You might want to specify a country here.
We know where you are, but you're not the centre of the universe.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
118 points (89.3% liked)
No Stupid Questions
47045 readers
661 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I hear they don't let trans people in. Could try that
that's how you end up in a labor camp making military drones instead
by being in a country that doesnt have a draft and by being trans
Fight for an Independent California.
Was in the Marines before, hated it and left to go to school. Would never think about joining back up. However I actually unironically would be willing to fight for California to be its own country, America is already on decline and society is fucked in general.
Aside from that maybe I'd expatriate and go to my mother's home country in Central America and try to improve things there.
By being Canadian. Y'all can come live in my basement, my little American basement babies.
Thanks homie. I'll cook every night.
Man, you're WAY more charitable than I!
In 2016, I offered formal asylum to a few dangerously leftist US friends of mine.
This time 'round (2024) I publicly revoked it. I'm done with the country as a whole. They need to stay there and figure their shit out.
That's one of the greatest acts of friendship y'all keep offering us. It's always been appreciated
Wait that's an option? 👀
Hmm I guess I'll just die. 🤷♂️
Maybe I'll find my faith into Buddhism or something lmao. (cuz buddists can't do violence so you have religious exemption)
Oh yea btw, my mom called me weak and cowardly and unmannly and once told me "You should join the military so you can become more 'Manly' and 'brave'"
I was like "Sureee mom, so when WW3 breaks out and they deploy me to Taiwan, I get to shoot at China's PLA soldiers..." (context: my family is from China) then mom got mad at me and told me that I'm so weak no military would ever accept me anyways... lmfao.
So if I get drafted and die in war... maybe my mom will finally be happy that her son "died a man" or whateverz...
Surely Donald will close the bone spurs loophole
Same boat man. I've seen enough shit I'd probably blast my superiors too.
Do you think they’d actually bring back the draft? I feel like after Vietnam they realized that it’s too hard to send the general population to do terrible shit without getting a lot of pushback. A professional military that’s already filtered out anyone with a conscience is half of why they can just do shit like this while most of the country doesn’t want it. Plus technology has improved a lot, allowing a smaller force to do the same thing.
As for me. I’m already out of that age range, but I’ve already been wanting to move for a while. Maybe that would be the last kick in the pants necessary to get me to actually do it. But with the depression it’s still kind of a coin flip so….
The DoD thinks its a dumb idea to have a draft as the quality of the fighting force is degraded and other Incentives work better. The problem is facts and good reasoning are not something that the current administration is known for. Half want a Holy war to bring about Armageddon. The other half will do it based on something they see on social media.
The US government has been investing billions into AI, drones, and other autonomous and remote weapons systems.
Sending a bunch of young men to the opposite side of the world would be not just unpopular, it incredibly expensive. Food, clothing, equipment, healthcare costs. I highly doubt the end goal is to actually annex Iran, so they're much better off trying to find a local group to support in taking over the country and establishing a US-friendly puppet state. There's no need to have Americans in guerilla warfare for that.
The only way I see them doing that is if they WANT to kill off a chunk of the male population in that age group. Which... Maybe? I could certainly see Trump and Hegseth trying to send "undesirables" overseas to die, but they've also made moves like banning trans people from military service. Unless they reverse policies, it looks like Trump will prefer to cozy up to the military rather than use it as a tool for getting rid of people.
Maybe Trump will just do what Netenyahu tells him to. But I think this is more about trying to manufacture a reason to cancel mid-term elections like they outlined in 2025 than anything else. With the added benefit of funneling more government money into the military-industrial complex.
Do you think they’d actually bring back the draft?
The important question is whether THEY think they'll bring back the draft; and the answer is yes, they are thinking of that very thing. Young men - they'll bar women - will go and die, just to keep the Epstein files sealed by any distraction possible. Any fight, any time, anything big and bloody.
(Because if you listen to the one witness, it's just even so much more heinous than even this)
Back when I was young I was just glad I was hard of hearing.
Just gonna give them a rundown on my politics
shoot my superior that's telling me I need to kill innocents
Everybody, tell them this!
It could be a beautiful strategy to avoid the draft.
The phrase "Yes, officer, please put me in a building with access to weapons and military officials." Is a very useful tool.
It's funny how a small group of people can make 99% of the world do heinous things they don't necessarily want to do but the masses rarely fight back. Tyrants will never be afraid when they know nobody will ever do anything effective against them. Noone can convince me we aren't already in at least the first ring of hell based on how fucked up this world is.
If you haven't read about the Milgram Experiment, it's a fascinating, and disheartening journey into notions of authority and compliance. In short... Milgram's finding was that most people do what they're told--even when they known it's wrong--simply because they're told to do it.
