A Peculiar Form of American Madness
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A Peculiar Form of American Madness
Heroification of the military is a strange mindset for any self-avowed democracy
America is touched by a peculiar form of collective madness that sees military action as creative rather than destructive, desirable rather than deplorable, and constitutive to democracy rather than corrosive to it.
This madness, this hubris, this elevation or heroification of the military and war has to end, or it will most certainly end America, if not the world.
Related to this, America advances and sustains a historical narrative based on triumphalism, exceptionalism, and goodness. We Americans see total military dominance as something to crow about, even as we insist that it’s our birthright as “exceptional” Americans. This mindset, or Zeitgeist if you will, enables and empowers a national security state that easily consumes more than half of federal discretionary spending each year. As long as this mindset persists, the MICC or MICIMATT will persist and continue to grow in reach and power.
So that’s my first big step in taming the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think-tank complex. America’s mindset, its culture, must change. Change the mindset and you begin to change the deference if not adulation granted to the MICIMATT.
Change the mindset, weaken the blob. That was what Dwight D. Eisenhower had in mind in his “Cross of Iron” speech in 1953.
Our peculiar form of militarized madness is simply no way of life at all for democracy or for the planet.
It won’t be easy because we’re taught to salute the military and support “our” beloved troops. We’re taught that corporations like Boeing and Raytheon are job-creators, even citizens. We look to Congress to represent us, even as its members thrive on corporate campaign contributions (bribes) while genuflecting to the generals and admirals. We look to the media for news and information even as those outlets are fueled by advertising dollars from companies like Boeing, if not owned by them. We look to “liberal” academia for new ideas even as colleges and universities compete for Pentagon research and development dollars. We look to think tanks for fresh approaches even as they’re funded by weapons contractors.
Under these conditions, it’s not surprising that the U.S. no longer sees peace as possible or even as desirable. Peace is rarely mentioned by U.S. political candidates or by the mainstream media. War is simply taken for granted; even worse, it’s seen as the health of the state.
That war is now seen as the health of the state is indeed a peculiar form of American madness. As the Christmas season approaches, is it too much to ask for sanity as in peace on earth and good will toward all?
Ike’s “Cross of Iron” speech in 1953 was brilliant in its clarity and power. Can you imagine any U.S. politician saying these words today?
“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 fifty miles of concrete pavement. 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 is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
A Peculiar Form of American Madness
How do you fix ignorant/stupid? My mother and I go to a local diner often and I listen to all the conversation's around me and I have not once heard anything about Ukraine or even for that matter Afghanistan. Most of the customers are groups of men, young and old. What does that say?
There is, Dennis, a very clear, concise, simple, and ~ for anybody familiar with American military history since the end of World War II ~ easy-to-understand reason why the US military is failing to meet recruitment goals.
And it has absolutely nothing to do with “Wokeness” [whatever that is], or any other current psycho-babble.
The Americans the military is trying to recruit have spent their entire lives with America at war someplace on the planet, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and so forth; aka “The Forever War.” And America has LOST EVERY ONE OF THOSE WARS.
The parents and grandparents of those Americans the military is trying to recruit have also spent their entire lives with America at war someplace on the planet: starting with helping the French reclaim their colonial empire in Indochina, to Korea, then our very own Vietnam, then Cuba and Central America [aka “Cold War I"]; and then Kuwait and Yugoslavia, and so forth, as America flexed its new-found, global, unipolar hegemony.
And the only one of those wars America DIDN’T lose was the one where we saved the Incubator Babies; the one that set the stage for 9/11 and the above cited Forever War.
And that, of course, doesn’t include all the assassinations, coups, stolen elections, false flag operations, and the rest of America’s means, methods, and mechanisms for waging "Pax Americana" during Cold War I.
Thus, the entire population of the United has lived its entire life with its nation being at war someplace with somebody over something. And this ~ the most expensive, extensive, and expansive military component of any Empire in Human history ~ HAS LOST EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM.
And now we have “Cold War II” and the very real prospects of Americans fighting a two-front Hot War in Eastern Europe and in East Asia [including the very real prospects of the use of nuclear weapons].
At some point during what the Vietnamese term “The American War,” a significant number of American military personnel decided and determined not to be “the last motherfucker to die in this motherfucking war.” That’s when the in-the-field strikes, fraggings, and other manifestations of “Take this Fucking War and shove it” began to make itself felt in Vietnam and elsewhere.
And no doubt had at least some impact of how the American people began to perceive that war; and how its managers in Saigon, the Pentagon, and White House responded.
So there is no real mystery at all as to why the American military is failing to meet recruitment goals. Fewer and fewer of those previously prime potential enlistees want to be “the last motherfucker to die in this dying Empire’s motherfucking war.”
And it really isn’t all that difficult, complicated, or complex to figure out exactly Why, is it?