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... but one has to go back to the McKinley era to see the thinking that the `pugs have about defense. First, having a military around the world to protect corporate interests serves their purposes, too. Makes the world "safe" for US investment. The other reason is psychological--the wealthy are terrified of some cataclysm which will strip them of their wealth, whether that's an internal upheaval or an attack from outside (which is why unions have been assaulted in the country since their inception--and why they have always been associated with communism in the past century, even though unions in this country predated the Bolshevik revolution by several decades).
The robber baron mentality thinks that government is an interference to their operations and their wealth, except for defense--they think a "strong" defense will protect their wealth ("strong" meaning lots of money put into their defense industries, too). The rest of what government does, they'd like to kill--including health and education subsidies. That's been the conservative meme for a hundred or more years.
And, they want the general public to pay for their security, which is why there are so many tax plans afoot that generate enough revenue for defense by taxing the middle class and the poor, but not enough to pay for anything else.
It's all about preserving and increasing wealth. It's not just that the wealthy have big interests in defense firms, although that is part of it.
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