One of the most effective rhetorical tools in normalizing massive military budgets is to treat spending billions — and sometimes trillions — of dollars as something one has to do in order to be “modern.” “Modernization” is, after all, an attractive label. Who doesn’t want to be modern? Consider just a few examples from recent reporting on
Modernization: The Media’s Code for Military Build-Up
The mainstream media treats shelling out trillions on the military like it’s a simple iPhone update.