We don’t live in a perfect world.

To quote Bender Bending Rodriguez
I say the whole world should learn our peaceful ways, narrows eyes by force

@redweasel
Have you considered attempting discourse in ways that aren’t unhinged?

I mean, just a thought. You might get something more constructive out of it.

@redweasel  
Because people aren’t identical everywhere. I mean, if you think Palistinian “I want them to die more than I want to live” generals are the same as American generals giving humanitarian aid with their military units (such as giving Iraqi livestock vaccines), I’m not even sure what to say at that point. I’d ask if you think the Japanese commanders who ordered the Phillipine Death March or saw the Rape of Nanking are just the same as Allied generals who rescued concentration camp survivors.
 
Also, hah, cute, but try just stopping the advancement of your military tech and see how defending yourself goes when you’re using hardware that was obsolete a decade ago. Just ask the Iraqi Republic Guard how that went for them.
 
Though honestly their hardware wasn’t even that far behind.
 
Also, if you know how to collapse the DPRK without war, or know some bit of Intel that proves they won’t strike even if we can’t strike back, the CIA would love to know.
 
Also I’m sure Syria, Georgia, Ukraine, Isreal and Palestine, India and Pakistan, and post-war Iraq would all love to hear about how you don’t need a powerful modern army to defend yourself. Man, sure wish China and the DPRK believed that.

@Cirrus Light
 
my point is I don’t trust the usa, and I’m not sure why you do. how’d they convince you that they were more trustworthy than any other nation or organization?
 
I mean seriously, you don’t think other nations are helping perpetuate the situation in north korea? that they don’t have their hands in deep, building up their bogeyman nation to scare us with? it’s laughably naive to think that our leaders aren’t working both sides, and classified information helps them keep their own people from learning about it.
 
the usa is a great country, but the government, the military and the corporations building these weapons, are not equivalent to the country. they can be just as degenerate as the corrupt nation they’re opening diplomatic relations with, and the people of the nation will still be perfectly decent, since they exist despite the government, not because of it.
 
as for the red queen’s scam, I have to point out that a lot of people with some cheap firearms are much harder to defeat than one nation with a single big bomb. no warlord wants to kill the people he rules over, otherwise he’ll have no one to rule over. really the only people who benefit from an arms race are the arms merchants. they’ve been trying to fool us into funding their weapons for centuries with the same old fear mongering argument of barbarians at the gates. the dprk isn’t going to blow us up, and building tools to blow them up isn’t the best way to free them from the yoke of tyranny.

@redweasel  
I fail to see how the US having it will suddenly mean DPRK has it and we don’t have it to counter or any countermeasures against it.
 
We all take part in the red queen’s race. We must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place.
 
China and Russia continue to advance themselves. We have to stay ahead of the curve or we’ll be overtaken. There is no middle ground. The moment you believe victory is assured is the moment defeat is assured. These are truths so fundamental they are not only evident in history but remain true in every strategy game, they are so basic to how a complex situation with many positive feedback factors plays out.
 
I also believe any degeneration of the US to the point of us no longer being worthy of that edge will also cause us to lose it. The state of tyranny is a sickly one. And as of the moment I don’t trust anyone in the world with the lead more than the very nation that gives more international humanitarian aid than any other, and has the freest speech of any.
 
So perhaps one day the US may degenerate and become just as bad as DPRK, but I don’t believe that day is near enough to matter more than our ability to make conflicts today or tomorrow as bloodless as possible.

@Cirrus Light
 
the problem with a huge edge is that it introduces a single point of failure into any system. as soon as north korea get their hands on those lasers, suddenly all our military hardware explodes, and we’re all getting lasered through the heart if we don’t worship glorious leader kim jong whatever. it’s a huge, juicy target for any nefarious individual to succeed beyond imagining. you can’t assume the person with the edge will always want to do good indefinitely, even if they call themselves the redblooded patriots of liberty, justice and the american way. and even if they do want to do good, they’re not gonna live forever.
 
basically all tyranny and oppression boils down to a severe imbalance of power, and without that imbalance, none of that stuff can exist. so it’s better not to have a massive disparity, than to just hope it works out well to have one.

