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The "silver dollar" change isn't -- it's the dime. The design was in the works before the current administration [1], and is only intended to be for the 250th a

The "silver dollar" change isn't -- it's the dime. The design was in the works before the current administration [1], and is only intended to be for the 250th anniversary [2]. The Dept of Defense was only created in the late 1940s. Before that the US had the Dept of War, the Dept of the Navy, and other organizations. The point of calling it "defense" was not because "everyone has the right to defense", but because the US was promoting the United Nations and waging a Cold War, and wanted to pretend that it would never do anything proactive or aggressive. That is, it was propaganda, as the current preferred name "Dept of War" is now for a different posture with regard to America's adversaries. If you're going to call people stupid or immature for making certain decisions, maybe take a couple minutes to find out who made the decisions, and/or what the history of those and similar changes has been. [1] https://www.ccac.gov/system/files/media/calendar/images/SemiQ-Dime-Candidate-Design-Portfolio-2024-09-19-email.pdf https://www.ccac.gov/system/files/media/calendar/images/Semi... [2] https://www.usmint.gov/coins/coin-programs/semiquincentennial/#circulating https://www.usmint.gov/coins/coin-programs/semiquincentennia...

BloondAndDoom 7mo ago
[flagged]
conception 7mo ago
Just to add, it was in the process of manufacture during Biden, signed into production during Trump. A unfortunately timed nothing burger. Not to say that War is Peace folks won’t jump on it.
- enoint 7mo ago
  In an alternate universe, Kamala Harris might be in Iran now. But her choice of SECDEF would be competent. No less than 1M Americans are more qualified than Hegseth; for the first time, I think.
throw310822 7mo ago
> the US was promoting the United Nations and waging a Cold War, and wanted to pretend that it would never do anything proactive or aggressive. That is, it was propaganda Many other countries similarly changed the name of their respective ministries, reflecting the ideal (if not the fact) that war should not be pursued for gain or used to resolve international controversies. Actions trail behind ideals; ideals are set to remind us of how things should be even if we don't live up to them. Renaming the DoD to DoW reflects an aggressive, violent and ultimately predatory posturing that the West had chosen to abandon after WW2 and many millions of deaths.
- SoftTalker 7mo ago
  The millions of deaths are still happening, they just aren't our boys so we were all cool with it.
  - afavour 7mo ago
    They haven’t, though. In the decades that followed World War 2, creation of the UN etc, the number of people dying in warfare and civilian death due to war dropped dramatically. No, it wasn’t zero. But there was still a notable drop. I don’t think it’s coincidence that blowing up this world order has only become a cause now that those who suffered the horrors of WW2 have died.
    - dbspin 7mo ago
      They may have dropped from the level of death during the war itself. A transnational conflict that involved every continent on earth. But I'd be shocked if the numbers dead from war in the post war period did not exceed the median number of civilian victims of war pre-WW1 or in the post war period. The World Wars normalised the idea of total war, of death squads and killing fields and mechanised genocide. Those have continued apace, everywhere from the Congo to Cambodia. At the time they were novelties in 'the civilised' world.
      - brabel 7mo ago
afavour 7mo ago
> as the current preferred name "Dept of War" is now for a different posture with regard to America's adversaries. …which is the bad thing being discussed, yes. I don’t really understand why “there used to be one” would be exonerative. Not to mention, they didn’t rename it, that requires an act of Congress. Instead they just told everyone to change which name they use. Lines up with the “adult children” theory. Skip the actual work, (which would involve addressing the nation and justifying this change in posture), instead focus on the performative. As we are seeing in real time with Iran, “we’ll just war!” was a juvenile idea, committed to with near-zero forethought or planning.
- ryandrake 7mo ago
  > Not to mention, they didn’t rename it, that requires an act of Congress. Instead they just told everyone to change which name they use. It's wild how people are just going along with it, too. They didn't officially change the name of anything. Why are journalists and people outside of the administration's orbit using the "preferred" but fake name?
  - michaelteter 7mo ago
    Hey, “Gulf of America”!
  - padjo 7mo ago
    To maintain access mostly
linkregister 7mo ago
Famed spy fiction writer Tom Clancy surely knows the provenance of the name Department of War.
- tom_ 7mo ago
  Better to have two names for one thing than one name for two, that's my view.
  - clancy_ 7mo ago
    Exactly
    - tclancy 7mo ago
      Suspicious.
- recursivecaveat 7mo ago
