Not like I can take an analysis of the current debt crisis in the United States more than an inch down the road without feeling lost in complexity, but there’s a glaring aspect to the controversy which isn’t lost on me nevertheless.
As the President meets with leading Democrats and Republicans to ward off what must be the worst fiscal crisis the U.S. has ever faced, entire issues are not even being discussed. The elephant sits there on the breakfast table, forcing people to angle around him to see the other side and no one even mentions his presence.
This entire discussion goes on like a Noh dance – highly-stylized and lacking any noticeable resemblance to real life.
It’s the defense budget, silly.
What say?
It’s the defense budget.
Pare back guns, not butter.
I’ve said before how phoney it is to represent the fiscal debate as being between cutters and spenders. Both sides are spenders. Both sides refuse to cut back on the defense budget. It’s Tweedledee and Tweedledum when it comes to keeping the financial commitment to the “defense” industry (read: war industry). The war industry itself has to go.
How can you, Dems and Republicans, talk about gutting social policy, eroding entitlement, paring down health care, when you spend so much on weapons of mass destruction which are then used to bully others into compliance or are sold to allies (read: partners in war crimes and crimes against humanity) for the same purpose?
Why is it that the word that shows up least in any discussion of cuts (maybe short of “pork”) is “defense”?
Is everyone feeding from the same trough?
What possible humane purpose does the proliferation of depleted-uranium weapons, planes of mass destruction, aircraft carriers of hostile intention, and all the secret projects to blow up the world a million times over contribute to our society that so much of the budget should go towards it? Or that it should be preserved from any discussion of cuts?
Or that it should come before education, health care, unemployment benefits, retirement benefits, or any other social program that feeds, clothes and houses people where expenditure on defense contributes to people starving worldwide, being reduced to rags, and having their homes destroyed?
Are you political leaders, of both stripes and all persuasions, so much in cahoots over rifling the national treasury that you don’t choose to focus at any time on what will benefit people?
If we were obliged to live forever in this reality as it’s portrayed daily (which we’re not), what would our future be? Can you see this society, led by these leaders (short of the President), ever having pulled out of their downward spiral of destruction without the events occurring that we are studying daily here? Honestly, can you?