@redweasel  
If you went to war with a medieval kingdom, the difference in technology would allow you to end the war swiftly and with virtually no losses except enemy soldiers.
 
A huge edge does actually help if the person with the edge wants to minimize the humanitarian toll. Similarly, If we were advanced enough, an orbital battery of lasers could immediately incinerate all hostile military hardware and force them to surrender. I doubt any amount of North Korean brainwashing would allow them to overlook the fact that all their equipment is just exploding out of nowhere. That would be pretty darn terrifying.
 
Power isn’t inherently evil. It’s necessary for evil, but it’s also necessary if you wish to intervene in the world in any way - whether what you impose on the world is good or evil. People often confuse it for evil, though, and unfortunately often the people who seek it aren’t the ones who should have it. That’s why we have a democracy where theoretically nobody truly has it, as elected officials are only as powerful (as voted for) as they do what the people want.
 
I feel sorry for Fluttershy in the Crystal War Timeline, but honestly… what she’s demanding is Sombra’s slavery on all of Equestria. Assuming Sombra wouldn’t just kill them all. So…

@redweasel  
Yes, yes it would

@Prometheus labs CEO
 
admittedly a giant, earth-shattering kaboom would be pretty epic.

@redweasel  
The negative utilitarianism(the extreme version), I’m just talking about making every war go by extra fast, in all honesty I have no idea if something like that would work and it’s 1:20 in the morning so I don’t wanna figure it out but it sounds awesome either way

@Prometheus labs CEO
 
yeah, just build a giant bomb and blow up the planet. no more war!

Instead of no war why not just make sure every war goes as quickly as possible by having highly advanced weaponry, the better the guns the faster the war. You can’t stop war but you can make it burn out really fast

@redweasel  
So the military’s real intentions are classified, they control the USA (not the government), military WMD technology should be public and open, I should stop studying physics and go into medicine to cure athritis, and the military is our slave-masters, not our protectors, and apparently without one we’d be perfectly safe just by trusting ourselves to the good human nature of, say, ISIS, North Korea, Iran, Russia, etc. etc, and my belief that China’s constant military posturing, Iran’s mass “death to America” chants, North Korea’s insanity, Russia’s actions in Ukraine and Georgia all prove the need for our defense, my belief that these things prove our need for defense is just “how the propaganda goes.”
 
…Not even gonna mention whatever the heck you just linked.
 
Yeah, I think we can be done now.

@Cirrus Light
 
well, a military coup isn’t really necessary, since they already control the USA.  

yes, by “some country’s military” clearly I meant “the USA military who suddenly decided to grow bristly black beards and start speaking russian, since everything is always their fault.”  

or that. that works too.  

that’s putting too much blame on human nature, I think. you can’t change human nature, so it’s convenient for the powers that be to get us to blame their machinations on it, since we can’t fight it. humans have the tendency to form strong bonds with the people they grow up with (their tribe), which occasionally results in inter-tribal warfare, and intra-tribal violence of individuals upon one another, and that’s it.
 
humans do not have a tendancy to engage in these massive nation spanning wars, defending people they’ve never even met who are unaware of their existence. but humans do have a vulnerability to centuries of research on mind control and propaganda, finding ways to exploit our nature, and amplify the violence to unnatural levels. quite honestly, to say humans have a tendancy to form these giant armies is like saying forests have a tendancy to burn to ashes, while ignoring the politicians with flame throwers running around and toasting everything in sight.  

yes, that’s how the propaganda goes. the world will end and your babies will get eaten, if you don’t support a big legalized mafia called a military. they’re just defending your freedoms after all! oh sorry you’re not allowed to know their real intentions, it’s literally classified.  

