Sampanviking said: In America all the pre-requisites are lining up and look to be falling into place. Could an organised army of hundreds of thousands of Vets really push the US over the brink? Click to expand...

The typical US service member tends to be right-of-center, politically unsophisticated, and deeply suspicious of protest movements of any kind. The later I think is in part a legacy of the anti-war movmement of the 1960s. Most of my co-workers use terms like "dirty hippies" or even "commies" (yes - still a pejorative label in the US military) when ever they refer to the OWS folks (which is not very often). I also think that as a rule the very idea of civil disobiedience is something of an anethma to the military mind. A Soldier looks at the OWS protestors and sees a bunch of lazy, dirty, good for nothing hippies who apparently have nothing better to do than to make a mess of public spaces, beat drums, smoke dope, and collect welfare while they (the Soldier) is out busting his or her ass keeping the hippies safe to have their stupid protests. While clearly the reality is something quite different, that describes the typical knee-jerk reaction of a lot of military folks. This is more true among the career military folks (typically older, more conservative, more buy-in to the "military" outlook) than the younger kids, but of the younger kids in the military have very little interest in politics at all.It will take something much bigger than one or two vets being in the wrong place at the wrong time to see any wide spread military/veteran support for OWS.That being said, there US military isn't completely politically homogenous. There are a few of us here and there who are left-of-center, and support at least the ideas behinds the OWS movement (that we don't want our democracy to be for sale to the corporate board with the most advertising dollars to spend on buying...I mean "supporting" their preferred candidate for office.... ). ;Just a disclaimer - I am generalizing and simplifying pretty heavily here, but I've been in uniform for 22 years, and I think overall it's a pretty accurate description of how a large number of enlisted and non-coms feel. I won't comment on the officers - because God only knows what they think-Adrian