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Bro if he's not a nazi - that is, if he didn't know what kind of skull he was permanently inking on his chest - then he is uneducated enough not to be suitable for public office.
But even if you do enough mental gymnastics and forget about the nazi tattoo, the fact that he was a Blackwater merc should be enough to dissuade anyone from voting for him.
If this man somehow made a 180° in his 40s and went from a nazi merc to some sort of leftie, that's awesome for him. That's nothing short of a miracle right there, divine intervention kind of stuff. Big clap. Still shouldn't be voting for him and he should be humble enough not to be running in the first place. Let someone who had it right all along give it a go.
I disagree with the idea that we should even want our politicians (or leaders in general) to have lived perfectly virtuous lives. I would much rather someone who has made mistakes AND LEARNED FROM THEM in a leadership role because... that is literally life experience.
The problem is that... there is absolutely zero indication that platner learned from anything. He was still using homophobic slurs as recently as 2020, he is outright lying about why he still had a nazi tattoo, and, most importantly:
NOBODY knows who he is. Near as I can tell, his credentials are that he is a reddit shitposter who says good things about M4A. He does not have an extensive history doing volunteer/charity work or any form of activism. He basically was in the military, then joined Blackwater, then took over an oyster farming business with his wife where even he acknowledges he mostly depends on his disability payments for said time in the military.
Whereas, at an old job, I was regularly part of the unofficial commitee that worked to improve diversity and equality in our hiring practices. And one of the strongest allies was a woman who was fairly cagey about her past. She was the one who most regularly took advantage of company programs to maximize donations to advocacy groups and she very regularly was suspected to be the person who put the flyers up about protests and the like. And she was always the first person to go REAL fucking hard when people started using dog whistles to explain why they didn't want to even advertise to Women in Engineering or the various Black Engineering lists.
And... for a lot of us who got to know her out of work, she was fairly open that she grew up in The South to a very religious family and did a lot of things she is ashamed of in her youth. And... a few of us definitely had suspicions over a fairly large and prominent tattoo on her shoulder that seemed to be covering Something up. But she was also very open that she has spent most of her life atoning for her past mistakes and I don't know a single person who didn't consider her a fucking Ally.
Contrast that with "I talked about how much I like socialism on twitter".
That is a comical and disgraceful summary of Platner's career. Hell, running for office wasn't even his idea. He was recruited by local labor unions, directly as a result of his activism work, not his online posts.
Oh piss off. The overwhelming majority of people (even on Lemmy) didnt know what a totenkopf was until this incident. I wouldn't be surprised if YOU just learned about this
I didn't know what it was. An upon looking it up, Germans used it going back to the 1700s. It also looks cool so it's a damn shame the Nazis ruined it, just like they ruined everything.
This is one of those razors, malice and incompetence, that one. Walk in tattoo parlor, they have pictures, you pick one. Know many Marines who did that very thing, though mainly women or eagles or some shit.
The question isn't what we know. It's that he says, in the 20 years he's had the tattoo, he never learned who also used it, and no one else ever mentioned it to him. That is highly improbable. Its not that he has the tattoo, it's that his justifications so far are implausible.
Hahaha I hit a nerve apparently 😂 I don't expect everyone to know what this symbol is, but before you tattoo something, come on! As for myself, I'm from a country that suffered under the Germans and I'm well aware of what they did, their atrocities etc and their various insignia. Also I'm a fan of Mark Felton on YouTube so yeah, I knew, sorry.
Btw the overwhelming majority of people don't have nazi tattoos and don't run for public office so I don't give a fuck if they know or not. He should fucking know.
This, again, speaks to your naivety. About military culture, about tattoo culture, etc.
For YOU, it's important to know everything about something you're getting a tattoo of. But it's EXTREMELY common in both military circle and tattoo circles to just get a tattoo of a thing. Because sometimes, for some people, it's not about what the tattoo is, but the place, experience, memory of getting it. The art itself is the least important thing.
That's not you, and that's okay... but to think that everyone thinks like you? Or should? Arrogance. Snobbish arrogance.
Whatever man, sow division about shit. Don't let people make mistakes and grow. Be insufferable. That'll make the world better.
Educate me on military [lack of] culture and tattoo subculture, is it let's enroll anywhere they'll give us a gun so we can shoot little brown people and let's ink anything anywhere until society pays attention?
So I don't give a fuck what people do, you want to join Blackwater and do whatever shit they do, go ahead. Want to tattoo stupid nazi symbols you know nothing about? Suuuure. Just don't expect a vote from educated people with actual culture. But then again it just occurred to me that there's not so many of the latter, given the current level of US politics... This guy is probably at the right place at the right time. Carry on.
All that money, the pain, the effort and nobody cares huh? It's not your fault, it's just everybody's got them these days so nobody cares anymore...
By the way mods, whoever removed SailorFuzz's comment above, why did you do that? Now I look like an idiot making personal attacks for no reason. I'm not offended by the comment, please reinstate it so that people know who this guy is. It wasn't even a slur, all they said was I was insufferable, come on. Thicker skin guys!