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I know this sounds cartoonishly evil, but please consider how the unemployment rate went down drastically within this subpopulation.
Now about my newest idea 'tunnel-sized toddlers with claymore mines'
Maybe the real problem was that there weren't enough civilian jobs that could make use of the valuable skills they were taught, like, "how to get shoved into the line of fire while the rest of us run away."
Yeah this is the kind of shit you literally couldn't put into a fictional movie because viewers would not buy that a first-world democracy would do that to their citizens. You'd need an intentionally over-the-top cartoonishly evil fictional entity like Vault-Tec to even approach a "Moron Corps" scenario in fiction...
[off topic?]
I'll take this opportunity to tout a favorite graphic novel.
Big Man Plans.' A slightly off kilter officer recruits a 4-F little person to be a tunnel rat in Vietnam. Then it gets kinda weird...
Didn't they recruit little people to be aircraft mechanics in WWII? They could fit inside fuselages and wings?
I never heard that. They'd have had normal sized women and it's more likely that they'd plan around the building than to rely on little people. Remember that the US was building thousands of planes and ships and needing extra small folks would have created a massive bottleneck.
I did a quick search and nothing came up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovitz_family
Family of 'dwarves' who survived the concentration camps.
Once in the concentration camp Auschwitz, the Ovitzes attracted the attention of the German camp physician Josef Mengele
Fucking hell.
But they all survived. Let's not forget what happened despite all the ambient bullshit about holocaust denial.
This is part of what Forrest Gump was about. Think Forrest and Bubba would have made it to boot in the first place?
Holy crap this is what Forrest Gump was about I never realized...
To be fair, it's about other things, too. Like Jenny's character's arc had nothing to do with that part.
Well, it shows the state of the country regarding protesting the war in Vietnam, Black Panthers and such, although we don’t get to hear what he says about the war at the National Mall before he spots her running out.
The movie was like that. The book was simply horrible.
Edit: Only someone who has never read the book could downvote the above statement.
Yes, it was based on 'McNamara's Morons' as people said. And to be fair to the book, it does a better job of making Forrest Gump more self aware, he does in fact grasp that he's being exploited and underpaid and under trained, used for the most deadly jobs and mocked for it.
...d-does he?
Some readers think so. But there's always projection.
McNamara was truly one of the most cold-blooded sociopaths in US history.
The Fog of War is a damn good documentary. I watched it in a college class about the Vietnam War, and that class absolutely radicalized me. There was zero reason for the US to be there.
It is indeed a great documentary. Ironically, McNamara happily agreed to be interviewed for it. I haven't seen it in over 20 years, but I just remembered being absolutely repulsed at how completely unfeeling the dude was about everything.
"Just need a few more million tons of bombs bro. Then the NVA will finally realize that WE'RE the good guys bro."
-- Robert McNamara (Probably)
I understand the program and/or participants were pejoratively referred to as "McNamera's Morons". They had an absolutely dismal survival rate for what I imagine are super obvious reasons. Beyond fucked up and still somehow not in the top 5 of fucked up shit our government and/or military has done to our own citizens.
This is why Forrest and Bubba went to Nam, and why Lt. Dan was not super thrilled to have them in his squad.
promoted as a response to President Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty
US war on the poor has been consistently successful.
That's what the movie Full Metal Jacket was half about
So the possibility Ogryn's used in combat are more realistic than I expected.
This country never ceases to amaze me with how shitty they can be and sweep it under the rug.
Guess Forrest Gump and Benjamin Buford Blue could potentially be examples of the program even if it wasn’t part of the film.
Edit: a quick look says that yes indeed, our movie characters were part of Project 100,000.
And remember boys and girls, these are the actions of good Christian people, which tells you a lot about what Christianity is about. Just to be clear, this isn't exceptionally bad behavior for Christians, this is pretty much the standard, I'd expect no less from them.
Fuck ALL religions, all religions are evil and all religions should be prohibited as it's all just an excuse to be an asshole and yet appear pious. Fuck it all
Vietnam was about oil, do not blame religion they knew what they were doing. It's always class warfare.
Oooohh, you found an exception!
I'm sure there are more, but way to go with completely missing the point
You are mistaken. I see your point, I just disagree with it.
Well let me put it differently then
Yeah, I'm sure quite a few wars weren't about religion directly. I'm also quite sure that Gods and religion has been used in almost all wars to convince people they are the righteous, to convince them to commit horrible atrocities
Even the Nazis had "god ist mitt uns" (pardon my horrible German) in their belt buckles.
Religion is a tool and was one of the first forms of government, a proto-government. States are also a tool, do the same shit (resource control) and now that god is capital. Many modern religious folks do more mutual aid in their community than the average terminally online leftist and I don't blanket blame others for seeking meaning when lives are complicated and messy. People need social safety nets and now churches are fallbacks when states fail in different areas. Be kind to individuals and ruthless to systems. States are just continuing where the schism with religion left off. Religious institutions managed surplus extraction, states took over that function (often incorporating religious legitimation), and now capital operates as the organising logic with its own quasi-sacred justifications. New Atheist attitudes often miss the forest for the trees and function as a reactionary sentiment not grounded in materialism. It treats religion as a causal prime mover rather than as an institution shaped by and serving material interests. I have book reccomendations if you are interested in this. Note, Christianity is really interesting case sudy, but that is a whole seperate conversation.
