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Showing Original Post only (View all)The grand grotesquery of the U.S. military - By Mark Morford [View all]
This is the chart that blows away all other charts, that makes babies melt and flowers scream, that equally intoxicates and befuddles all viewpoints along the political spectrum; its the meta-, mega-, uber-chart that you rarely hear anyone in the corridors of power fight much about, not in the normal sense anyway, largely due to its stupendous insanity, imposing wastefulness, open-palmed insult to all you ever cared about.
Really, how can you not be sort of amazed, in a gross-all-over kind of way, when you see how the US military budget is so vast, so grotesquely outsized that, at upwards of $600 billion, it not only dwarfs all other expenditures in our economy, its actually larger than the military budgets of the next 10 major world powers on the planet, combined?
Whenever I hear that factoid, I just cant make it scale. It just sits there, like a lump, a massive tumor on the face of the nation that no one dares mention, even though its the size of Mars. Even today, after many post-Cold War budget cutbacks, we still spend 10 times more than Russia, five times more than China, and so on. No one else even comes close. Is this not viciously surreal? Insane?
Its not exactly something to be proud of.
Really, how can you not be sort of amazed, in a gross-all-over kind of way, when you see how the US military budget is so vast, so grotesquely outsized that, at upwards of $600 billion, it not only dwarfs all other expenditures in our economy, its actually larger than the military budgets of the next 10 major world powers on the planet, combined?
Whenever I hear that factoid, I just cant make it scale. It just sits there, like a lump, a massive tumor on the face of the nation that no one dares mention, even though its the size of Mars. Even today, after many post-Cold War budget cutbacks, we still spend 10 times more than Russia, five times more than China, and so on. No one else even comes close. Is this not viciously surreal? Insane?
Its not exactly something to be proud of.
http://blog.sfgate.com/morford/2015/02/18/the-grand-grotesquery-of-the-u-s-military/
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If we can't afford to educate our children, to heal our sick or care for our elderly ...
Scuba
Feb 2015
#6
All the military might has to be used or some may take notice of the obscene waste.
Fred Sanders
Feb 2015
#11
The defense budget is defending the wealth and income and growing the wealth and...
stillwaiting
Feb 2015
#24
Wouldn't it be awesome if we paid those military contractors to do GOOD in the world
think
Feb 2015
#8
While it may be pie in the sky I truly hope you get the chance someday. Thank you for the response!
think
Feb 2015
#20
"Prussia is not a state that has an army, but an army that has a state." Mirabeau
Tierra_y_Libertad
Feb 2015
#12
You think mandatory service, would not only improve the military operational capabilities,
NM_Birder
Feb 2015
#32