1) We were supposed to occupy Afghanistan to midwife a liberal-democracy and eliminate al-Qaida and the Taliban. However, that morphed more into another front of the drug war, thus ensuring a whole new set of opponents and alliances. So at this point the original war has been lost - but no one wants to admit they blew it and discuss how they blew it. So they pretend to still be fighting a winnable war.
2) We really couldn't summon up the $700G. Fortunately, we haven't really had to. However, we have probably lost $100G in the name of "responsibility", which mainly means keeping the present system more or less afloat so that it can be mismanaged again. The main thing it did was strengthen GM and Chrysler so they could continue to strong-arm their vendors, dealers and nascent competitors; rather than liquidate into more balanced and profitable units.
3) The manned space program has long been known to be pretty much a waste of money. We hear of great technical spin-off advances, but all these are in the distant past. What we are doing is supporting a government program that lobbies for itself. Humanities would be cheaper, but humanities suffers from the reputation of being a repository for political activists, and people wonder why they should pay for someone else's political activism, when they can't really afford their own.
4) Sports programs get results! Okay, half the time those results are a lost game and the other half the time, it's a lot of money to get a fairly meaningless victory. However, it all plays to a "safe" partisanship, primarily because it IS meaningless. Humanities partisanship tends not to localize. Humanities achievement is hard to gauge and often pretty hard to relate to. The current enthusiasm for "privilege" studies pretty much sets up a war to delegitimatize other people's experiences, struggles and achievements. Few people want to pay for the "privilege" of being delegitimatized.
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2) We really couldn't summon up the $700G. Fortunately, we haven't really had to. However, we have probably lost $100G in the name of "responsibility", which mainly means keeping the present system more or less afloat so that it can be mismanaged again. The main thing it did was strengthen GM and Chrysler so they could continue to strong-arm their vendors, dealers and nascent competitors; rather than liquidate into more balanced and profitable units.
3) The manned space program has long been known to be pretty much a waste of money. We hear of great technical spin-off advances, but all these are in the distant past. What we are doing is supporting a government program that lobbies for itself. Humanities would be cheaper, but humanities suffers from the reputation of being a repository for political activists, and people wonder why they should pay for someone else's political activism, when they can't really afford their own.
4) Sports programs get results! Okay, half the time those results are a lost game and the other half the time, it's a lot of money to get a fairly meaningless victory. However, it all plays to a "safe" partisanship, primarily because it IS meaningless. Humanities partisanship tends not to localize. Humanities achievement is hard to gauge and often pretty hard to relate to. The current enthusiasm for "privilege" studies pretty much sets up a war to delegitimatize other people's experiences, struggles and achievements. Few people want to pay for the "privilege" of being delegitimatized.