Re: "wasteful" military spending.
Keeping a standing army around that's larger than what we need to deter an invasion is just as "wasteful" as outside contracts/new weapons system boondoggles. And cutting out the pork would put a financial strain on a lot of working people, just as cutting military retirement benefits would.
It's very different on a gut level, because of what soldiers are asked to do and because everyone knows somebody in the military. We can empathize with them, while the corporations (even though they're employing a ton of people) are abstracted.
Which I think explains what Spencer's saying about the widespread belief that the system is corrupt. Almost everyone seems to disapprove of Congress and vague "special interests", but a ton of people who get special benefits from the government (SS, Medicare, the mortgage deduction, people in a ton of favored industries) don't see themselves as beneficiaries, and would consider it hugely unfair if they were to lose out.
So you can't really expect a big, coherent, popular political movement to arise from that mistrust, and it would be a bigger mistake to interpret that discontent as validation of or support for any particular political program.
