Militarism’s effect on the US

Nikhil Pal Singh:

… the wars in which U.S. soldiers and support personnel have been engaged on three continents for the past two decades retain a hazy, distant, and amorphous character; this perception is also typical now among civilian noncombatants. That the consequences of war-fighting remain seemingly remote ironically reinforces war as a natural and unchanging backdrop to social life in the United States today.

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U.S. society itself has never in living memory been more riven by civic animus and dysfunctional, friend-enemy politics. Proliferating mass violence involving weapons of war, declining life expectancy, and suicidal fatalism — the last a prominent affliction of soldiers — have become features of everyday life throughout the United States. What if these, too, are part of the unaccounted price and collateral consequence of the U.S. addiction to war? What if the steady militarization of U.S. foreign policy over the past several decades, and forces steadily decaying domestic social bonds, institutional stability, and public trust, are related?