You might want to re-read your comment. Upthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7949955), I've already made the unnecessary-military argument you're struggling to articulate, and I mentioned the "standing army" phenomenon here because Eisenhower's voters had lived most of their lives in that intellectual climate. It's clear that he could have relied on that built-in skepticism in a way that no leader today could.
Now I'm "a pig" because I'm a little skeptical of the tired Eisenhower hagiography one always reads in these threads? Just face it, your hero didn't save us. Anyway the MIC is just a specific example of a general trend with this nation. You might even like some of the other examples: the War on Drugs, the War on Immigrants, the War on Fat, etc. If a system always does the same thing, one expects that system to keep doing that thing. "Voting" isn't somehow external to the system under discussion.
You might want to re-read your comment. Upthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7949955), I've already made the unnecessary-military argument you're struggling to articulate, and I mentioned the "standing army" phenomenon here because Eisenhower's voters had lived most of their lives in that intellectual climate. It's clear that he could have relied on that built-in skepticism in a way that no leader today could.
Now I'm "a pig" because I'm a little skeptical of the tired Eisenhower hagiography one always reads in these threads? Just face it, your hero didn't save us. Anyway the MIC is just a specific example of a general trend with this nation. You might even like some of the other examples: the War on Drugs, the War on Immigrants, the War on Fat, etc. If a system always does the same thing, one expects that system to keep doing that thing. "Voting" isn't somehow external to the system under discussion.