The US Military Is a Socialist Organization Affordable housing and food, tuition assistance, and universal health care are hallmarks of a social welfare systemâand life in the armed forces.
What do I mean by softer forms of militarism? Iâm a football fan, so one recent Sunday afternoon found me watching an NFL game on CBS. People deplore violence in such games, and rightly so, given the number of injuries among the players, notably concussions that debilitate lives. But what about violent commercials during the game? In that one afternoon, I noted repetitive commercials for SEAL Team, SWAT, and FBI, all CBS shows from this quietly militarized American moment of ours. In other words, I was exposed to lots of guns, explosions, fisticuffs, and the like, but more than anything I was given glimpses of hard men (and a woman or two) in uniform who have the very answers we need and, like the Pentagon-supplied police in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, are armed to the teeth. (âModels with guns,â my wife calls them.)
Got a situation in Nowhere-stan? Send in the Navy SEALs. Got a murderer on the loose? Send in the SWAT team. With their superior weaponry and can-do spirit, Special Forces of every sort are sure to win the day (except, of course, when they donât, as in Americaâs current series of never-ending wars in distant lands). (...)
Besides TV shows, movies, and commercials, there are many signs of the increasing embrace of militarized values and attitudes in this country. The result: the acceptance of a military in places where it shouldnât be, one thatâs over-celebrated, over-hyped, and given far too much money and cultural authority, while becoming virtually immune to serious criticism.
If this exposure proves accurate it is not an insignificant shift nor is the mindset even remotely sane. They're talking about tactical weapons. Those have been around since the cold war. I was thinking that they were to have been phased out. Obviously not.
The U.S. military is finally withdrawing (or not) from its base at al-Tanf. You know, the place that the Syrian government long claimed was a training ground for Islamic State (ISIS) fighters; the land corridor just inside Syria, near both the Iraqi and Jordanian borders, that Russia has called a terrorist hotbed (while floating the idea of jointly administering it with the United States); the location of a camp where hundreds of U.S. Marines joined Special Operations forces last year; an outpost that U.S. officials claimed was the key not only to defeating ISIS, but also, according to General Joseph Votel, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, to countering âthe malign activities that Iran and their various proxies and surrogates would like to pursue.â You know, that al-Tanf.
Within hours of President Trumpâs announcement of a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, equipment at that base was already being inventoried for removal. And just like that, arguably the most important American garrison in Syria was (maybe) being struck from the Pentagonâs books â except, as it happens, al-Tanf was never actually on the Pentagonâs books. Opened in 2015 and, until recently, home to hundreds of U.S. troops, it was one of the many military bases that exist somewhere between light and shadow, an acknowledged foreign outpost that somehow never actually made it onto the Pentagonâs official inventory of bases. (...)
On Banana Republics Bluntly stated, the politicization of the American military had already advanced a good deal before Trump became president.
Today, the politicization process is on steroids.
Yeah a sub would be worse, clausta, can we say claustrophobia while tripping ?
I used to have a Merchant Marine card, never went out though. A close friend did sail on the ore boats up here on the GL's. One winter, he had the ship watcher job for his boat as it was tied up for the winter here in Cleveland sometime in the mid 70's. I spent lot's of time onboard that winter. From stem to stern. Flipping dangerous just being there, straight and sober. Spooky, too, but that's another story ... And then to be on something ginormous, operational, fully manned and underway, tripping ? No way in hell. Rather trip at Disneyland and that is not all it's cracked up to be, either. Been there, did that ...
and that clip of Dragnet, yikes !
Yeah, Reagan on acid would've been something: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this magic, glowing wall before the multicolored sounds pouring out of it come and take away the pretzels." I have a cousin who spent most of his Navy career on submarines, mostly under the Arctic ice, playing hide-and-seek with Russian (then-Soviet) subs. He said there were very prolonged periods of time (days?) where no one was allowed to speak or make any kind of sounds. They used all kinds of hand signals and many of them learned American Sign Language. I imagine using LSD would not have been a good idea. I'd forgotten how much out-and-out nonsense was spouted out by Joe Friday. It's funny these days to see it, but a lot of people believed him back then.
Geez, not as bored as you. Your news feeds or whatever it is that you indulge yourself in must be overwhelming.
But tripping on an ACC ? You've got to be kidding. I couldn't think of a worse place just because of what it is. Last place I would even think of tripping.
Actually this is a problem, we do NOT need active duty military tripping. It was a bad idea when it was administered to the soliders by the military and it is a bad idea for them to take it on their own.
