Fear + Loathing = Grist

You may wonder why I nearly quit posting on this blog. I've wondered myself. I feel bad about being inconstant and inconsiderate to you, my esteemed reader, and I owe you an explanation. The explanation came to me just the other day.

The Bush years were as if I was in the back seat of a car driven by a crazy frat boy, careening over the street, and my attention was (understandably) riveted on what new potential disasters were appearing just ahead and what fresh disasters we were leaving behind. I was communicating with my fellow passengers as quickly as I could form coherent thoughts in the hope (naturally) that somebody could somehow restrain the driver. I did more than blog: also wrote letters to my Congressional representatives and local newspapers, and even demonstrated on the mall in DC against starting the Iraq war.

Now we are recovering from our long national nightmare, nursing our hurt from crashing a couple parties where we overstayed our (un)welcome, and wondering how we are going to pay for that nice car that is now upside down in the ditch. The adults have now arrived and taken over, thankfully, and we can go back to assuming the trip back home will be slow and uneventful. Have we gotten back home to prosperity and respect, yet? How much longer? I'm tired.

War Elephant

Gibbon notes in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” that stable empires commit about 1% of their resources to the army; more being wasteful and less, dangerous. By Gibbon’s metric, the US “Defense” department should receive about $140 B (US GDP ~$14T), roughly one-fifth of its current budget. Sure, it’s arbitrary, but it also makes sense relative to the other countries.