In
a recent poll, 66% of people in the United States are worried that the
U.S. will become engaged in a major war in the next four years. However,
the U.S. is engaged in a number of wars
right now that must seem pretty major to the people living through
them, wars that have created the greatest refugee crisis so far on the
planet and threatened to break similar records for starvation. In
addition, 80% of the U.S. public in the very same poll say they support
NATO. There’s a 50/50 split on whether to build yet more nukes. A slim
majority favors banning refugees who are fleeing the wars. And over
three-quarters of Democrats believe, for partisan rather than empirical
reasons, that Russia is unfriendly or an enemy. Despite the warnings of
the wise for over a century, people are still imagining they can use war
preparations to avoid war.
