Listening to Ward Carroll's youtube channel he had on Admiral James Winnefeld Jr. Its interesting listening to the Admirals disgust for what he sees going in national leadership starting at roughly the 49:30 mark of this episode https://youtu.be/DdC2P6UqEGE. A couple quotes...
"Something has got to happen that causes more accountability for decision making and responsible behavior on the part of our political class"

" ..Or when the electorate gets tired of it and starts voting other people in"

"...we have a system that's pretty broken ...that's held hostage to very few individuals with probably inordinate amount of power who can hold things up."

Just copying and pasting some of the Admiral's credentials;
Commands held
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
United States Northern Command
North American Aerospace Defense Command
United States Sixth Fleet
Carrier Strike Group Two

I don't have time stamp for it but if you go back to I believe Ward's "How World War III Starts" episode-to keep things open source- he talks about flag officers who admit the current administration's priority is not the military.

As citizens we should understand
- what our military spending is for
- why it's relatively high compared to GDP
- What's the cost unpreparedness
- What's the cost of western nations not investing in defense
- What are the ramifications of our various energy and trade policies outside US borders
- we can all put our thumb on the scale by
- paying attention
-writing our reps
- peacefullly assembling
- using our 1st amendment rights
- holding the media accountable
- and of course with our vote