I have read about it and I have issues with it, at least the original study. The participants signed up for an experiment run by a Yale professor so I'm sure a lot of them didn't think this would cause serious damage if any damage in reality. The participants signed up knowing they would get paid.
Not that money would excuse them for "harming" people but in combination with what would appear to be a professionally run experiment by a reputable school, I don't think people would necessarily assume this was some kind of actual murder room.
Now if the experiment was to give randomly selected participants off the street a gun and tell them to shoot a puppy for no money, I think the results would differ.
I definitely think this experiment has issues, but I think the reasons you mentioned make it more applicable to the military though not other scenarios. Bc soldiers are meant to obey orders above all else. Their commanders aren’t random people, they’re meant to be the authorities who know what’s a war crime and what’s not. Now, obviously that’s not true, or if they do know they don’t necessarily give a shit, but this all sets up a permission structure that it’s “okay” to follow orders even if it seems kinda wrong
Fragging is back on the menu, boys! /s
load more comments
(10 replies)
I'm too old, but remember doing this planning after 9/11. (FWIW, if it didn't happen then, it's really likely not going to happen now, but you never know. Always good to have a plan.) Here he's some options:
First option: conscientious objectors are still allowed. Go join a Buddhist temple (treeleaf.org is an online one). But you have to commit. Be a member in good standing, take the precepts, actually participate. Similarly, you can be exempted if you're a priest. Do you genuinely think that aliens are angels and that the alien god Raël is our savior? Great! Start a local Ralean church and start preaching. Do it on YT! Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Perfect! We need more Pastafarians to get it legally recognized in more states.
Second option: Mental Health Disqualifications. An ADHD diagnosis CAN sometimes be enough to get a deferral (but Petey might sign a blanket waiver). Gender dysphoria as well, and with this administration, they're so trans-phobic that seems like a slam dunk (assuming there's no trans gulag you'll end up at). The important part to any mental health disqualification is treatment or meds in the last 12 months (24 months maybe).
Third option: Stay in school, kids. Regular university attendance still is ground for a deferral....today at least. Grad school? PhD program? Might be worth the application fee.
Fourth option: Leaving the country. A lot of people ended up in Canada during Vietnam. Digital nomad visas are easy to get in a lot of places. An alternative to this would be Peace Corps service, which would let you defer being drafted until your service is done. You can extend up to 5 years in the same country. Also a large number of people in PC during Vietnam. Considering it survived when USAID didn't, I'd say anyone qualified might as well start applying now as it can take up to a year to a placement.
Last option: Be the sole income earner for your family. So marry someone - anyone - and be employed, preferably in an industry that won't go away during a draft (sorry, DoorDash isn't going to cut it). I had a grand parent who was a welder during WWII who wasn't drafted based on this one.
I'd be careful with the mental health one given how they've been positioning to send people with ADHD to "wellness farms" and lord knows what they'd do with trans draft dodgers.
Yeah, I didn't want to go the extra step and suggest that whatever a bunch of transphobes decide is "gender dysmorphia" will get people sent to a conversion gulag, but we were all thinking it, right?
Do what that Canadian teacher (in Hamilton I believe) who got the fake massive tits
For anyone considering transitioning to dodge the draft, please consider you may actually be transgender, approaching transition from a direction that relieves guilt over gender conformity is pretty common.
Why dodge when you can frag?
Reminds me of an old lyric by John Prine..."She was a level-headed woman, on the road to alcohol, and I was just a soldier, on my way to Montreal".
Would measles be a way out? It is on the rise in america.
On of my ancestors cut his two fingers off to escape the Russian draft decades and decades ago. I'm not in America and I think I might be disqualified anyway if I were, but I wonder if that's a modern strategy that could work. It does sound a bit drastic...
My German great grandpa was a pacifist and got around being drafted into WW1 and WW2 by pretending to be an alcoholic. He apparently barely ate and lived only from booze and cigarettes for a month. He went to the draft office underweight and shaking and they pretty much sent him home immediately. Unfortunately he did some actual damage to his liver with it but I guess it's better than getting blown to bits for the Emperor or the Nazis.
God, he must have really committed to the act to do acutte liver damage in 30 days
Did he have fun at least? How much sauce was that per day?
Or it was retrospective.
"Frank what the fuck have you been doing while I was away visiting my family?"
"Um, er, ah, dodging the draft! Yeah, that's it. Certainly not a month long bender."
😜
I guess it's not something he wanted to take any chances with. His father was fairly high up in the Austro-Hungarian military, so he knew what the frontline was like.
He still lived a long and decently healthy life and died in his 80s. Never drank or smoked again though.
Good for him, lucky the liver is respawnable
load more comments
(2 replies)
view more: next ›