re: #141 Targetpractice

It’s the “top of the heap” mentality, that so long as America comes out on top, even if the rest of the world is a smoldering wreck, then we win.

We learned it after WWII, when we decided that being the country that took the least direct hit in the fighting meant we deserved to be the “leader of the free world.”

IIRC, after WWII, there was a serious movement by government (exacerbated by the Republicans’ taking control of Congress after the 1946 elections) to try to return to the traditional American “post-war” practices: i.e. demobilize, demilitarize and return to a more-or-less isolationist foreign policy. Pay off those millions of GIs with “The Thanks of Their Country”, and send them back into the civilian economy - which, since so much else of the world really was a “smoldering wreck” - would be booming.*
The main thing that changed that (at least IMH**O) was the fact that the only other major Power to come out of the war in an “improved”*** geopolitical position was the Soviet Union: seen (and not unjustifiably) as an aggressive, expansionist power; and one basically opposed to the US in most everything. The isolationists may not have cared, but the prospect of even greater Soviet influence was scary enough to convince the Truman Admin to shuck the wartime marriage-of-convenience with Stalin, and take a more aggressive role in international “leadership”. Which turned out, in the short term anyway, to be quite profitable besides.

* True.
** Historical
*** Aside from the 20 million or so dead: then again, Russia….