It's absolutely part of how our police became militarized. It's not even just the vets. The entire military industrial complex is involved. It became a way to make money and recoop some of the investment in gear. The same corporations that produce fear for the military outfit the police.

There's also a through line with the drug pandemic. There's more than one reason why we had to have a "war on drugs".

You can go into a station house and magazines made for cops promote violence and aggressiveness and fear of the citizenry. Real tough guy stuff to a sickening level.

And many of these cops lap every bit of that shit up without ever a critical thought about it.