Trump's pledges to increase military spending have never been a big point in my support of him. I am a semi-isolationist and believe we have too many entangling alliances, too many foreign commitments, and that a gigantic professional military impels its (often unwise) use of force and foreign military adventurism.
But watching the hysteria on the far left, I'm beginning to appreciate what he's up to. Not enthusiastic, no, but as a student of history, I am beginning to think, like so many of Trump's political impulses, this impetus may be another example of big picture wisdom.
Because...
We are approaching a civil war, a suspension of democratic governance, and as scary as such is, it scares me not half as much as a corrupt farce of a democracy controlled by cynical, self obsessed elites using radical leftist ideology in a misguided and desperate attempt to exert and maintain control over a cascading Marxist-progressivist witch hunt our oligarchs will be immune to because of their great wealth and power.
Which will ultimately consume said elites as well, by the way. They play with fire.
But if the civil war is inevitable, I hope it starts soon, or soonish, while Trump or his successor holds power and while our military establishment supports Trump or his successor...
In the first century BC, the Roman republic began to collapse under the unsupportable weight of foreign militarism and creeping empire. The organs of republican, democratic governance had transformed into tools of imperial oligarchists and the ever rising cost of maintaining a huge professional military.
The resulting "SOCIAL WARS" presaged the collapse of the republican constitution as great leaders such as Marius and Sulla relied on the loyalty of their troops to impose order onto creeping chaos, a process that eventually resulted in a military dictatorship under Sulla, and within the next century, the imperium of the Caesars.
I don't relish the end of our democratic republic, but cannot help but envision some form of extreme transformation, at least some sort of "push restart", that will involve violent conflict and at least an interregnum period of authoritarian rule before we have any chance of reconnecting with our democratic republican roots.
And I would rather such an interregnum be at the hands of a Trump or Trump successor supported by our gigantic military than at the hands of radical leftists supported by the same...
Trump's pledges to increase military spending have never been a big point in my support of him. I am a semi-isolationist and believe we have too many entangling alliances, too many foreign commitments, and that a gigantic professional military impels its (often unwise) use of force and foreign military adventurism.
But watching the hysteria on the far left, I'm beginning to appreciate what he's up to. Not enthusiastic, no, but as a student of history, I am beginning to think, like so many of Trump's political impulses, this impetus may be another example of big picture wisdom.
Because...
We are approaching a civil war, a suspension of democratic governance, and as scary as such is, it scares me not half as much as a corrupt farce of a democracy controlled by cynical, self obsessed elites using radical leftist ideology in a misguided and desperate attempt to exert and maintain control over a cascading Marxist-progressivist witch hunt our oligarchs will be immune to because of their great wealth and power.
Which will ultimately consume said elites as well, by the way. They play with fire.
But if the civil war is inevitable, I hope it starts soon, or soonish, while Trump or his successor holds power and while our military establishment supports Trump or his successor...
In the first century BC, the Roman republic began to collapse under the unsupportable weight of foreign militarism and creeping empire. The organs of republican, democratic governance had transformed into tools of imperial oligarchists and the ever rising cost of maintaining a huge professional military.
The resulting "SOCIAL WARS" presaged the collapse of the republican constitution as great leaders such as Marius and Sulla relied on the loyalty of their troops to impose order onto creeping chaos, a process that eventually resulted in a military dictatorship under Sulla, and within the next century, the imperium of the Caesars.
I don't relish the end of our democratic republic, but cannot help but envision some form of extreme transformation, at least some sort of "push restart", that will involve violent conflict and at least an interregnum period of authoritarian rule before we have any chance of reconnecting with our democratic republican roots.
And I would rather such an interregnum be at the hands of a Trump or Trump successor supported by our gigantic military than at the hands of radical leftists supported by the same...