Ask Lemmy

don’t i remember his conclusion was effectively, '…and that’s why monarchy is the best form of government?"

That's reductive and misses much of the thesis of The Elements of Law or Leviathan. Hobbes definitely extols the virtue of a strong central government, but he mentions it in contrast to the feuding princedoms common to 17th century Europe. He (not unreasonably) critiques the democratic governments of the ancient world by noting their penchant for demagoguery and civil wars along the same lines.

But the argument is around which countries can most efficiently formulate and implement national policy. This isn't a moral critique so much as a Machiavellian practical analysis.

for instance, the People With The Big Army changes pretty much every 4 years

The President changes every 4-8 years. The bureaucracy in the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, and the State Department are more static. US foreign policy hasn't radically changed since Truman. Presidents routinely run up against professional career bureaucrats who slow roll, undermine, and neglect policies they oppose. The military itself has its own political inertia in that regard, and it isn't something you can easily sway unless you're ready to jettison large chunks of your experienced labor force.

if we could only figure out how to reach into the minds of all those soldiers, and an effective message to plant

Military bases are absolutely awash in AM Talk Radio, right-wing TV, and QAnon internet. It isn't unusual to see a Douglas MacArthur or a Michael Flynn retire from the service to get involved in politics and expose how absolutely unhinged the upper ranks of the US military can get. Also, we're apparently putting CTOs from tech companies into the officers' corps now.

I think this is a solved problem from the right. You basically buy your way in with your trillions of dollars in media cartels and contractor kickbacks.

my opinion is that individuals comprise any hypothetical organized countervailing force

Individuals have to act in concert. They need to collaborate, coordinate their actions, and provide support to one another. It isn't enough for a million people to wake up one morning and say "We're not going to take it anymore" without any understanding of who their peers are or what they're doing.

what I would like to see, perhaps I should just speak for myself- is other people taking the brave public first steps of actual resistance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belling_the_Cat

The term has become an idiom describing a group of persons, each agreeing to perform an impossibly difficult task under the misapprehension that someone else will be chosen to run the risks and endure the hardship of actual accomplishment.