The president’s proposed $445bn increase in military spending would batter popular domestic programs as millions struggle

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

-The Chance for Peace speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953

How far we have fallen. But . . .

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    25 days ago

    Trump spent most of his political career casually mocking the warmongering and deficit hawkery endemic to both the George and Bill administrations (in favor of his own brand of at-home white nationalist police state).

    That was his whole path to victory over the GOP Primary field in '16 and again in '24. He ran - quite literally and explicitly - as a Mussolini style “national socialist”. Nakedly and unequivocally fascist in the 1930s sense of the word.

    Now he’s just another John Bolton / Jim Webb neoconservative. Everything the public soured on decades ago is coming back up like swamp gas. No wonder even lay Republican voters are souring on him. He’s indistinguishable from Jeb Bush.

  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
    2·
    24 days ago

    “Golden Fleet” battleships named after you-know-who. (Those battleships will cost an astonishing $9bn to $13bn each.)

    50/50 they will cost over $20B a piece (need Qatar air force 1 jet quality VIP room) and still won’t be able to approach within 1000km of Iran coast. Navies no longer project power against modern defense strategies. Only blockades of civilian ships that battleships are too slow for.

    The $200B “Iran defeat recovery bill” that was written a little more than a week after war started is still secret and being worked on. Likely to grow even if war unwinds quickly to cover Iran and allies (not just Israel) reparations to keep them colonized.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    75·
    25 days ago

    Yes, yes, we’re stealing from social programs to fund a fucked up war machine to support Israel and randomly attack countries for any reason, yes.

    But look, Harris was married to a Jewish man, ok? Morally, it was wrong to vote, or to vote for her. Right .ml? 👍 Plus, she wasn’t 100% onboard with transitioning herself. So. It makes complete sense that we tacitly support this.