I’ve got no illusions about how shitty America is in a lot of ways. The fact that we have a military whose primary purpose is to exist as a force in being to dissuade large, authoritarian, expansionist, and (regardless of whatever tankie revisionism you’ll undoubtedly spout) neo-imperialist countries (China, Russia) from simply redrawing the lines on the map as they see fit and rolling their tanks in is emphatically not one of America’s shitty aspects.

And yes, our military has been used to do shitty things for shitty reasons. I am not justifying or excusing that; it’s right to call us and our politicians out for that idiocy. But our military has also made the casual military use of nuclear weapons since the end of WW2 by anyone a non-starter. On balance, I think that’s a pretty clear net positive. And the majority of Americans are trying to push things in a better direction, despite the political and electoral mechanisms that are aimed at preventing us from doing so.