Recently I have been involved in a discussion about whether the US government was stingy or not for their small donation to the Tsunami appeal. We all knew it would increase, calling it stingy at the time wasn’t necessary (though the small donation if it didn’t increase would have been stingy). The problem came when people suggested that they couldn’t spare the money because the country couldn’t pay for schools. I then pointed out that military cuts are quite possible, the US doesn’t need a military force 8 times the size of their nearest rival, and 4 times the size of Russia, China and the 7 “axis of evil” states combined. The comment then was that reduced military funding would increase the number of people on welfare. This I do not doubt, it’s fairly obvious. The flaw in it though is that it is suggested that people are only in the military because they would be without jobs otherwise, turning it into one big welfare system.
Of course this is a flawed notion. The military is not an efficient welfare system afterall, at least in the short term (ignoring possible gained from increasing work ethic etc – these *might* be fair counterarguments). You’re looking at probably at least $100,000 per year per person direct costs in the military, and probably $40,000 on welfare? A big difference, hence it would be cheaper to sack people from the point of view on the economy.
This is immediately twisted into me saying people would be better off on welfare and that they do useless jobs anyway. Worse the response from US military families is that “They are doing the jobs so you don’t have to. So you can sleep in your beds at night without fear” blah blah blah. Why is it that I’ve gained the impression over the last few years that the US military isn’t about safety of the country, certainly not of the world. It isn’t about increasing training or anything like that. It’s about making people feel good. It’s about making the US as a country feel self righteous about being able to protect the world if it wants to, go to war against “evil” regimes. It’s about making military people feel self righteous about being in the military, they are so special afterall, better than the rest of us.
Other world militaries seem to have nothing of this. In european forces people are either there because they were made to (national service) or because they want to better themselves, or in many cases they admit to not having any better ideas. Fine. Not in the US though, no, there they all join up because they are such wonderful people that they are willing to risk their lives to save the rest of us.
We all know what it is really though. Self righteous bullshit, and the US military is full of it.
Labour’s Election Posters
Sunday, January 30th, 2005We see that Labour has created a set of posters representing Michael Howard an co in various different ways. The first is his and Oliver Letwin’s heads on flying pigs with the caption “THE DAY THE TORY SUMS ADD UP”. The second is of Michael Howard’s face with a pocket watch held in front of it, and motion lines to indicate that the watch is swinging. This pose is apparently reminiscent of Shylock, and along with the fact that the flying pigs in the other poster were just that, pigs, these posters are supposed by certain sections to be anti-semitic.
What I don’t understand is why posters that in all liklihood are innocent should be seen as anti-semitic by anyone? It didn’t occur to anyone I asked that there was any Jewish hint in the posters at all, so why Labout would be attemting to… what, remind people that Howard is Jewish, maybe, by using these posters, I don’t know. More likely they were playing on the common phrase “Pigs might fly” for the first, and the second is a representation of a hypotist which goes well with the caption saying something on the lines of “My sums do add up”.
Anti-semitic? If they are intended to be then they are cleverly so, because it’s certainly not the most obvious reading of the message from the posters.
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