Today's military is well resourced, well trained and well led. Many people today might take it for granted, but this is a very different thing than the US military's reputation say half a century ago. As part of the conservative revolution, one had to not just reconstruct the military literally when ends the draft, you have to build a professional institution quote unquote. The argument that is quite explicit among military officers and the Reagan administration is that these are the ideal citizens.
Featuring Nadia Abu El-Haj on Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America. A truly remarkable book about the unseen ideological foundations of American militarism: American civilians are enjoined to venerate troops, deferring to their traumatized positionality. The first in a two-part interview.
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Buy: Fighting in a World on Fire by Andreas Malm versobooks.com/books/4138-fighting-in-a-world-on-fire
The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History of Debt, Misery, and the Drift to the Right by David Roediger haymarketbooks.org/books/1879-the-sinking-middle-class