| Americans want to believe. Call it "optimism", if you're feeling generous. American exceptionalism is a thing to believe in which satisfies all of the needs of a believer. It's part of the belief triad "god-family-country". The military is an extension of the country. There is very little visible military presence in the US, and the military has no role in civilian affairs except in cases of temporary callup for natural disasters etc. And yet it's a very big military, so everyone has some adjacency to present or historical members of the military. In short, it's the perfect object of optimistic belief. The military is consistently the "most trusted" part of American society -- perhaps because all the things it does, it does elsewhere. And for the most part, American foreign policy is pretty similar across political lines, so there's no inherent partisan rift, making it an easy and safe thing for everyone to agree on. A foreigner might argue that that is a flimsy basis for belief. They might point to some tragic events visited upon the world by the US military. They might say that Normandy was a long time ago and it doesn't justify everything that's happened since then. Many Americans would agree with that. But that's the outsider's view. First and foremost, internally, the military is a jobs program. And it's very very good at that! Tons of training and education, incredible amounts of commerce and technology, genuine personal development, and on the whole very little international malfeasance. Americans are optimistic people. |
My optimism died the second time Bush Jr. was elected, but I'm only 49.