It is amazing how quickly things can change when it is in the interests of the Rogue .1% to do so. The normalization of the previously unthinkable used to take a approximately a decade, though legitimating specific horrors could take for less – such as the dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese cities. Now, change is far quicker, largely because of the almost inescapable messaging environment that largely funnels through the channels of a handful of media sources.
While only 55.7% of households had a TV in 1954, 90% had them by 1962 (Television Set). Before that there was radio and newspapers. What was once largely local with a plethora of information (news) sources, has narrowed down to a handful, and those share significant economic interests even if the target different “markets” (demographic and ideological portions of the population). More recently, we have added social media and all to the influencing and propaganda mechanisms are brought to bear in a highly targeted manner. Partially because of overload, and partially by shaped behavior, much of our population is trapped in a shiny bubble of roaming “now”, framed to our individual preferences and biases. We have largely become untethered from history, continuity, and reality. Highly paid message magicians distract attention, while atrocities happen and the theft of our world happens right under our noses.
In 1953, General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower conveyed the truth of war to the nation in his “Chance for Peace” speech (4/16/1953). Speaking from the midst of the cold war and the armed camp mentality that rapidly established itself, this man trained to war foretold the path of the militarism that we now blithely embrace (emphases mine):
What can the world, or any nation in it, hope for if no turning is found on this dread road?
The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated.
The worst is atomic war.
The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
Militarism is insidious and omnipresent. A couple of days ago I posted a piece on corporations who owed no taxes, and even received subsidies and rebates. In study after study this list of tax brigands includes the top military industries and the energy sector, as well as the financial industry that funds and profits from endless conflict and war. Every year, more of our taxes goes directly and indirectly to militarism. Congress is captive as contractors have distributed production and jobs across the entire country and a threat to move would mean major financial harm to those communities.
The other side of the equation is to continuously expand military spending beyond war to domestic uses. First by transferring the machinery of war to police departments where it can be used directly against us as we pay for both police and technology and the ever-eroding investment in people and communities. Second into the private consumer market from “security” systems, to personal drones, to the morally corrupt gun industry selling arsenals meant for war to a civilian market for “entertainment” and “security”. We are being swallowed whole and while most folks sung up in their customized bubble.
[I have included some sources after Robert Koehler’s article that folks many find useful: the whole text of Eisenhower’s “Chance for Peace” and his final speech before leaving office in which he highlighted the M-I complex, and a list of the 10 most expensive weapons in the US arsenal.]
