Kinda sorta,
The Mỹ Lai Massacre, but they found a fall guy in Calley and he claimed he was “only following orders” he was found guilty but did not have to serve the life sentence.
There’s a whole lot to the story if you’re interested in looking any further. It’s a very ugly story,
So if you’re not in a place where you want to read about horrible atrocities committed by our troops, don’t look.

well said

and we can go further and say that the entire effort at discerning if someone is a troll working the learned helplessness psyop, or if they are genuinely this sort of whiny entitled useless cynic, it doesn't matter

cynical voices are capitulation to fascism

whether as an organic aspect of a weak person

or as a purposeful astroturfed agenda

the results are the same, so we treat both voices the same:

reject them

mindless cynicism helps fascism

You’re right but IMO they mesh together. The most effective astroturfing takes a real phenomenon/sentiment and amplifies it. That could be as simple as vote and engagement manipulation to boost ‘real’ comments.

E.g. after the last two No Kings protests Reddit was flooded with “it doesn’t matter/waste of time/these protests are useless” comments. Many were probably ‘real’ but astroturfers likely seized the opportunity to upvote them.

well said

The cynicism and despair flooding the zone seems intended, to me, to reduce participation in the non-violent means we have of change.

well i mean:

fuck fake left wingers who are just useless cynics coping

but also fuck right wingers

but you have your approach. i appreciate it

https://mstdn.social/@ManyRoads/116364607326117509

self-awareness

you have it, to your credit

and i as well can feel bleak. we all do at times

but it seems to be a dying artform in this world where some can pull themselves out of it, and others wallow in it and make it their entire identity

defeated people. learned helplessness

they only serve as an aid to MAGA

well we feel a need to call it out

george writes a hopeful post and you can see under george's top post above many comments exhibiting this sort of dissipated, ineffectual impotent mindless cynicism that is all too common in the world

and only serves to help MAGA

so we'll call it out

it may be pointless for the person we are responding to, these whiners often seem too far gone and insincere

it's for the sake of everyone else reading along

https://mstdn.social/@ManyRoads/116364555001927978

some is troll psyop from MAGA and geopolitical actors. maybe not paid troll farm, just random edgelords enjoying a game

but entitled, lazy detached people who consider themselves on the left is also real

a mirror image of MAGA in terms of a rotten society. these fake leftists are as bad as MAGA

fake leftists because they do not have an ideological position, they have a psychological position

they don't care about improving society, they care about whining

I’m becoming more and more convinced that cynical defeatism is being intentionally astroturfed and amplified in left-leaning online communities all over the internet by malign actors.

...they said, continuing to engage

unread

uninterested

please read george's top post again, and think about how you can contribute meaningfully and positively to fix the usa, rather than whining empty mindless cynicism

thank you oh so very much my good friend

hi and welcome to mastodon, where people post things and others respond to them

i thank you very kindly for responding to my post with your whiny inaccurate bullshit about "realism"