  Totally different guy actually. The author died in 2013. I was briefly experiencing a bit of disgust at the idea that they were now ghostwriting blog posts as him, before clicking around the site.
cyberge99 7mo ago
The current preferred name is Department of Defense. Ask anyone who isn’t incompetence aligned.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- boca_honey 7mo ago
  That's the official name. The preferred one by the government is Dept of War. [1] As the original poster said: > If you're going to call people stupid or immature for making certain decisions, maybe take a couple minutes to find out who made the decisions, and/or what the history of those and similar changes has been. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/09/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-restores-the-united-states-department-of-war https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/09/fact-sheet-pr...
  - afavour 7mo ago
    Well I think the operative question here is “preferred by who?”. The current government prefers it. Voters do not. None of us are obligated to indulge the “secondary title” nonsense in an executive order clearly designed to sidestep the actual legal process for a name change.
MidnightRider39 7mo ago
Starting the war with Iran was definitely a pretty stupid decision, even at this point of it. In a couple of years it will look like the beginning of the end for the US hegemony.
- adventured 7mo ago
  No it won't, that's merely fantasy projection (a personal desire for the US to suffer for what it's doing). US hegemony ended with the rise of China's economy into superpower status over the past 10-15 years. There was no scenario where the relatively brief US hegemony from the late 1980s to the late 2000s was going to continue no matter what the US did. China was always going to build a military to match its economic might. That military will gradually project globally. US hegemony lasted for a mere ~20 years. Today it does not possess hegemony, China is able to stand-off fully with the US both economically and militarily (at least in Asia). Iran is a regional conflict. It will matter less than the Iraq war and occupation did.
  - jfengel 7mo ago
    Maybe. But the Iran conflict also ties in with the Ukraine war, which is an assertion of Russian power into that US-Europe/China duopoly. And it's happening at the same time as the former alliance is breaking. It's possible that it will be a regional conflict the way the Serbian/Austro-Hungarian conflict was regional. Or the way people pretended that the Germany/Sudetenland conflict was regional. I don't wish to catastophize. But I also think it's important to realize that this does have the potential to become much worse very suddenly. That doesn't make the decisions easy, but they shouldn't be easy.
  - nradov 7mo ago
    Nonsense. China remains unable to project power much beyond the first island chain. They're building fast and that will change in a few years but as of today their conventional military capabilities remain very limited and defensive. When was the last time a Chinese carrier strike group deployed to the Middle East?
    - 7mo ago
amelius 7mo ago
We can soon rename "Dept of War" into "Dept of Debt".
- the_real_cher 7mo ago
  USA= United States of Accounts payable
nkurz 7mo ago
> The "silver dollar" change isn't -- it's the dime. The design was in the works before the current administration, and is only intended to be for the 250th anniversary Referring to a dime as a dollar bothered me too. Going deeper, the absence of the olive branch is actually an intentional historical reference to the Revolutionary War, where peace was tragically lost. According to the artist who made it, the open claw is to symbolize the desire to regain it: The image takes inspiration from the Great Seal of the United States, and represents the colonists before and during the American Revolution, Custer explained. While he included the arrows from the seal, he left out the olive branch to symbolize the fact that the colonies hadn’t yet reached peace — but left the claw open to demonstrate that they were waiting for it. https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02/philadelphia-mint-coins-design-medallic-artists-pennsylvania-local/ https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02/philadelphia-mint-c...
dpark 7mo ago
> as the current preferred name "Dept of War" is now for a different posture with regard to America's adversaries. The “Dept of War” naming is not aimed at our adversaries. It’s aimed internally. It’s chest beating from man children who want desperately to identify as “alpha males”. The same man who calls himself the “president of peace” unilaterally renamed the department of defense. It’s entirely legitimate to call this out as nonsense.
dudefeliciano 7mo ago
> If you're going to call people stupid or immature for making certain decisions, maybe take a couple minutes to find out who made the decisions, and/or what the history of those and similar changes has been. “We won the first world war, we won the second world war, we won everything before that and in between,” Trump said at the signing. “And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to the Department of Defense.” Seems like a stupid and immature reason enough to me.

