Sometimes I'm a little reticent about identifying as a libertarian, but this is not one of those times. When Trump sent bombs to Syria, the mainstream media and prominent politicians in both major parties came in their pants, but the Libertarian Party sent out an email condemning the attacks. And it seems like libertarians are just about the only ones saying things like this (from Adam Bates' Facebook page):
All the posts about this hideous bomb (made in Oklahoma, because of course it was) today remind me that when the Iraq War broke out, I thought that footage of Baghdad blowing up was the coolest thing ever.
Now I recognize that feeling as the product of a diseased mind. 18 year old Adam wasn't well.
That single bomb was $16 million, evaporated in a 16 year old war that stopped being about anything two months after it started.
I haven't seen any reports of how many people it killed, because nobody cares. We can rest assured that they were all terrorists, though, because we determine whether someone is a terrorist by whether they're killed by our bombs. Simple.
Our media figures have more raw, murderous, "beautiful" power to masturbate over, we've "stimulated demand" for the defense contractors once again, and the White House has finally figured out (with the approval rating to back it up) that Trump can supplant any negative news coverage of his bigoted authoritarianism at home by firing it at brown and black foreigners instead.
Yesterday we feigned indignation at the government's lack of respect for the past victims of authoritarian evil, today we salute with awe the mighty power and quickness with which the government is capable of obliterating people we never knew in a war that will never end for a cause nobody can articulate.
Quite a society that is capable of that.