I think that the military is given too much importance in the USA. veterans are honored, even if they made things worse for their own people, for instance. I can’t say the military is unnecessary, but I can say that too much of USA culture has been rigged to feed the war machine.
 
interestingly, NATO and NAFTA is one of the biggest reasons that the USA is hemmoraging industry, because it gave corporations a blank check to outsource. when it’s easier for money to cross the border than people then you end up with people stuck on one side, being exploited for money, while people on the other side are driven into poverty, from being out-competed by the crooks bringing their the money across the border. the USA’s GDP goes up, but their citizens are still poor.  

well gee, maybe if the USA stopped wasting so much money on its so-important military, then other countries would step up to the plate. can you blame them for not trying to fight a monster the size of the USA army? european nations are practically forced to remain demilitarized, because if they ever got a military, the latest figurehead running the USA would start shouting about hitler and shaking his spear.  

it would do less harm than the secrets that they have kept.  

if someone is making ICBMs and telling me that I’m not allowed to know about it because I’m an enemy until proven innocent, I’m gonna be a lot more scared of that someone, and a lot less scared of some tiny starving country with a tinpot dictator who only exists because china couldn’t give a shit about his ravings about greatness. that’s the thing about classified information, is it’s not classified from koreans, or spies, because who can tell who’s a spy? it’s classified from the people that they’re supposedly protecting.  

you’re free to have the opinion that soldiers killing other soldiers to protect some rich dude’s oil investments is the only thing stopping immortan joe from barrelling through my house and popping off my head. I think the situation is more complicated than “they kill brown people, therefore they’re making my life better” but I don’t really spend a lot of time on modern war trivia, so maybe it is black and white. what I’m concerned with is not supporting my military, but making some friends, so that we can support each other. if my friends support the military, then I guess I wouldn’t have a problem with that. but I can’t support people who have done nothing to prove that they’re doing anything good for me at all. they don’t even know I exist!  

so maybe… stop researching that stuff, and instead try to find a cure for arthritis?
 
you don’t know what good the CIA are keeping from you, for their own selfish and political interests. to say nothing of private industry and their stupid NDAs. that’s what’s revealed when information gets unclassified: embarassing diplomatic failures, and vital technology that was being shelved because one person couldn’t use it to exploit the rest of us.  

it would be nice if you didn’t resort to attacks on my character in order to fool yourself into thinking I’m wrong.  

as much as I’d like to be a weasel, every human being is the same species. there are no humans that are more carnivorous than other humans. calling us sheep, protected by sheepdogs is just as invalid as calling us slaves, protected by our masters. we are all the same, and pretending we’re different species in order to justify walling us in is not only incorrect, it’s dangerous.
 
incidentally, sheepdogs and wolves are the exact same species, genetically. it’s just that there’s so much genetic diversity within that gene pool, you can get crazy results through breeding. coyotes too, all fully cross-fertile with wolves and dogs.
 
plus if there are wolves out there, then I want me a piece of that rough gay wolf sex

@redweasel  
“then the army would arrest everyone for tax evasion” Okay, let me spell this out: why would Congressmen put the military in their budgets if there was no need for the protection? I know government is horribly inefficient and big organizations are often more political self-perpetuating power structures than about their job - oh, I know about that, it’s a huge problem with the industry I’m most passionate about and I know all about it there - but if there wasn’t even some sort of excuse or pretense, nobody could keep it afloat no matter how much political influence (within reason). Politicians have to maintain some level of appearance and “factory of spinning cups for no discernible reason” simply wouldn’t cut it.
 
And this explains nicely why a military coop is very unlikely, and very stupid in a democracy like ours.
 

 
>“all those conflicts are caused and perpetuated by some country’s military.”
 
All of them? Really? So basically America is the cause of all the problems in the world? We’re the reason North Korea is a horrible tyranny ruled by a genocidal maniac? We’re the reason Isreal and Palestine hate each other? We’re the reason China wants Taiwan? We’re the reason Russia attacked Kuwait and Georgia? The one that you might possibly have an argument with is Iraq, perhaps due to the CIA supporting Afghan fighters against the Soviet Union, but that’s a bit roundabout and loose and gets into the whole Cold War, where the military really was absolutely necessary, so your argument really fails to apply there.
 
