Beefy boi flies the Marathon route

It's actually the Connecticut Air National Guard. Connecticut has lots of surplus Death, because of its high life expectancy, but nowhere no put it. No one wants Death in their back yard, so the Air National Guard just keeps flying it from place to place. This requires some serious lifting capability, because Death is very heavy.

There have been a few that have suggested that it be shipped out to some place where Death is in greater demand, or just dumped in Rhode Island, but Connecticut is too high-minded for that.

And that doesn't particularly bother me, as it has well and truly outgrown its origins by now.

“The military” is a term broad enough to encompass the valiant defenders of desperate cities and the massacring hordes they defend against. What all militaries have in common is not goals or values or character, it is method. The universal method of all militaries is violence. Since no means has ever been discovered for resisting the power of violence without resorting to violence in turn, even societies that have no ambitions towards domination have militaries. These militaries possess resources that can be put to non-violent uses, but those are secondary.

What are the motives of the people who serve in the US military today? There are some, of course, who are motivated by cruelty and a desire to dominate, but I think that they are few. There is another motivation, however, that is related, less dishonorable, but not innocent. A proficiency in violence is very commonly regarded as a virtue, and associated with manliness, power, and status. This is primary for some who join the military, and lurking in the background for most. We have in this country two million warriors who haver never seen a battle.

What role does “duty” play? A fairly large one for most, I think, but it is a value that is very weakly defined. Duty to what, and to whom? “To country” is the approved answer, but as those who most loudly proclaim their loyalty to their country are often those most willing to betray it, this does not clarify anything. “Duty” is like religion; if you perform the correct rituals, and express the correct opinions, you are perceived, and perceive yourself, as doing your duty. There is more to it, of course; duty to fundamental principles and institutions, to others, and to oneself, can motivate great sacrifice. It is doubtful, however, that anything so powerful or specific motivates two million people to join the peacetime military of the US.

The most common motivation is something much simpler. The military provides jobs, with high job security, and at least the appearance of opportunity for advancement. The pay is low, but the benefits are good. Many promises are made about the skills that will be acquired, but they are exaggerated. Militaries are good at training people to serve the military.

When the military becomes a large institution in a rich nation, it acquires its own wealth and interests. It begins to perceive itself as a significant social, cultural, and scientific institution. Americans take for granted, for example, military involvement in the space program; NASA is nominally civilian, but most of the astronauts have been military. ARPA (or DARPA, as it is sometimes known), has enormous amounts of money to spend on whatever it conceives as “advancing America’s military interests”, which is how it got involved in sponsoring ARPANET, with certain unintended consequences. The people who did the work, by the way, weren’t military. Only the money was.

“The military” is not just the people who serve in it, which is a very good thing, because if it was, it could be expected to serve their interests, and not ours. That is the way many, perhaps most, militaries over the course of history have operated, with generally evil consequences. Let us not wish it for ourselves.