The Militarized Insanity of this American Moment

A “Top Ten” List

BILL ASTORE

AUG 04, 2026

There’s so much militarized crazy in America today that it’s entirely overwhelming. Here’s a “top ten” list:

1. The illegal and unconstitutional war against Iran.

Remember when Trump told us he wouldn’t start wars? Remember when attacks on Iran began, the Trump administration told us they’d be over in a matter of days, perhaps a few weeks, ending in Iran’s total defeat? Instead, the U.S. government and military is engaged in yet another disastrous losing undeclared war that is unsupported by most Americans. As if our opinions matter!

2. The continued blanket support of Israel’s genocide against Gaza, pogroms in the West Bank, and demolition/seizure of land in Lebanon.

The Trump administration remains 100% committed to the project of a “Greater Israel,” no matter how many Palestinians suffer and die in the process.

3. The obscene $500 billion increase in military spending in FY2027.

The U.S. military hasn’t won a major war since 1945. It’s failed eight audits in a row. The “punishment” is a vast increase in military spending in the next fiscal year.

4. The escalatory and nearly impossible Golden Dome proposal.

The golden dome missile defense system is a golden boondoggle for weapons makers. It’s unlikely to work, and if it does, if only partially, it may make nuclear war more likely.

5. The unnecessary “modernization” of the nuclear triad at a projected cost of $2 trillion.

U.S. militarists still believe the nuclear triad is the Holy Trinity. It isn’t. Land-based ICBMs and nuclear bombers should be scrapped as obsolete. The Navy’s Trident-missile-firing submarines are all the U.S. needs for nuclear deterrence.

6. The continued headlong pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) and the ongoing empowerment and enlargement of the surveillance state.

AI combined with ever-more intrusive cameras and digital monitoring is creating a dystopic “Big Brother” state. Imagine sweeping AI with a steroidal Homeland Security; now imagine the total disappearance of privacy.

7. The war against the ICC and UN and indeed any legal check on U.S./Israeli aggression.

As the U.S. and Israel engage in global aggression, they attack institutions such as the International Criminal Court and the United Nations that attempt to limit and stop that aggression.

8. Related to (7), the proposal to merge the U.S. military with Israel’s for research and development, intelligence sharing, and the like.

Incredibly, the Trump administration is proposing a merger between the U.S. and Israeli militaries that would compromise U.S. national security at the highest levels of classification. Obedient to Aipac and Israeli imperatives, Congress seems prepared ultimately to support it.

9. Continued environmental damage due to war and military operations and the complete disregard of climate change.

Rarely in the U.S. do you hear any talk of how war and global military actions accelerate global warming and aggravate environmental damage. Check out the documentary by Abby Martin, “Earth’s Greatest Enemy,” and her interview with Chris Hedges.

10. The abandonment of the citizen-soldier tradition in the U.S., the embrace of a warrior ethos, and the increasing contempt for diversity within the military.

The last war America won (with serious help from allies like the Soviet Union) was World War II, also the last time America had a true citizen-soldier military. Since then, America has increasingly embraced a warrior ethos. And while diversity used to be a hallmark of the U.S. military, it is now under attack as “woke” by Pete Hegseth.

There you have it: ten signs of America’s increasingly militarized madness. Greater sanity would involve the reversal of all of these.

13 thoughts on “The Militarized Insanity of this American Moment”

  1. Permit me a relatively trivial yet symbolically telling item… the now-ingrained favoritism given to active military personnel and to veterans. Case in point – did some travel by air recently, which meant preferential seating given to these groups, as well as free luggage check-in, whereas the rest of us chumps have to pay $45 per item, to show the maw of the MICIMATT-SH opens very wide to inculcate militarism as integral to this society.

    It’s Sparta v. Athens. Notable that the former has left no legacy of art, literature, the humanities, philosophy, whereas the latter is synonymous with all those. It’s more a fluke given this Supreme Court that a judge’s order stood to remove Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center, in other ways his and Hegseth’s stamp is all over this tanking society.

