Thread: Use of different cases in similar context. Don't understand why

The line in a show I am watching reads as follows:

"то, что единство может и должен предложить нормальный мужчина - вооружаться, вооружаться самим, вооружать рабочих"

The part that has me confused is the end of the sentence that says to arm ourselves and arm the workers. "самим" I believe is in the dative and "рабочих" the genitive(animate accusative). The two constructions are very similar, in fact the only difference is that the first part is reflexive and what follows is not. Does the reflexive verb require its object to be in the dative case? Is this just for the verb "вооружаться" or other reflexive verbs as well? Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Ah, you're missing out on the proper grammatical relations of verbs and their objects here. Refer to this:

вооружать рабочих, вооружаться самим, вооружать рабочих самим

Самим is, how do you call it properly, an inderect object in both cases there and рабочих is your direct object, which is in boringly mundane accusative there. Here's a nifty little tip though, reflexive verbs, grammatically speaking, don't generally go well with direct objects because this reflexive form is already comprised of the verb in its basic active form and the reflexive себя, which is exactly what turns the action a verb describes back at its subject. Like this вооружать себя-> вооружаться. Ся is a shorty for себя if you will. This reference is strictly grammatical though, symantically a reflexive verb "taken apart" won't always mean the same thing. Вооружаться = вооружать себя, however.

Also:
"то, что единственно может и должен предложить нормальный мужчина"
"единство" is "unity"
"единственно" is "the only thing that..."