Or perhaps you actually mean “some military somewhere did it”, in which case, you’re absolutely right. If only humans didn’t have this violent tendency to organize into big legalized mafias to exert power and kill each other, we wouldn’t have this problem. But unfortunately humans do have that tendency - oh, but how sweet it would be if humans didn’t… But we do, and as such, unless you want your free voice to be silenced, and people around you killed for practicing freedoms we now enjoy, or for simply being alive and who they are, then we need a military, because some humans are petty, terrible creatures that derive pleasure from exerting power over others, who seek respect without giving it, and have abandoned love altogether.
 
But there’s no intonation to text, I use italics for it sometimes, but given context, saying “some country’s military” looks a lot like “some country’s military”, as in when everyone knows who you’re talking about but you don’t say it explicitly and just say “a certain someone screwed up their job” while giving Bob an angry glare.
 

 
>“something” implies “everything” now
 
Well, “making up imaginary boogie men” and implying that it’s valid to be “not wanting that protection” certainly seem to indicate that you have a very low opinion of the importance of having a military. I’m just saying there’s more than boogie-men out there. There’s powerful nations with huge militaries that would love to take over the world, but know it would be a terrible idea with us and other major powers in the way - but mostly the US. Most of the western world realizes we carry most the weight and just lets us do it.
 
They know that we know that if we can protect ourselves, we’re capable of protecting them as well, and so we sign this NATO treaty which says we’ll protect them in exchange for some of their tech and being able to put bases in key strategic places on their land.
 
In fact, I think European nations are an excellent example of how we wouldn’t pay for a military if we didn’t have to. They can rely on ours, so their militaries are a relatively tiny portion of their GDP. …Then they have the audacity of criticizing us for paying so much more than them, when in reality they’re just being lazy and not paying their share because we’re already in the NATO agreement and they know we won’t break it and they know they can rely on us for support…
 

 
And you actually did make an “always” statement.
 
“it’s always classified to protect the army from justice, not from supposed enemies.”
 
So should we reveal all our technological secrets? Tell North Korea how to make a good ICBM and a lightweight warhead? Maybe we should let ISIS know who our intelligence operatives are among their ranks, or how our intelligence agencies operate?
 
Let me tell you something, if the CIA stopped working for a month, events like 9/11 would probably happen multiple times a year. You live in this bubble of security and criticize the people who live and die every day to give you that bubble - people who devote their lives and sacrifice more in a week than you’ve ever sacrificed in your life - only to have you complain about how corrupt and unnecessary they are. We live in a world where technology has devised weapons with unimaginable power. One day I might know more about this and not be able to speak at all - but do you ever find it odd that we developed a super-weapon in the 1940’s, but in the 80 years since no completely new tech to top it? Just given what I know of physics, I suspect the WMD’s you know are only the tip of the iceberg of the crap the CIA watches out for and protects us against. To say nothing of biological superweapons.
 
Now there are two separate genocidal maniac states seeking to obtain a device that can level the downtown area of a city and at the size of a briefcase, or give everyone within 60 miles 3rd degree burns if it’s larger and make huge areas of land unlivable for decades, one of these nations has declared proudly how it wants to kill us, and is still at war with millions of innocent people on its southern border, and the other is best buds with terrorist organizations that want to kill us and would just as soon see the whole world burn, and you’re telling me how awful that military is and how a lot of it is just smoke and mirrors?
 
It must be nice to be as naive an unaware of the world as you. And if you really did mean “by some country’s military” (referring to the US), it must be real nice to believe that all the turmoil in the world traces back to one group, as though without it we wouldn’t have the problems we do as a species.
 
We’re all sheep, and there are sheepdogs and wolves. The sheepdogs go out and fight the wolves sometimes, and some sheep seem to think that teeth are evil, and want to get rid of our sheepdogs. Surely the wolves will stop attacking, if we just mind our own business, right?
 
To a wolf who seeks power, sheep are flesh to feed its appetite, and if there aren’t sheepdogs to protect that flesh…

@Cirrus Light
 
okay, let me spell this out. if there was no need for the protection, nobody would pay for it. then the army would arrest everyone for tax evasion, and then extract mandatory payments out of our monthly salary. even if that protection is absolutely vital, they’re forcing us to pay for it, so we would still have them, even if there was no need for the protection.
 
as for those countries, I can’t help but point out that all those conflicts are caused and perpetuated by some country’s military.
 
