Dude…
The US has always been at war.
All empires are always at war…
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
24 points (92.9% liked)
Showerthoughts
41486 readers
677 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Yeah, but Vietnam was a pinnacle of sorts, and Iran started pushing really hard and fast as launch day approached...
Pinnacle in what way?
Draftee casualties in a US proxy war.
Vietnam wasn't a proxy war for the US, it was a proxy war for Russia.
There were orders of magnitude MORE draftee causalities for the US in WWII than Viet Nam.
In percentages or raw numbers?
I just went down a mini rabbit hole.
WW2: 10 million drafted, 16 million in the service. 400,000 casualties overall. I couldn't find anything that split casualty figures by volunteer/drafted status.
Vietnam: 1.9 million conscripted. About 17,000 casualties among the drafted.
No matter when you launch the rocket, the US will be in some war overseas.
No matter when you launch the rocket, the US will be losing some war overseas
Ftfy
Pretty sure Artemis was in the works long before this. If you want to talk suspiciously convenient timing, look at the intervention in Venezuela just before before Iran.
Artemis has been in the works for over 20 years, this is the first time the project didn't get delayed for ... reasons.
Wasn’t Artemis II meant to launch in 2023?
I believe it has been pushed back multiple times.
There isn't a connection.
Classic example of correlation not being causation.
Exactly
While the relationships may not be causal, there are literally millions of connections.
Ok, since there are literally millions of connections, list 50.
Start with the thousands of contractors who drift back and forth between NASA and military contracts.
That's not millions of links, though. It's just that building rockets is a thing only a handful of companies are equipped to do.
The better metric to look at is which country is the US trying to show up. In 69 it was Russia, and today it's China.
Each contract worker is a link. Each company is a link. Each congress critter playing for missile pork projects in their district is a link. And this isn't just about the missiles, as you say: who are we trying to impress? What are we trying to get in exchange for that impression?
The space race and proxy wars were a huge part of the cold war, and now, many things point to some kind of new cold war. I'm surprised by the amount of people claiming that there's no connection.
Monument building is the reaction of a scared nation. It's historically been a cheap way to boost national unity