Geez, not as bored as you. Your news feeds or whatever it is that you indulge yourself in must be overwhelming.
But tripping on an ACC ? You've got to be kidding. I couldn't think of a worse place just because of what it is. Last place I would even think of tripping.
A submarine is probably worse, but still... When I first read that headline I had forgotten what the thread topic was and briefly thought it was about some new information which surfaced about Ronald Reagan having used LSD while he was President.
That is what I thought, too.
Yeah a sub would be worse, clausta, can we say claustrophobia while tripping ?
I used to have a Merchant Marine card, never went out though. A close friend did sail on the ore boats up here on the GL's. One winter, he had the ship watcher job for his boat as it was tied up for the winter here in Cleveland sometime in the mid 70's. I spent lot's of time onboard that winter. From stem to stern. Flipping dangerous just being there, straight and sober. Spooky, too, but that's another story ... And then to be on something ginormous, operational, fully manned and underway, tripping ? No way in hell. Rather trip at Disneyland and that is not all it's cracked up to be, either. Been there, did that ...
Geez, not as bored as you. Your news feeds or whatever it is that you indulge yourself in must be overwhelming.
But tripping on an ACC ? You've got to be kidding. I couldn't think of a worse place just because of what it is. Last place I would even think of tripping.
Geez, not as bored as you. Your news feeds or whatever it is that you indulge yourself in must be overwhelming.
But tripping on an ACC ? You've got to be kidding. I couldn't think of a worse place just because of what it is. Last place I would even think of tripping.
A submarine is probably worse, but still... When I first read that headline I had forgotten what the thread topic was and briefly thought it was about some new information which surfaced about Ronald Reagan having used LSD while he was President.
Fourteen sailors from the nuclear reactor department of the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan face disciplinary action in connection to LSD abuse, Navy officials confirmed this week.
Geez, not as bored as you. Your news feeds or whatever it is that you indulge yourself in must be overwhelming.
But tripping on an ACC ? You've got to be kidding. I couldn't think of a worse place just because of what it is. Last place I would even think of tripping.
Fourteen sailors from the nuclear reactor department of the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan face disciplinary action in connection to LSD abuse, Navy officials confirmed this week.
Given his erratic behavior, from daily Twitter eruptions to upping his tally of lies by the hour, itâs hard to think of Donald Trump as a man with a plan. But in at least one area — reshaping the economy to serve the needs of the military-industrial complex — he's (gasp!) a socialist in the making.
His plan is now visibly taking shape — one we can see and assess thanks to a Pentagon-led study with a distinctly tongue-twisting title: âAssessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Defense Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States.â The analysis is the brainchild of Trumpâs adviser for trade and manufacturing policy, Peter Navarro, who happens to also be the key architect of the presidentâs trade wars.
Navarro, however, can hardly take sole credit for the administrationâs latest economic plan, since the lead agency for developing it was also the most interested of all in the project, the Pentagon itself, in particular its Office of Defense Industrial Policy. In addition, those producing the report did so in coordination with an alphabet soup of other agencies from the Department of Commerce to the Director of National Intelligence. And even thatâs not all. Itâs also the product of an âinteragency task forceâ made up of 16 working groups and 300 âsubject matterâ experts, supplemented by over a dozen industry âlistening sessionsâ with outfits like the National Defense Industrial Association, an advocacy organization that represents 1,600 companies in the defense sector.
Before jumping into its substance and implications for the American economy and national defense, let me pause a moment to mention two other small matters.
First, were you aware that the Pentagon even had an Office of Defense Industrial Policy? It sounds suspiciously like the kind of government organization that engages in economic planning, a practice anathema not just to Republicans but to many Democrats as well. The only reason itâs not a national scandal — complete with Fox News banner headlines about the end of the American way of life as we know it and the coming of creeping socialism — is because itâs part of the one institution that has always been exempt from the dictates of the âfree marketâ: the Department of Defense.
Second, how about those 300 subject matter experts? Since when does Donald Trump consult subject matter experts? Certainly not on climate change, the most urgent issue facing humanity and one where expert opinion is remarkably unified. The Pentagon and its contractors should, however, be thought of as the ultimate special interest group and with that status comes special treatment. And if that means consulting 300 such experts to make sure their âneedsâ are met, so be it. (...)
It turns green. NO WAIT! Purple. Yeah.
When I first read that headline I had forgotten what the thread topic was and briefly thought it was about some new information which surfaced about Ronald Reagan having used LSD while he was President.
