Because, for decades prior, the US was the military of NATO. The US pumped massive percentages of its GDP into maintaining a standing military while most of NATO focused more on social programs with comparatively minimal military spending.

Here ya go buddy. Here’s where you said it.

If you think we ‘happened’ to keep a large standing army just because we were defending Europe.

The plain fact is we didn’t even try and reap the peace dividends following the Cold War. We doubled down and found an excuse to pad the pockets of the MIC.

If we’d shrunk down instead of maintaining all this obsolete gear, it’d be easier to be proactive to changes in warfare like drones. We wouldn’t maintain fleets of fourth gen fighters and build out our fifth gen fleets.

You maintain military production capacity by having a strong civil industrial capability.

As we learned in WW2, it doesn’t take much to convert from making cars to making tanks.

Bonus side effect: prevents us from getting embroiled in nation building or getting after commercial wet dreams for regime change when it takes 2-3 years to build up a force.

He has a chip on his shoulder from his time as a CGO. He just wants to show the successful who is in charge.

Come to MN. Medicare peeps be hammering their horn at the light then driving home 10 below the speed limit.

That’s the fun part about electric cars. The batteries are warrantied for 10 years and the data and real life examples show they go much longer than that.

Only repairs are coolant, brakes, and tires. Don’t hit/damage any of the sensors/electronics… they’re the expensive part of an EV. Self driving is amazing though.

The used market is a great place to get a EV AT 3-50% off.

rivian or Tesla is the only one with a truck bed though. I dunno where you’d find 2 feet of clearance in any vehicle without modification.

My mache can pull a trailer pretty easily at the weights you’re describing.

The airlines could pay them if they wanted to.