No, We Don’t Need This Bloated Military

I got a couple emails that asked me, “Hey, don’t you think we NEED a military?! What are we going to do if we’re attacked?!” Very well. I’ll play. Pay attention, boys and girls. Get up and make coffee and settle in for a nice winter’s chat.

NUMBER ONE: The reason we end up being “attacked” in this day and age is because we stick our rather big nose into everyone else’s business. Listen, we all cannot stand neighbors that do that, so how much more would another country hate that behavior? Especially when it comes in the form of killing their citizens for vague political objectives none of them signed up for, wanted, or asked for. Most people on this planet want the following: Food, clean water, shelter, and safety. Ok, now, if Bashar al-Assad provides all of that, so what is that to us? We didn’t vote for the man, but the Syrians did. So butt out of it. There’s a lot to be said for minding your own business. Every war we’ve been into could have been avoided had we done so. I wonder how many MILLIONS of lives would have been saved had we just minded our own business? Right, we’re always the poor, innocent little waif minding his own business and we got blindsided. Sure. But when America does that, we call it a “decapitation strike” and high-five all the way to the press conference where we gloat about it for weeks. Or we call it a “pre-emptive strike” as if we’ve got The Psychic Hitline, er, Hotline working for us in the Pentagon.

NUMBER TWO: This isn’t a re-make of “Red Dawn” over here, got that? No one is going to invade America. Not when we have enough nuclear weapons to literally destroy the entire planet and have enough left over to work on obliterating the entire solar system itself, just for kicks. The interstellar Circle K’s would be talking about that for eons. Extraterrestrial rockhounds would be collecting pieces of the Earth for their collections for billions of years to come. Yeah, I get it, everyone has fantasies of gearing up and going out to fight invading Russkies that landed at Malibu. But, look here F Troop, most of the people that fantasize about that couldn’t walk across the street carrying a package of Pop Tarts without wheezing for breath. So how are they going to shlep a 100-pound rucksack across Arizona here in summer? I’d pay to sit in the bleachers watching that action. No, Virginia, there isn’t a Soviet Claus. And they weren’t thinking of invading us, either, by the way. The only tanks I see on American streets belong to the police.

NUMBER THREE: The first cause of needing a huge military here that’s costing us a fortune is because our government feels it needs to run the world. Well, excuse me, buuuttt! These colors don’t run—the world! I know the government feels the world will fall apart without the United States, but I bet the Romans felt the same way. Probably the Assyrians, too, and the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar was probably a firm believer in regime change and where is he now, I ask you? No. If the United States fell apart tomorrow (yay!), the world would roll merrily along. In fact, the celebration party would probably last for the next fifty years; a Jubilee of epic proportions when the entire globe was redeemed from American imperialism. Again, the so-called “threats” we face are being concocted by our government who then depict these charades to the American people as genuine things. As if Yemen is suddenly going to amass a fleet of aircraft carrier battle groups from a yard sale and appear off the coast of California demanding Mount Rushmore for ransom and forcing the Statue of Liberty to wear a hijab. Please. If I laughed any louder at the “threats” this government tells me to be afraid of, they will, indeed, hear me in Yemen. If we stacked end-to-end all the dollar bills we’ve wasted on this bloated military, we could also get rid of NASA because we could WALK to the next galaxy.

NUMBER FOUR: “We face growing threats”. Yes, because our government keeps watering and fertilizing them! My gosh, our government could see a threat from a derelict offshore drilling platform taken over by squatters and declared a sovereign nation! The defense spending to defend America against Ralphistan would cost us the productivity of three generations! “Sir, we have intel that Ralphistan is preparing to launch a canoe…” “Quick! Everyone to the fuehrerbunker! Fire back! With everything!” Has anyone yet seen the absolute comic threat assessments? Has anyone turned down the sound on Presidential press conferences as he’s telling us about “threats” and played “The Sound Of Music”? You should do that sometime. Then you’ll see how utterly ridiculous this manifestation of collective ignorance and superstition is. Yes, superstition. The belief that a government makes us safe, as if it’s some gigantic Four Leaf Clover and Lucky Rabbit’s Foot all rolled into the White House. Personally, I’d rather rely on a Lucky Rabbit’s Foot than this sordid collection of vagabonds, charlatans, and buffoons.

There. As for me, I’d like to take my government back for a refund. I didn’t subscribe to this foreign policy. The installments on that policy are too high. I can’t afford it. I’ll even return the fancy toaster oven I got when, wait, I never got one. Where can I report the government to a consumer protection agency? I think we’re all being ripped off.

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