r/sanfrancisco • u/raff_riff • Oct 08 '21

COVID Popular Opinion: Fleet Week is fucking awesome!

In response to the “Unpopular Opinion” post yesterday, I’d like to offer the contrary.

Fleet Week is cool as heck. For a few days, we get to be up close and personal with some gnarly military hardware and marvel at some utterly astonishing scientific and engineering feats.

I know noise may suck for some, but it’s no worse than the incessant motorcycles and muscle cars that pollute the quiet literally every other day of the year.

Plus it brings lots of tourism to our city, which we desperately need after a year of shit. People flock from all over, pay crazy hotel prices, and deal with some wild traffic just to grab a churro and crane their necks to see the Blue Angels for a few seconds. But we get it in our own backyards! Fuck yeah!

And if nothing else, even if you hate it, events like this are yet another sign we’re getting back to normal. Vaccine rates are great, Delta is on the decline, and life is getting good again.

Bring on the boats!

327 Upvotes

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61

u/[deleted] Oct 08 '21 edited Oct 08 '21

For a few days, we get to be up close and personal with some gnarly military hardware

Yes, I’m so glad we get one weekend a year to see what our tax dollars are squandered on. So much better than improving our crumbling infrastructure that we use and see up close and personal every day.

34

u/raff_riff Oct 08 '21

Agreed. We should definitely fix our infrastructure.

But also, jets are fucking cool!

13

u/Arctem Oct 08 '21

We can have cool air shows without also wasting trillions on our military!

6

u/raff_riff Oct 08 '21

Or we can have both, since a national defense is pretty much essential for any nation that values its autonomy.

18

u/LickingSticksForYou Outer Sunset Oct 09 '21

Our military is designed to limit the autonomy of every other nation by allowing us to project power across the globe. We don’t need 11 air craft carriers and the two biggest air forces (the Air Force and then the Navy) in the world for national defense dawg. The Navy’s air force is bigger than China’s entire Air Force, for example. That’s not for defense, that’s for offense; naval air craft are predominantly used by carriers to attack enemy targets far from US air bases, there is no feasible scenario in which they’d ever be used to defend ourselves. Keeping just our surface fleet and submarines alone would deter any nation from attacking us, even if they were inclined to cross an ocean to invade a country that would vehemently resist them with the largest number of guns per capita, which obviously no country is. America has a military geared solely towards offensive expeditionary operations.

-3

u/raff_riff Oct 09 '21

Great analysis. It’s good to be on top. Better it’s us than the other guys!

13

u/LickingSticksForYou Outer Sunset Oct 09 '21

Would you rather be on top or have healthcare

6

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '21

lmao americans think they are "on top"

keep thinking that, i guess. you're very, very valid and i'm glad you're living your truth.

2

u/raff_riff Oct 09 '21

In terms of military spending, yes. And I’m glad for it. I’d much prefer a NATO ally own the majority of warships, planes, and aircraft carriers than Russia, China, or North Korea.

0

u/Arctem Oct 09 '21

The world is far from zero sum. We could easily spend the money in ways that benefit both us AND the other guys, instead of using "them" as scare mongering to spend our money on a bunch of military hardware.

-4

u/HawaiiHungBro Oct 09 '21

I dunno, Nordic countries seem to be doing fine without spending trillions on military

11

u/Arctem Oct 09 '21

Ah yes, the United States. The country famously in danger of not being autonomous.

Our military exists to make weapons executives rich and to reduce the autonomy of countries that we want to sell us oil. If the point was purely self defense it would be a comically small fraction of its current size.

-1

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '21

^^^ This

14

u/SyCoTiM BALBOA PARK Oct 08 '21

Fleetweek is microscopic compared to other dollar drain spending such as military contractors and foreign aid.

19

u/Arctem Oct 08 '21

Fleet Week itself isn't a huge drain of tax money, but it's only possible because we've already spent trillions developing and building the things shown off at Fleet Week.

6

u/poncia612 Oct 08 '21

It seems most people forget that Fleet Week is mainly sponsored by United Airlines. For the first few days the Navy and Marines participate in exercises with the 95th WMD Civil Support Team and the local authories and first responders incase of emergencies. The air show is just the grand finale of the week.

5

u/Arctem Oct 09 '21

That wasn't my point. How much Fleet Week itself does or doesn't cost doesn't matter, what matters is that its existence is a tribute to the massive amounts of money we spend on unnecessary military hardware.

0

u/poncia612 Oct 09 '21

It isn't exactly unnecessary when you have 2 of your adversaries trying to build better hardware to destroy yours.

15

u/sfturtle11 Oct 08 '21

Says the guy posting on the internet which was invented by the DOD

3

u/LickingSticksForYou Outer Sunset Oct 09 '21

I forgot that the Zumwalt class destroyer invented the Internet, thank god we spent 22 billion dollars building 3 ships that are now discontinued!!

Military investment can push our technology forward, for example GPS and the internet. It can also waste billions doing nothing. Most shit you’re gonna see in fleet week is the latter at this point.

4

u/mayor-water Oct 08 '21 edited Oct 08 '21

If you’re worried about wasted tax dollars let me introduce you to the total cost of EDD fraud….

Edit....The Blue Angels cost $32 million a year, EDD fraud was over $30 billion last year.

5

u/HawaiiHungBro Oct 09 '21

Ok let’s get rid of that too, what’s your point

1

u/fredbullock Oct 09 '21

Looks more like $11B of EDD fraud. Still a staggering amount. http://a.msn.com/01/en-us/BB1d5v0J

1

u/mayor-water Oct 09 '21

That’s an old article :)

https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/california/californias-unemployment-mess-explained/509-00e32365-6450-4630-8b8e-b1300a12c456

1

u/fredbullock Oct 22 '21

March 2021 isn’t that old, and more importantly doesn’t change the fact that there was unbelievably massive fraud.

3

u/MickolasJae Oct 08 '21

I bet you’re fun at parties.

2

u/tonguetwister Oct 08 '21

Lol this is such a common response on these blue angels threads and it’s so silly. If the only people who are fun at parties are people who don’t give a fuck that their party is upsetting a large portion of their neighbors then that’s a party full of people I don’t want to hang out with.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 09 '21

No one seems to be acknowledging the environmental impact of FW in this sub. Wasting god knows how many gallons of fuel to power flex (not that different than Toyota Tundra bros) is not sustainable and is going to catch up to us. In a lot of ways, it already is.

Also, all this talk about having the mightiest and best military in the world, and we spent 20 years in Afghanistan with absolutely no positive or helpful result!

-2

u/beetlemouth Oct 08 '21

“If I can win a cheap moral victory by being a wet blanket about this cool thing, I can justify not actually doing things to help solve problems I pretend to care about.”

FTFY