The Teflon Mind of Empire

The Mind of Empire is devoted to self-preservation, usually at any cost. If self-preservation is normally considered to be a matter of fighting and violence, then those segments of society involved with violence and weapons of violence will be most closely identified with empire; other segments of society may be sloughed off or mistreated or amputated with impunity.

I think it is a shame that in so many sciences there is such progress, creativity, and discovery as there is now, and that there is also the realization that the major funding and progress that will be made in most of these fields will be in those which are most clearly able to be "weaponized".

It is the Teflon frame of mind, you see, that is responsible for it.
Teflon early on found important use and substantial funding in the Manhattan Project.
Ever since World War II, we have partially justified enormous military expenditures based on the fact that discoveries used in weaponry "leak" out into the general public in time, and then make our lives better.
(Apparently it never dawned on us that non-military funding on a comparable scale to military funding would accomplish the same discoveries and break-throughs without weapons and war.)

The only common ground present day groups of mankind seem to be able to find is a battle ground.

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