War values as applied to society. Mussolini understood this very well. A free society is too disorganized to control. So he imposed a warlike value on the Italian society to control the economy.
“Ordinary rules of behavior are mothballed. You can get things done like building roads, hospitals, houses. Domestic populations and institutions were required to do their part....
...William James spoke of the moral equivalent of war. He wanted all the benefits without the cost. Hence in recent times the left has looked at everything from environmentalism to global warming to public health and ‘diversity’ as war equivalents to cajole the public into expert driven unity,” Page 149, Liberal Fascism, David Horowitz.
Poverty is not something one makes war on. To say that it will take a war on XXXXX means they are making war on the American citizen, on society as a whole. This automatically means there are winners and losers, there allies and enemies, there is nothing uniting society in using these tactics to control society. They are self-destructive to the very people they claim to help. There is no moral equivalent to make war on your own citizens over anything. Even God does not make war on His Saints, that “war” is against evil.
The whole idea of a ‘war on XXXXX’ means a government that puts a gun to the head of the citizen, not cajoled, but forced into submission through assorted punishments, disgrace, and bullying tactics.
The War on Poverty has cost trillions and has only multiplied their numbers - though the definitions of “poverty” and “poor” have certainly been massaged and exploited. The Left loves this issue because if you protest, you are greedy and/or racist - so people naturally tend to shy away from such labels.