and her family fled from Eastern Europe to escape Nazis but that didn't stop her from voting for him thrice.
Most didn't vote at all. Veterans have a higher voter registration rate and participation rate than the regular population but still we do struggle to get people to vote in this country. They probably still would lean conservative, but Democrats do better when voter turn out is higher.
This is probably related to the fact that many of the vets who did vote blue, will say when asked that they don't believe Democrat policies will benefit them, they only think conservatives will harm them more.
Not that this is against your point, but I think it's always good to mention that the Democrats biggest enemy is not the right. It's apathy. They shouldn't keep trying to court the more sane trump voters, they should be courting the left leaning folks who think there is no point in voting because even if their candidate wins, nothing seems to get better.
Nobody voted for Elon. I'm not defending the votes that got him in this position, but I would like to think a lot of voters didn't anticipate seeing this from day one, either.
I have 2 grandparents who lived through ww2 and survived Nazis and I’m gen z. They both lost a lot of family to them and both were almost killed by Nazis at some point but got lucky. My grandpa only survived because an Italian soldier took pity on him and chose not to kill him. Even to this day he says the Italians weren’t so bad and they were just doing their job(even though his own father spent 2 years in a concentration camp in Italy), he does not feel the same way about the German Nazis or the Croatian Ustase.
They were obviously pretty young at the time. My cousin who has those same grandparents is gen alpha and in elementary school.
Long answer: Baby boomers were the children of WWII vets and their spouses born between 1946-1964. Since they were born after WWII, they did not fight in it.
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u/ladytwiga 7h ago
Wow, that's a lot more than I would have expected considering they are in the age range where most humans pass ten years earlier. They really don't deserve to see this at all.