Dear Ivanka, Eric, and Donald Jr.: Join the Army or the Marines; lead by example and show your patriotism by your willingness to sacrifice.

We now have ample evidence that the United States–even in the absence of declared wars, state-to-state conflicts, and serious threats from an invading army–will continue to be a heavily armed country that relies on the use of military advantage to push our agenda in the world.

Call it what you want, but the reality is that we are going to enforce a Pax Americana and whatever the Republican-majority Congress and the Commander-in-Chief feel is an American view of the world. We will do it as much and as far as we are able. We are the modern version of Rome, by design or default.

What we are not–for better or worse–is Sparta. We engage in pieties to assuage our guilt over our “all-volunteer” armed forces. We use them without really thinking about the consequences of sending them into harm’s way. Fewer than 1% of American families have any skin in the game, and as I’ve so often heard, “Well, they signed up for it.” The last time there was a draft, the country was in the street. The idealist in me would like to say that it was over an unjust and unjustified war. The cynic in me says that the only reason anyone cared was because it was their own lives on the line that time.

tRump is pushing an agenda that could easily lead us into war. He is backing both the US and Iran into a corner. If he’s  a tenth of the man he says he is, and if his offspring are not just fleas on those 10% coattails, he will encourage them to join the Armed Forces. Not the Air Force (too cushy) or the Navy, but boots-on-the-ground expeditionary forces, either the Marines or the Army infantry.

Let’s see how patriotic these plutocrats are.