Leaving the Toilet Seat Down

I was reading an article the other day, another one of those ones about how we (us college students) are getting fucked by budget cuts, and how student loan debt is the highest it’s ever been — even higher than credit card debt.  And there’s a sort of inflation happening with college degrees; every year you’re paying more for a degree that’s worth less.

317,000 waiters and waitresses hold college degrees in the USA today.

But why?  Why is this the case?  I mean, we’re the dominant economic powerhouse in the world today — how do we not have enough money for our schools?  How can our funds be so tight that we have to send a 22 year old college graduate with a six-figure debt to be a waiter?!

And then we look at the budget.  And we see how much money we pour into the military.  For 2011?  $685.1 billion.  

Are you fucking joking?!  American citizens are don’t have enough to eat, and our government is spending $11.4 billion on developing F-35 Joint Strike Fighters?!?!  This is horseshit.  We’re like fucking children running this country, spending all of our money on the coolest looking toys!  How about we throw the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter out the goddamn window and use the $11.4 billion to, I don’t know, cure cancer?  And don’t worry, if that won’t do it we have a long list of fucking useless military projects to suck funds from.

Fuck the military.

In case you haven’t caught on, I’m opposed to the military.  Like, not just what they do, but their entire existence.

Let me explain — I think we should have a defense budget.  I think our defense budget should be a tenth of our current military budget.  And I think that our defense budget should be devoted to developing defensive systems, like lasers that can disarm bombs in midair, or EMP emitters, or other nonlethal defense technologies.

Military, on the other hand, can be done away with.  I don’t want standing troops.  I don’t want to spend any more money building guns and bombs and fighter jets.  I don’t want to lose any more American lives (or cash) to fight a war that we shouldn’t be involved with anyways.  Put all that money into reforming education, getting everybody’s basic necessities met, and funding scientific and technological progress.  And put all that manpower into rebuilding our infrastructure or some other government project.

To sum it all up: the military is an addictive drug, and an expensive one at that.  It’s taking all our money away from things we need and putting it into killing people.  Can somebody try and justify this to me?  I’m fucking baffled.