Well, I can't say I'm surprised to hear what you've said in your last sentence. It seems most people in the military and veterans adopt this mindset. I really d

Well, I can't say I'm surprised to hear what you've said in your last sentence. It seems most people in the military and veterans adopt this mindset. I really don't like labels, and I've always been kinda strange, and likewise have some very "strange" ideas about how the world should work. But suffice it to say that I am ultimately an anarchist, but also very much a socialist. I would like to see big government and big capitalism die in a fire, but a skeleton remain that provides social welfare for those that aren't capable of providing for themselves. I have married into becoming a Swede, and don't mind the high tax rate because of the social benefits it funds. What I've found in talking with people from all parts of the spectrum is that generally, most people share the sentiment that corporate capitalism and huge government is bad, and that individuals should be empowered to change their own fate. Once you get rid of the us-versus-them of people defaulting to defending their favorite color, you get a lot of "Yeah, veterans missing legs and orphans and the poor should be offered a leg up, and capitalism is a pretty good tool for a lot of things" from both sides. You get a lot of this kind of discourse in Sweden, for example, where there is instead fierce and fallacious arguing in the States. In my teens, I used to abhor the idea of conscription. But traveling the world as an adult (outside of the military kind of "travel"), I saw systems with conscription and that conscription having a direct positive impact on the public's participation in government, which seems to most maximally bring to fruition the will of the people, whatever their collective wishes are. A distant cousin of "an informed decision is the best decision, regardless of what is chosen". Places like Israel and Finland. Interestingly, Sweden abolished conscription in the early 2000s, and I believe there is a resultant apathy in the youngest generation that is pretty plain and obvious and generally acknowledged even among that generation. It is very interesting to have watched that happen, and I believe having abolished conscription is directly to blame for that apathy. With respect to your magic button, the way I look at it is that everyone eventually meets their demise. A mantra my best friend instilled in me is that everything happens for a reason. I don't want to get into religion because we're not on mushrooms and that is a whole universe unto itself, but the point I'm trying to make here is that our current mindset and state of being has come at a price. The important thing to say here is that we don't get to set the price. Our experiences cost real, actual lives. I also carried a machine gun my entire time in the Army, at various times I was also a Bradley gunner and a .50 gunner. We pressed buttons that gave us experiences at a cost that we didn't choose. That's just the way the world worked out for us in those moments, and it is what it is. What I'm driving at is that it is difficult or impossible to speculate about what our lives would be like without those costly experiences, because those experiences are necessarily driving our decisions today. It took a lot of time for me personally to come to this point, and what it ends up doing is really brings those costs to bear, so that I get much more out of life than I would otherwise. Once I stopped feeling numb about the whole thing, even going out for a run on the trail next to my house in the suburbs feels like a gift, and that's a pretty profound realization, considering the general attitude of apathy a lot of the population of the developed world feels. They take life for granted. So, that was a tangent, maybe also not directly addressing all of the things you've said. But maybe helps quantify some of the reasons I've said what I've said.