some real great takes here 
I was brought up in a household that was anti military.
Only as an adult was I able to form my own opinion.
Without a strong military in the past we would certainly not be here today and without a strong military now, who knows what other nation might decide to attack our sovereignty.
It’s childish to be anti military - it shows you do not understand the interconnectedness of our society - good and bad.
It’s disingenuous to ignore the effect the aggression of the cold war and its aftermath had on the current Russian situation.
Bro, I don’t know what warped version of reality you live in, but without a strong American military to stand up to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, you’d be speaking Russian right now. Ukraine blew their chance to join NATO as soon as possible like everyone else did when the Cold War ended, and they are now being slaughtered en masse by Russia in their attempts to turn them into their newest southwestern oblast.
As a liberal raised during the backlash to the Iraq War, my attitude towards the Military Industrial Complex has really changed in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s seemingly inevitable invasion of Taiwan. Add in the possibility that the US could be dragged into new wars in the Middle East and even possibly South America, and I really don’t think we have the luxury to say “weapons bad, let’s not build any”.
Being the policeman of the world absolutely sucks. War absolutely sucks. But one of the best ways to prevent China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, etc from saying “might make right, let’s take this land and these resources from our neighbors, since no one can stop us” is for the US to say, “no, we will stop you and we have the will and the tools to easily do it.”
who’s responsible for the US choosing to police the world? 
The US is the most benign empire one could wish for. History makes that plain, and just peeking over the fence at contender’s tendencies and track record further reinforces that. Easy moral justification backed by actual moral justification.
in honour of all the defense of us atrocities i present to you: the hacker news logo with the fascist “life rune” symbol:
maybe we can get that as an emoji in the same vein as 
I sometimes really wonder if Amerikkkans would actually do anything if the military launched a literal coup
I guess none of these bootsuckers would
The right are the closest to the military and the most armed and will be fine with it, the armed left are so few it’ll sadly be a slaughter, and libs will hush up because they’ll literally be threatened and all their sabre rattling hinges on their absolute safety, because they’re inveterate invertebrates. Everyone’s a vocal believer in liberalism when some black or brown country is the target, but the moment they have to weather the violent massacres to uphold what they’ve been screeching about, they’ll shut the hell up and start believing that sometimes bad things happen and what can you do?
They’re fine with Vietnam losing a million people, but they don’t even want that a cop should give them dirty looks.
I think the libs would protest en masse, and if the coup leaders are smart they’ll just let them wear themselves out because I don’t think they’ll be capable of any kind of organized resistance. They’ll just have their week in the streets, go home when they run out of sick days at work, and spend the rest of their lives patting themselves on the back for “doing everything we could” to prevent General DeSantis or whoever from taking over and implementing nationwide pogroms against all non-cishet people.
the government is widely loathed and the military is widely respected. all it would take is the right general. someone who speaks in the idiom of the resentment of the middle class, raging against the dark bargain between the rich international puppetmasters and the destitute welfare leeches. I think we can expect it as soon as the far right gets on the same page about Israel and trans people.