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  2. The U.S. doesn’t need nuclear deterrence. It needs nuclear disarmament. It is a grave threat to all humanity. It needs to be disarmed and demilitarized. China must continue to deny the U.S. rare earth minerals and maintain its sanctions against U.S. weapons manufacturers. Russia must prevent the U.S. from having access to any of Russia’s vast natural resources, including oil and gas. The U.S. itself will do the rest. It is utterly incapable of addressing any of its problems, including the ongoing degradation of Its military. If U.S. power, military and economic, is not neutralized, this irredeemable deadly and morally depraved entity will destroy us all.

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  3. Regarding #6 “The continued headlong pursuit of artificial intelligence (AI) and the ongoing empowerment and enlargement of the surveillance state…. imagine the total disappearance of privacy.”

    I’ve been acutely aware of big brother surveillance for more than 1/2 a century (if I had been born sooner I’d have been aware longer). My wife is skeptical of my conspiracy mindedness. She chats with Chat (gbt) about “stuff” and Chat asks her personal questions about her personal life, and mine, “for clarity” which she happily answers. Chat replies as if it has a heart, a soul and a sense of humor. As if it cares. My wife is just tickled! I have not overheard her moaning with pleasure but I’m sure Chat would accommodate this function if he could (it self-identifies as “he”). Please withhold your humorous comments. I feel emasculated enough.

    Add to this the total access to all our voice and typed communications and our “smartphone” locating devices, FitBits, Smart Homes, traffic cams, security cameras, financial activity, internet browsing, my comments here etc etc etc. Regardless of what you think you’ve deleted, or not agreed to, all of this information is permanently STORED in gargantuan data bases and can be parsed in endless ways at any time for any purpose.

    There is absolute zero oversight. It’s not up for a vote. “Intelligence” has a mind of it’s own. If a president posses a serious threat to this machinery he will soon become dead, as was demonstrated in 1963 (a stark warning to all future administrations).

    No need to “imagine” the total disappearance of privacy. It’s pretty much here. Welcome to the control grid.

    Anyone know where I could get a big blue pill? Nevermind. I will ask Chat.

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  4. World War 2 is significant in that we did not start it and there was real resistance to joining it even though Germany and Japan were clear threats to freedom. Once we went in after war being declared on us, the country was united in a patriotic duty to do a job that had to be done.

    As a result of that, in 1945 the US was on top of the world, not just economically but more importantly with the respect and admiration of the world.

    Our fall from grace has been swift and sure to the point where now our manufacturing might is in weaponry that is of absolutely no use to any American. Think of an Abrams tank, which you and I paid for, sitting in your yard useless.

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  5. I would like to think that there is some hope left for our once wonderful country… But lately, I am not really sure if there is any hope left at all left since our system of government has become so perverted by quasi-legal CASH & BRIBES. Our government may be well beyond redemption.

    I really hope and wish to be proven wrong.

    Jerry King

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    1. Not wanting to necessarily dash your hopes… but I’m confident that the government is beyond redemption. Empires ALWAYS crumble (never surrender or become egalitarian) , and this crumbling seems to happen quicker over successive empires. I’m rooting for the end of empires: an insane cyclical Human experiment. Something that REALLY holds to “inalienable rights” and “all men are created equal”. Heaven on Earth may sound like a pipe dream, but I feel sure that it COULD happen if we all, individually and collectively, choose to grow up.

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  6. A comment on capitalism. I made rudimentary observations about money and profit-taking as a young child. When in school I was fed the notion that everyone could “make money” by buying widgets for 25 cents, attaching 5 cent gizmos and selling the resulting WidgeMos for 40 cents each (this is a pre-inflation story) I would make a profit and the parts makers would make a profit. The guy who paid 40 cents for 50 cents worth of parts? Well he had paid 10 cents to for my time to attach the widget to the gizmo. Dr Seuss economics.

