PS DefenSe in the us.
A lack of a standing army has implications. It’s a huge drain on an economy that filters resources into tanks and guns rather than schools and healthcare. It also has ripple effects in places that aren’t strictly military.
The US massively overproduces food. The reason is that farms were heavily subsidized during WW2 in order to feed an army where every soldier would potentially need a 3000kcal diet after matching all day, every day. Those farms dropped that money into automation, and that meant they still had the capability to produce that much after the war.
Dropping farm subsidies would have meant plunging that industry back into depression. So the subsidies kept going. You could nationalize the farms, but that doesn’t happen for obvious reasons. Nobody has come up with another idea for getting out of that trap.
Contrary to what MAGA thinks, free school lunches aren’t there to support “moochers”. During the draft for WW1, 1 out of 9 draftees were rejected for reasons related to malnutrition during childhood. Those programs exist to make sure America can draw up an army. MAGA doesn’t remember that lesson and undermine their own objectives in the process.
You need to subsidize heavy industry, too. Car companies become tank companies in times of war. Therefore, you better make sure your car companies survive in “peace” time. Hence all the government financing of those companies. Chrysler (or the company owning it) has been stumbling from one financial boondoggle to the next for my whole life because of this.
Even worse, you want the tank factories to stay tank factories. Which means Congress needs to order new tanks even when they’re not needed otherwise, or else those factories close. Same goes for ships and planes.
None of which used to happen until industrialized warfare forced the issue. If Originalists want things how it was in the first few decades after the Revolution, then the military should have had its funding and staffing at anemic levels for about a decade now. Except that genuinely would be a problem in case of another big war.
A solution to this is to take our ball and go home. As long as Canada and Mexico are friendly, we face no threat on our own continent. An oversea invasion is impossible (I can go over the details of why, but it comes down to logistics). The scaffolding of an army and a navy focused on shore defense would be fine. Keep a few nukes if we really have to.
MAGA would never go for that, either. They’re isolationist in some ways, but still want a giant military for some reason.
They literally renamed it from ministry of war to defense to justify all the Western wars of aggression.
Soon to be the “Ministry of Peace”.
You’re talking about the same industry that coined the term “preemptive strike” instead of calling it what it is: starting a war.
“I didn’t shoot a baby, I neutralized a threat!” - the IDF
funny how the israeli military is called a “defense force”. haven’t been doing much defending.
But when you’re Hamas, defending your country from invaders: terrorists!
I have been calling them the genocide force for the past year
Diaper force
Old joke from when I was in engineering college.
What’s the difference between a electrical engineer and a civil engineer?
One builds the bombs one builds the targets.
It’s a fairly recent development. It was created as the department of war by Washington and remained that until 1947 where it split into the departments of the air force and army, joining the already existing department of the navy, which together made up the national military establishment (NME), which was renamed 2 years later to the DOD.
Oddly enough, this also coincides with the time when the US military was more explicitly about offence rather than defense. After the Revolution, people mistrusted the federal government having a large standing army. The army was raised up in time of war, and everyone went home when it was over.
Post-WW2 was the first time the US kept a large army in “peace”. Been that way ever since.
defense
offence
Make up your mind!
Claiming the US was not immensely offensive before WW2 is laughable Even in the 19th century when they colonised plenty countries and took control from from Britain or Spain,…
And this in the most brutal way.
It was the period where they gained the most land and influence.
“the people” or their opinion has nothing to do with it and they could’t give a shit about what they mistrust or not.The US didn’t have a large standing military or budget for it. This matters.
What are you trying to say?
In the 1860’s they surpassed the size of the British navy.
And in case you didn’t know leeching of colonies and slaves is a lucrative.
Still the work of Edward Bernays and others, the father of modern propaganda.
- Military-industrial complex
- War machine
- Merchants of death
There are many names.
A way of keeping people employed usefully in many highly skilled jobs so you don’t need to give them social security payouts for being jobless. In this way it is a truly excellent idea.
The problem is that it happens at the expense of other jobs, and the lack of transparency makes corruption way too easy.
“Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”
- President Muffley, in Dr Strangelove
“The Ministry of Peace”
-Orwell
Please respect and enjoy the peace ☮️
- Emperor Cleon, who ended the galactic wars
The US used to have the Department of War. Then it split up after WWII into the departments of the army, navy, air force and the overseeing department was renamed the department of defense. Probably a branding thing.
edit: a word
100% branding. Cant go around admitting to attack and start wars. Its defense, guys. On other countries soil. Right?
I’ve always heard to it referred to as the “military industrial complex”. Eisenhower tried to warn us about it in the 1950s.
Smedley Butler was warning us in 1935. War is a Racket .
They also cause Famines, Plagues, and Pestilence. They have whole departments devoted to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
They’re not a one trick pony.
pollution/conquest, death, famine, pestilence.
The attack industry
