What a lot of people get from this (including me) is the absurdity of military shows. Air shows are less ridiculous because planes are capable of some incredible things, but it’s still unsettling. Like gun shows or parades of duty.

if we're talking about absurdity, you should really think about philosophy here, we're talking about this, over the internet, using funny keyboards. This entire fucking interaction is absurdist. The very concept of a technologically influenced military is absurdist. Literally everything is absurdist.

Would you say the same thing about the moon landing? Was that absurdist? What about the pioneer and voyager satellites? Are those absurdist?

There are so many things in day to day life, and outside of it that could be considered absurdist.

We have advanced many of our societies to such a point that we might be able to do away with weapon worship entirely, so I think it’s sensible to be uncomfortable with venerating the trappings of dictators and despots.

I fundamentally disagree with this statement. Call me when people stop randomly getting into fights with each other and maybe i'll give you that point lol.

I kind of agree that militaries are still necessary, but there’s a big difference between an unfortunate but necessary thing and a celebrated thing.

yeah but why not celebrate it? In the case of the US the military is primarily volunteer based. Drafts are extremely unpopular. Should you not respect and celebrate the people that have served in the military? Does celebrating the military not directly bolster these people as well?

In the specific case here, the US military is the reason this country even exists. It's obviously going to be a pride point of the country when it's the entire reason we exist. As evidenced in many other countries.

I would argue that a celebrated military is better than a required and mandated military (think finland)

The difference between an F-15 and an angle grider is that the F-15 is intended to hurt people.

says who? It's a plane, it's the instruments on the plane that are intended to hurt people. Should we be ok with other planes like recon and spy planes? Is the U2 a martyr of service? Is the SR-71 the pinnacle of peaceful military technology? This is on it's face a relatively silly statement.

I could very easily argue that an angle grinder was designed to injure people by proxy. It's literally designed to remove material, or to cut material, i see no mechanism in which this can't be applied directly to a human, and thus, it's designed to hurt people. And it's not just going to hurt a little bit, it's going to really fuck your shit up. you could argue that it's not an intended behavior, but i would disagree with you on principle of it being a tool designed to remove material, being successful at removing human material from human.

Pulling an angle grinder out of your coat isn’t as intimidating as pulling out a knife

is a knife designed explicitly to kill? Why do we have them in the kitchen then? Why do we use them outside of killing people, seems to me like you're implying that a primary function of a knife is to hurt people. I would argue both of these things are incredibly common, a kitchen knife even more so. If we're operating in this realm of definition. A knife would be less threatening than an angle grinder, because it's expected that someone may have a knife, but it's really unexpected for someone to have an angle grinder.

Also if we're being pedantically correct here, it's not designed to kill people, it's designed to down other planes. Not people. It'd be a little weird to launch an f16 or an f15 specifically to target one single person.

Could you argue that the military stems from the innate human need to kill other people over conflict? Sure. Could you also argue that the only reason we have this technology we have now is because of the military and this need to kill people over conflict? Also yes. There is an extremely high link between military effectiveness, and technological advantage. This can be seen throughout human history, as well as into the industrial revolution.

GPS likely wouldn't exist if it weren't for the USSR and the US during the cold war.

An F-15 can only destroy.

are you willing to argue that the f-15 streak eagle was designed with the explicit purpose of killing people? It's an f15. I would also like to point out that there are training variants of the f-15 as well. Obviously not intended for real combat. There's also really weird shit like the ASM-135 ASAT which was designed to be carried on an f-15 as an anti satellite measure. Pretty sure that's not supposed to kill people.

This is an odd philosophical question. Because at the root here is basically the question of what came first. The knife, or killing people with a knife. The gun, or killing people with the gun. Theoretically there is a world in which you could invent from scratch, a tool used to kill people. However philosophically, you're going to run into problems with related innovations and inventions. Is a sword entirely isolated from a spear? A spear is basically just a stick. At what point do we consider a weapon "intended to kill" and at what point is it just "a weapon, but with the ability to kill"

You would have a better time making the argument for something like a military service rifle, compared to like, a basketball. But i'm not sure that would make sense philosophically. Because you're basically predicating the entire human race on the ability to kill other people, and if we're doing that, then who cares.

can’t advance science, at best it can do acrobatics while being incredibly expensive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_STOL/MTD

ok.

It’s nothing more than a weapon.

no, it's a plane, the weapons go on the plane, the Japanese may have used their planes as weapons during world war 2, but that is contrary to popular belief, not the standard mechanism for operation of a fighter jet.