"Each soldier was then issued an AR-15 rifle, three clips of NATO 7.62 mm rounds... "
That's one of my favorite Onion articles and I never noticed this detail.
Can someone who knows guns explain why this is funny?
Short answer is that it's the wrong ammo and won't fit in the gun.
Slightly longer answer. Ar15 is 5.56 mm (sort of a .223). A 7.52 mm (.308 ish)won't fit in the chamber, much less a magazine fit in the weapon. "Sort of' and "ish" because of a longer explanation about chamber pressure differences
Isn't this just eugenics?
No because its poor people and they aren’t considered humans to anybody in the upper class.
They were mentally challenged people.
From the poorest communities. I don't see rich disabled people on the front lines in any timeline. Almost like your income is used to discriminate in a system designed ages ago for kings and Queens but fuck me for saying we just put a new coat of paint on the old systems.
Part of me really thinks that our entry into Vietnam was partly because there wasn't enough jobs for all the baby boomers that were coming of age, and they needed to cull the numbers a bit.
The reality is worse.
The US was almost totally focused on the Soviet threat after WW2. The US wanted France as a strong ally, so the French coerced the Americans to pick up the torch in Vietnam and help the South beat the North. Eisenhower and Kennedy gave the South 'military advisors' but didn't want to fully commit. Then LBJ became President.
Johnson believed that he could win the War with a massive buildup. His plan backfired, and the US went from having a small force committed to a large force stuck in a quagmire. Johnson didn't want to raise taxes for the War, so he printed money, which lead to inflation.
Nixon got elected as a 'peace candidate.' He then doubled down on LBJ's policies of a big War paid for with paper money. Nixon knew the War was unwinnable; he planned on keeping it going until 1976 when he was out of office.
The inflationary spending was starting to hurt the US economy when the OPEC Oil Embargo hit. That made everything in the US much more expensive. It was so bad under Ford that families that used to be able to do well with one job needed Mom to get a job too.
Jimmy Carter's man, Paul Volker, won the war on inflation, but people only saw results after Carter was out. Reagan got the credit for Volker's plan, but Reagan had his own inflationary program ready to go.
In 1964, before the War ramped up, 'middle class' was one Union job supporting a family of four with enough money to send the kids to college and have some luxuries. In those days, $1 million was a vast fortune. By 1993, when George Bush Sr. was done, 'middle class' was two incomes to keep a household going. In 1993, $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
see also: Conscription of people with disabilities. It's ongoing in present-day Ukraine.
***Numerous Ukrainians with disabilities have been drafted over the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[4][5][6] ***The Ukrainian Defence Ministry amended the criteria for medical exemptions, reclassifying people with tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, thyroid disease and HIV to be fit for military service.[7] On 22 October 2024, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy sign a decree which dissolved the medical examination commissions for determining the severity of disabilities that qualified for military exemptions.[8] On 8 July 2025, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights published a report which acknowledged "***systemic and documented human rights violations under martial law" ***which included the conscription of people with disabilities.[9]
They're downvoting you because they cherry picked from this entire paragraph. Amazing reading levels from .world.
The Ukrainian Defence Ministry amended the criteria for medical exemptions, reclassifying people with tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, thyroid disease and HIV to be fit for military service
I think that's a bit different than drafting mentally challenged people to be canon fodder
***Numerous Ukrainians with disabilities have been drafted over the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[4][5][6] ***The Ukrainian Defence Ministry amended the criteria for medical exemptions, reclassifying people with tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, thyroid disease and HIV to be fit for military service.[7] On 22 October 2024, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy sign a decree which dissolved the medical examination commissions for determining the severity of disabilities that qualified for military exemptions.[8] On 8 July 2025, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights published a report which acknowledged "***systemic and documented human rights violations under martial law" ***which included the conscription of people with disabilities.[9]
you think there might be a difference between russia drafting mentally challenged canon fodder for a baseless war of attrition and Ukraine doing whatever it needs to to stay alive? maybe? a little difference?
Yes there is. I wholely believe there is. But the claim was "they don't draft the mentally ill" and was proven wrong.
Ukraine is better fighting for its survival. Russia is an oppressor trying to colonize.
But the claim was wrong, the commentor was downvoted for giving a link, and someone who clipped only a chunk of a paragraph that proved them wrong was upvoted. That's Fox News shit.
typical .ml
***Numerous Ukrainians with disabilities have been drafted over the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[4][5][6] ***The Ukrainian Defence Ministry amended the criteria for medical exemptions, reclassifying people with tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, thyroid disease and HIV to be fit for military service.[7] On 22 October 2024, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy sign a decree which dissolved the medical examination commissions for determining the severity of disabilities that qualified for military exemptions.[8] On 8 July 2025, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights published a report which acknowledged "***systemic and documented human rights violations under martial law" ***which included the conscription of people with disabilities.[9]
.ml sucks but if you actually looked at the wikipedia article, you'd see this is a broken clock moment.
Ah yes.
Operations "Human Shield" and "Get Behind The D*rkies".
this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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