THE SHEER INSANITY OF IT ALL

The terrifying rampage of the U.S. war machine

For all the cynicism we might have about the American media, when it comes to covering the chaos of President Trump’s second term I don’t think we can complain. Yes they have their biases, but when it comes to reporting the facts there are places where we can go to find them. “The media” is no longer a term that applies only to legacy media, after all. There are numerous independent news sources that are covering what’s going on.

The problem is not that we lack facts; the problem is that we lack vision, and we lack wisdom. We can see the dots but we’re not connecting them. There’s a lot of reporting on the trees, but what we need is a better view of the forest.

This morning I read that we don’t have to worry about Iran having missiles that can attack the United States - until 2035, that is. Um, I don’t want to ruin your day but please let that sink in. While the military might not call that “an immediate threat,” to me it still seems way too close for comfort.

Think about where you were nine years ago and then tell me that doesn’t seem like yesterday. How old are you likely to be in nine years? Think about the children in your life and calculate how old they’ll be in 2035. And if Iran will have missiles that can reach the U.S. by 2035, what other international player might have them as well?

Over the last six decades, the United States has recklessly bombed other countries to the tune of trillions of dollars and well over a million lives lost. American soldiers have died fighting for…wait a minute, let me think…I’m sure there was some reason and I’ll remember it in a moment. From Southeast Asia to the Middle East, our taxpayer dollars have paid for the largest, most powerful military in the world to supposedly make us safer. But has it not done the opposite? We have done little more than throw our weight around, create havoc, and make huge fortunes for the matrix of U.S. war merchants now called the military-technological-industrial complex. Vietnam, anybody? Iraq? Afghanistan? All that “defense spending” has not defended us. We have created enemies for the United States all over the world…and apparently one particular enemy, now nursing a sense of revenge that could well last decades, will have missiles that can reach us by 2035. Think about that just a little bit more, please. Iran will have missiles that can reach us by 2035.

We’ve been inching up towards a trillion dollars in annual defense expenditures for years, and President Trump now says he needs $1.5T to create his “dream military.” Given how much we’re depleting our military with this war on Iran, he’s already asking for more. His new military budget would be paid for by cutting the Environmental Protection Agency in half, plus making other severe cuts to programs involving health, housing, and education.

So why have we been throwing trillions of dollars into the coffers of the defense industry when forty per cent of Americans have only $500 in a savings account? Because the American people have been fed the ruse that all our military spending - more than twice that of all other countries combined - is needed to keep us safe. Wake up, my friends. America’s war machine has not kept us safe. It has made us anything but safe. And it’s reasonable to assume we might one day pay the price personally for our reckless, abusive military actions over the last 60 years. 2035 is not very far way, and sooner than we think we might have to drop that phrase “foreign wars.” Once those missiles can fly over the Pacific or the Atlantic, there will be nothing “foreign” about them. A lot more than higher prices at the gas pump are at stake here.

America’s elite political and media institutions are reluctant to recognize the abject insanity of our military trajectory over the last 60 years. They’re not amused when you even mention it, actually, and in my experience they’ll come after you if you do. You’re met with derision if you talk about a Department of Peace. You’re mocked for saying we shouldn’t just fight wars, we have to proactively wage peace. You’re deemed “unqualified” when arguing that our national security would be bolstered more by our ability to educate our children than by our ability to add to the seven thousand bombs in our nuclear arsenal. There won’t be any follow-up questions, because obviously such conversation is unserious. In fact, it’s the foundational narratives of American political leadership over the last few decades - from economics to war - that have been, if the human race is to survive itself, unqualified and unserious. Those narratives need to radically change.

There is no danger obvious to people now that wasn’t obvious decades ago, if we were willing to look. How woo woo, how kooky, to think maybe just maybe peace and love are the only way.