{"id":61261,"date":"2020-06-17T09:41:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T17:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/letters\/opinion-our-life-in-a-war-zone\/"},"modified":"2020-06-17T09:41:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T17:41:00","slug":"opinion-our-life-in-a-war-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/letters\/opinion-our-life-in-a-war-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Our life in a war zone"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is the U.S. Military supplying U.S. municipalities with battlefield weapons that is raising the civilian cry to “Defund the Police.” No Black Lives Matter protest is suggesting a “zero police” public policy. When an inflated Pentagon budget has more than $7.2 billion worth of equipment given away over the past couple of decades, including $293 million worth of property — from assault-gear to grenade-launchers — given away — to municipal public safety — last year, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency <\/a>website.<\/a> It’s no wonder we are training public safety to be civilian warriors. Though the Koch Brothers may be initially responsible, with their financial gamesmanship that has found a bottomline profit with consumers’ and competitors’ reactions based impulsively on fear, those directly responsible are the pseudo-public servants crying public priority dis-investment of social goods, like education, infrastructure and environmental de-toxification, in a libertarian, Tea Party delusion of nation as self that, without complete awareness, recognizes no benefit in social good. <\/p>\n

If we refuse to encourage the noble leadership that can defy this impulsive response to maximize self-gain, and instead cleave to those leading a path of wealth stockpiled to buy our government, the energy in our BLM uprising may not be, nor should be, immobilized until November or January 2021. <\/p>\n

John Sonin, <\/p>\n

Douglas <\/p>\n

• Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? Here’s how to submit a My Turn or letter.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is the U.S. Military supplying municipalities with battlefield weapons raising civilian cries. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":14,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-61261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61261"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=61261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}