BloondAndDoom 7mo ago

[flagged]

conception 7mo ago

Just to add, it was in the process of manufacture during Biden, signed into production during Trump. A unfortunately timed nothing burger. Not to say that War is Peace folks won’t jump on it.

enoint 7mo ago
In an alternate universe, Kamala Harris might be in Iran now. But her choice of SECDEF would be competent. No less than 1M Americans are more qualified than Hegseth; for the first time, I think.

throw310822 7mo ago

> the US was promoting the United Nations and waging a Cold War, and wanted to pretend that it would never do anything proactive or aggressive. That is, it was propaganda Many other countries similarly changed the name of their respective ministries, reflecting the ideal (if not the fact) that war should not be pursued for gain or used to resolve international controversies. Actions trail behind ideals; ideals are set to remind us of how things should be even if we don't live up to them. Renaming the DoD to DoW reflects an aggressive, violent and ultimately predatory posturing that the West had chosen to abandon after WW2 and many millions of deaths.

SoftTalker 7mo ago
The millions of deaths are still happening, they just aren't our boys so we were all cool with it.
- afavour 7mo ago
  They haven’t, though. In the decades that followed World War 2, creation of the UN etc, the number of people dying in warfare and civilian death due to war dropped dramatically. No, it wasn’t zero. But there was still a notable drop. I don’t think it’s coincidence that blowing up this world order has only become a cause now that those who suffered the horrors of WW2 have died.
  - dbspin 7mo ago
    They may have dropped from the level of death during the war itself. A transnational conflict that involved every continent on earth. But I'd be shocked if the numbers dead from war in the post war period did not exceed the median number of civilian victims of war pre-WW1 or in the post war period. The World Wars normalised the idea of total war, of death squads and killing fields and mechanised genocide. Those have continued apace, everywhere from the Congo to Cambodia. At the time they were novelties in 'the civilised' world.
    - brabel 7mo ago

afavour 7mo ago

> as the current preferred name "Dept of War" is now for a different posture with regard to America's adversaries. …which is the bad thing being discussed, yes. I don’t really understand why “there used to be one” would be exonerative. Not to mention, they didn’t rename it, that requires an act of Congress. Instead they just told everyone to change which name they use. Lines up with the “adult children” theory. Skip the actual work, (which would involve addressing the nation and justifying this change in posture), instead focus on the performative. As we are seeing in real time with Iran, “we’ll just war!” was a juvenile idea, committed to with near-zero forethought or planning.

ryandrake 7mo ago
> Not to mention, they didn’t rename it, that requires an act of Congress. Instead they just told everyone to change which name they use. It's wild how people are just going along with it, too. They didn't officially change the name of anything. Why are journalists and people outside of the administration's orbit using the "preferred" but fake name?
- michaelteter 7mo ago
  Hey, “Gulf of America”!
- padjo 7mo ago
  To maintain access mostly

linkregister 7mo ago

Famed spy fiction writer Tom Clancy surely knows the provenance of the name Department of War.

tom_ 7mo ago
Better to have two names for one thing than one name for two, that's my view.
- clancy_ 7mo ago
  Exactly
  - tclancy 7mo ago
    Suspicious.
recursivecaveat 7mo ago
Totally different guy actually. The author died in 2013. I was briefly experiencing a bit of disgust at the idea that they were now ghostwriting blog posts as him, before clicking around the site.