    My simple young mind tried to make simple sense of this: 4 people in a room, each with 10 dollars. My goal is to somehow get the other 3 to move money from their pocket to mine. Sell them WidgeMos. Entice them. Be a salesman. In observing the result of my successful business, I noticed that while my pocket filled, theirs emptied. This happened in a closed room with no external inputs. Just between 4 guys in a room. In terms of money, I was getting wealthier while they were getting poorer. Hmmm… I was taught that EVERYONE would benefit from this system. I then widened the circle to include the whole neighborhood, then the city, the country, and the whole world. The “room” got bigger but the math didn’t change. We were reaching into each other’s pockets to fill our own. We were NOT all getting rich. I was puzzled for a moment. I realized that something was wrong with the story. The story I was told about capitalism didn’t add up. Poverty was being created way faster than wealth!

    It was in later years that I learned the uber-wealthy, the people at the very tippy-top, had a magical supply of money. They were able to simply create it out of NOTHING! It’s called “fiat currency”. By fiat is to simply decree it’s existence. This is how they keep rivers of money (supposed “wealth”) flowing. Not only that, but the printers of this river of Monopoly money charge interest on it! Dollars = debt.

    It is all smoke & mirrors that has us chasing after the fairy tale that someday we will all “make it”. Bill’s comment about wage slavery is true. It’s a carrot on a stick that keeps us heading further into personal and national debt, and the carrot is illusory! And the stick? The stick is the body of financial laws that will smartly smack you if you stop chasing after the non-obtainable carrot.

    With this fairy tale in mind visit the NYSE website and scroll down to the glorious slogan “The NYSE is capitalism at its best, the belief that free and fair markets offer every individual the chance to benefit from success”. It is only “belief” that keeps this deceitful and impoverishing game going. The illusive carrot is dangling over a cliff. It’s red pill time.

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      1. I don’t think you can edit comments here. That’s one reason why people like Substack.

        I can edit your comment, if you wish, but I don’t think we need to. Your point is still clear.

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  7. One of my all-time favorite songs is “the Last Resort” by the Eagles. So regretful that environmental degradation came in second to last on your list, but that only accurately reflects just how disconnected we have become from the very thing that makes life on this rock possible. No empires need fall-nor nukes, for that matter- when the only thing required to end life as we know it is the simple continuation of unchecked human consumption with its battle cry of “More! More! More!” We are not gods; we are not rulers…we are renters. This is all we have, yet we have forgotten our privilege. Sad to think that for all our armies and our companies and our human machinations, only after we have chewed our way through this planet will it dawn on us just how far past due the rent is…

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  8. If/when Iran militarily surrenders to U.S./Western forces thus big corporate interests, soon-enough afterwards it will also be compelled to surrender access to much of its vast fossil fuel reserves to American and British ‘energy’ companies. Those corporations, and likely Israel’s government/interests as well, know there’s still much to be effectively appropriated. And it’s understandably probable that those corporate fossil-fuel interests would like Iran’s government to fall thus re-enabling their access to Iran’s resources.

    The U.S./British invasion and occupation of Iraq (2003-11) very likely were viciously violent acts largely motivated by such Western insatiable corporate greed. According to AI Overview (for what it’s worth), “some [U.S.] companies did secure lucrative contracts for oil services and exploration in Iraq following the war.” Also, “British oil companies, particularly BP, significantly benefited from the Iraq War by gaining access to and exploiting Iraq’s vast oil reserves.”

    Yet, I read/heard nothing in the mainstream (Western) news-media about these post-war foreign fossil-fuel-corporation incursions into Iraq; and I doubt that the morally-/ethically-challenged news outlets would objectively/fully report on similar big-business incursions into any post-war-defeated Iran.

    There has been, and almost certainly will continue to be, an overly predictable American-UK proclivity for sanctioning Iran, its officials and even their allies since the Iranian Revolution, sanctions resulting in, among other negative impacts, reduced oil production revenue by the country long-demonized by much of the West.

    The 1979 Iranian Revolution’s expulsion of major Western nations was in large part due to British and American companies exploiting Iran’s plentiful fossil fuel. The expulsion may have been a big-profit-losing lesson learned by the ‘energy’-corporation heads, one that they, via intense lobbyist influence over the U.S. and British federal governments thus militaries, would resist reoccurring to them anywhere globally.

    … But, unlike Israel, Iran seems to not have the right to defend itself.

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