>So you’re saying the military isn’t necessary?
 
yes, when I said, “a lot of that protection is just smoke and mirrors,” I actually said, “every single bit of that protection is just smoke and mirrors, and every soldier never does anything good ever at all,” because “something” implies “everything” now, I guess.

@redweasel  
>“making up imaginary boogie men” - “not wanting that protection”
 
So you’re saying the military isn’t necessary? Because we live in the civilized 21st century and surely nobody invades anybody else any more?
 
Tell that to Georgia, Ukraine, Kuwait, Isreal, Palestine, South Korea, Taiwan…
 
And yes people are forced to pay for it, but it’s still true - If there was no need for the protection, we would not have them (nobody would pay for it).
 
The reason taxes are involuntary is because everyone wants to be the one guy that doesn’t pay for them so they can reap the rewards without paying the cost, and when everyone is that guy, nobody is, because nobody pays for it.

@Cirrus Light
 
I’m not saying that all soldiers are evil. I’m poking fun at the statement, “If there was no need for the protection, we would not have them (nobody would pay for it).” people are literally forced to pay for it (in taxes), despite stridently not wanting that protection. plus a lot of that protection is just smoke and mirrors, making up imaginary boogie men so that we’ll throw our money at the army and say “the world would burn to teh ground without you shooting those brown people!”

One idea I had to put cartels out of business is to create legal drugs, minus the harmful side effects of contraband.
 
That will both create jobs for several people and help reduce crime due to drug trafficking.

@redweasel  
Did I say they weren’t doing anything wrong?
 
That does nothing to change the facts of what I said. What you’re saying is tangential, not an argument, since I never really said anything to the contrary.
 
And I think selfish people are more interested in elevating their own political power than in oppressing the populace as a whole, or getting as much money as possible out of contracts with Boeing. And it’s not like nobody there actually believes in principles.
 
And in truth, nobody is a devil or an angel, everyone is going to be some mix of desiring money and power and acting in accordance to their beliefs.
 
If I’ve studied the structure and its history for at least a month then I might form an opinion, but it seems little good to argue about their oversight when I know very little about it.
 
But I do know that at the top and bottom of it is people, and people are, as I said, neither devils nor angels.
 

 
But I do know it’s silly to just throw out the blanket of “No more war!” towards the U.S., especially. I think civil unrest and stuff like Syria is just as bad - if not worse than war, and if you truly want an end to violence, why would you attack the people who can end it? I detest violence, but I understand the reality of its sometimes-necessity, to protect us, our rights, and even to prevent more violence, as could be done in Syria (relevant because the artist is anti-war, iirc, and this was probably drawn in response to the missile strikes we conducted in Syria, or our presence in the middle-east).
 
As for Flutters’ case, if she wants an end to violence, at least if Equestria does well she’ll probably never see it, herself. But if Equestria surrenders or loses, she might experience it, and will certainly see it done to someone she holds dear.

@redweasel  
I’m not touching that one with a 10 foot pingas.

@Cirrus Light
 
yes, if they were doing something wrong, surely someone (else) would have done something about it! it’s not like they have any secrets they’re keeping from us. you can’t fool some of the people all of the time, can you?
 
I’m not saying they’re plotting our doom, just that they have a framework set up to do so with very little oversight. I’m not a big supporter of the propaganda that soldiers should obey orders above all else. the training in the (USA) army borders on brainwashing, honestly. that and classified information. it’s always classified to protect the army from justice, not from supposed enemies.
 
@Badheart
 
sure, sure, barbarians at the gates, nazi communists, turrorism. but maybe this website could be protected by an army that wasn’t poised to oppress its own people?

@Cirrus Light  
I mostly agree with you but police in general have way to little search power.

@redweasel  
It’s thanks to them this website is in front of your face right now, there’s people who don’t want us to have internet.