cyberge99 7mo ago

The current preferred name is Department of Defense. Ask anyone who isn’t incompetence aligned.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
boca_honey 7mo ago
That's the official name. The preferred one by the government is Dept of War. [1] As the original poster said: > If you're going to call people stupid or immature for making certain decisions, maybe take a couple minutes to find out who made the decisions, and/or what the history of those and similar changes has been. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/09/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-restores-the-united-states-department-of-war https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/09/fact-sheet-pr...
- afavour 7mo ago
  Well I think the operative question here is “preferred by who?”. The current government prefers it. Voters do not. None of us are obligated to indulge the “secondary title” nonsense in an executive order clearly designed to sidestep the actual legal process for a name change.

MidnightRider39 7mo ago

Starting the war with Iran was definitely a pretty stupid decision, even at this point of it. In a couple of years it will look like the beginning of the end for the US hegemony.

adventured 7mo ago
No it won't, that's merely fantasy projection (a personal desire for the US to suffer for what it's doing). US hegemony ended with the rise of China's economy into superpower status over the past 10-15 years. There was no scenario where the relatively brief US hegemony from the late 1980s to the late 2000s was going to continue no matter what the US did. China was always going to build a military to match its economic might. That military will gradually project globally. US hegemony lasted for a mere ~20 years. Today it does not possess hegemony, China is able to stand-off fully with the US both economically and militarily (at least in Asia). Iran is a regional conflict. It will matter less than the Iraq war and occupation did.
- jfengel 7mo ago
  Maybe. But the Iran conflict also ties in with the Ukraine war, which is an assertion of Russian power into that US-Europe/China duopoly. And it's happening at the same time as the former alliance is breaking. It's possible that it will be a regional conflict the way the Serbian/Austro-Hungarian conflict was regional. Or the way people pretended that the Germany/Sudetenland conflict was regional. I don't wish to catastophize. But I also think it's important to realize that this does have the potential to become much worse very suddenly. That doesn't make the decisions easy, but they shouldn't be easy.
- nradov 7mo ago
  Nonsense. China remains unable to project power much beyond the first island chain. They're building fast and that will change in a few years but as of today their conventional military capabilities remain very limited and defensive. When was the last time a Chinese carrier strike group deployed to the Middle East?
  - 7mo ago

amelius 7mo ago

We can soon rename "Dept of War" into "Dept of Debt".

the_real_cher 7mo ago
USA= United States of Accounts payable

nkurz 7mo ago

> The "silver dollar" change isn't -- it's the dime. The design was in the works before the current administration, and is only intended to be for the 250th anniversary Referring to a dime as a dollar bothered me too. Going deeper, the absence of the olive branch is actually an intentional historical reference to the Revolutionary War, where peace was tragically lost. According to the artist who made it, the open claw is to symbolize the desire to regain it: The image takes inspiration from the Great Seal of the United States, and represents the colonists before and during the American Revolution, Custer explained. While he included the arrows from the seal, he left out the olive branch to symbolize the fact that the colonies hadn’t yet reached peace — but left the claw open to demonstrate that they were waiting for it. https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02/philadelphia-mint-coins-design-medallic-artists-pennsylvania-local/ https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02/philadelphia-mint-c...

dpark 7mo ago

> as the current preferred name "Dept of War" is now for a different posture with regard to America's adversaries. The “Dept of War” naming is not aimed at our adversaries. It’s aimed internally. It’s chest beating from man children who want desperately to identify as “alpha males”. The same man who calls himself the “president of peace” unilaterally renamed the department of defense. It’s entirely legitimate to call this out as nonsense.

dudefeliciano 7mo ago

> If you're going to call people stupid or immature for making certain decisions, maybe take a couple minutes to find out who made the decisions, and/or what the history of those and similar changes has been. “We won the first world war, we won the second world war, we won everything before that and in between,” Trump said at the signing. “And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to the Department of Defense.” Seems like a stupid and immature reason enough to me.