It used to be that cities would conquer each other and burn the opponent to the ground. Now the empires just take potshots at each other with drones and missiles. Once war became remote-control, what's the point?

With mechanization, we're not trading so much blood for oil as just trading oil for oil and it's all just interest on interest in the stock market. We are forced (via tax codes) to place bets on the competitive moral turpitude of capitalists. The market be damned, we've got Stimulus!

Boeing's wheels go round and round, round and round, bouncing down the runway...They got so used to building weapon systems, they forgot that airplanes are supposed to come back.