In defense of

It’s not so early. I have been able to sleep a little later than usual this week and I think it’s the naps. Besides being good for your heart, naps are great for your overall health, including your mental health. America needs more naps! I wonder if the Decider takes naps? He should.

A big part of my walking routine is a long conversation with myself. And I was busy talking about the defense budget yesterday. So I had to Google it this morning to see what I could see…I knew I would find something interesting and I did. Good reading and it even has charts.

And I remembered that the Soviet Union collapsed because of overspending on their defense budget. No, Ronnie didn’t make the ‘Evil Empire’ go away. That’s a myth in the same league as George Washington and the cherry tree. They did it to themselves while in competition with us. We outspent them. So who are we in competition with now? All of the countries in the world? If so, we’re clearly ahead in this race. We’re spending $420 billion a year; not including the cost of the war. Maybe we should slow down.

Or, perhaps we can’t slow down. Have we created a monster that must be fed? Defense industries with huge payrolls that are dependent on the military dollar? How many people would lose their jobs if we slowed down?

Let’s say we cut $100 billion out of the budget and spent it on something else. We’d still be in first place militarily and we might even have a chance of being in first place among the few who strive to do good in this world.

And then I looked at weapon holdings by nation, per capita. Interesting data. And this of course, “Interesting facts on American Military The United States spends more money on its military than the next 12 nations combined.

In the 1990's, nearly half of all arms exported to developing countries came from the United States of America.”

I have to admit that life was simpler back in the days before Google. That was when we had to believe what we were told. And some people still swear by that method of governance. They don’t want to know!