Trump is assembling a team to put the country on a war footing, but not to fight a war.
Trump's team of generals and $1/year CEO's recalls FDR's to fight WWII. But Trump's mission to "win" is a return to American domination of world trade and industry. He looks at urban ghettos as a pitifully untapped and wasted source of manpower to refuel the American industrial machine. Likewise, he sees a return to American energy independence as a necessary ingredient to be able to direct the fight on American terms.
Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, between 384 and 389 CE
If You Want Peace, Prepare for War.
As a military strategist (I have read Ender's Game) it is a general truth that no defensive strategy works against long term aggression.
To convince an aggressor to stop it is insufficient to defend. To stop aggression there has to be a penalty.
Switzerland- there is special geography suited to defence, it can work while an attacker has pre-1960 technology.
Sweden is another example you could use - their strategy acknowledged that they could resist the Soviets only for six months, they reckoned on not being worth conquering considering the cost of a six month attack. They showed they meant business by, for example, an 'assertive' response to Soviet reconnaissance submarines.
Overview here (just one out of many): http://www.atomcentral.com/the-cold-w...
And more to the point, the USA and USSR both exploded nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
It was a proxy war fought right here over the USA and we all who lived through it were the victims. (Not everyone lived through it.
US military casualties
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
and here ("Over all, more than 200,000 American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines participated in atmospheric nuclear tests between World War II and the early 1960's. "
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/26/hea...
and here for US civilian casualties
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015...
It is better for us to have the "American industrial machine" in China. The goods are cheaper and the pollution is farther away. We are an information and service economy. You are dreaming of having everyone living on farms like the old days, except that you want everyone working in factories. I have worked in factories. Information work is cleaner and pays better.
Also, in point of fact, the horrible ignorance that caused the collapse of Detroit was caused by "good paying jobs" that did not require an education. Three generations of parents could not help their kids with their homework -- and why do homework when you can goto work in a factory for a "good paying job"?
Objectivists glorify the industrial revolution - and rightfully so - but it had its time and now it is time to grow new cells in your kitchen, or design and build a new set of knees for yourself, or create a new game, or work for a space launch company... or a million other things that do not involve the same three motions eight hours a day.
"Energy independence" is another nationalist chimera. Some of the freest and most prosperous places on Earth import most to all of their energy -- and other "natural resources" or "primary products." Look at Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Holland, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands. OTOH, places rich in natural resources, especially "energy" resources remain dirt poor and dependent on subsidies: Siberia, the Congo, Saudi Arabia ...
I mention Saudi Arabia because except for oil exports, what does it have to offer? Any great artists or writers or scientists? A cinema production capital like Hollywood? Heck, they are not even up to Bollywood. They have nothing to offer, except oil They are dirt poor.
Ayn Rand identified an intellectual fallacy that she unkindly called "the muscle mystic." She referred to people who implicitly (sometimes explicity) expect that physical objects (factories, oil wells) are the source of wealth and power. They are not. Freedom is.
Pizza aside for a moment, we are a nation of "hedge fund managers" and if you do not see yourself as one of them, then you might step back and take a broader look at your own household finances.
Keynesians separate businesses, households, and government: producers, consumers, public services (not in the market). But, in fact, of course, government is in the market, too. And, households are businesses. I have said that you should get the same tax breaks for depreciation on your lawn mower and refrigerator that a business would for a capital investment.
In a previous century, militarists derided "a nation of shopkeepers." (Ascribed to Napoleon, incorrectly, but it stands.)
... which brings us to pizza...
Do you know anyone named "Cook." Like Carpenter, Prentice, Miller, Cartwright, and many others, it is an occupation name from a time when people took the raw food they purchased (or grew) to someone else to cook for them. In part, it was because fires were forbidden in London. But, essentially, the specifics of pizza aside, the entire market from tomatoes and tofu to silicon chips and kidney transplants is just "pizza delivery" - people performing services that they do better than the person who pays them for it.
Too many conservatives think that military power comes from guns without questioning the origin of guns. Dwight D. Eisenhower had the equivalent of a master's degree from the Army War College for his studies in industrial management. He knew that Germany was doomed.
I think that you have touched on too many subjects in your sort of meandering along. At some points you sounded to me as somehow deeply aggrieved. I am not trying to be critical. Instead, I am trying to serve you as an "Objectivist" mirror.
One crucial subject that I found missing completely is education. To make it even more complex, even when taken superficially, how about productively handling the huge differences in cognitive ability, inventiveness and emotional balance among individual Americans?
Best wishes.
Maritimus
EDIT: punctuation and superfluous word
do not repeat the errors of Vietnam...the middle east and Afghanistan....
nuc them and send a message...end the future threat of Iran...they will have the nuclear bomb within 4 years and millions of American men, women, and children will die...
There are degrees of exercise of power when dealing with other national actors: proposing cooperation; negotiating; establishing penalties; economic isolation; but without a perceived ability to defend its national interests, and enforce measures if necessary a country has little hope of respect.
Hard choices as to where to spend the dollars and when to spend them.
the hard choices in education, immigration and trade. There will not be any easy choices if we are to recover from the "Fundamental Change" Obama made in this country. I shudder to think how close he came to the total annihilation of the fundamentals of this country that jerk came.
+1
The best that can come from President Trump's cabinet appointments is benign neglect and laissez faire. Making "hard decisions" to spend other people's money (taxes now and debt for the future) is not the road to recovery.
Also, demonizing President Obama merely glosses over the Bush Administration. The Wall Street bailouts, the war in Afghanistan, and all the rest were Bush policies that the Obama Administration continued. The problem is not "progressives." It is deeper than that.
All along, these past 100 years or more, and the last 20 in particular, we have had cultural institutions that mitigate the problems. See for instance the work of Moxie Marlinspike, which in fact, only extends previous work by Phil Zimmermann, among many others.
We never hear about homebrew genetic engineering.
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
do not repeat the errors of Vietnam...the middle east and Afghanistan....
nuc them and send a message...end the future threat of Iran...they will have the nuclear bomb within 4 years and millions of American men, women, and children will die...
LBJ decided to send 10,000s of thousands of American G.I.s to their deaths in Vietnam rather than nuc Hanio or Haiphong...sacrificing a generation of unborn u.s. children and American educated G.I.s rather than third world savages...
Bush and Obama decided to sacrifice two generations of American G.I.s instead of Islamic savages set on destroying Western civilization...
what has Trump in mind to do???....
in my opinion, one American G.I. is worth more than all of the middle east or Afganhistan savages...stop the madness...