Dirty Laundry

Professor J,

Wonderful Memorial Day post! What a different nation we would be if we took time to pause and reflect, more often. Sad that we can't even manage it on official days set aside for such things.

Hedges waits until the middle of the last chapter to bring up one of the problems that allows so many of the others he covers to fester under the surface...our failing press:

"Television journalism is largely a farce. Celebrity reporters, masquerading as journalists, make millions a year and give a platform to the powerful and the famous so they can spin, equivocate, and lie. sitting in a studio, putting on makeup, and chatting with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, or Lawrence Summers has little to do with journalism. If you are a true journalist, you should worry if you make $5 million a year. No journalist has a comfortable, cozy relationship with the powerful. No journalist believes that serving the powerful is a primary part of his calling. Those in power fear and dislike journalists--and they should." (169)

Anyone else hear Don Henley lyrics? 

The Founding Fathers were aware of how indispensable a free press was going to be in the republic. They were specific about guaranteeing the liberty of it. They could not however, have imagined the scene Hedges describes.  They could not have dreamed that the press would willingly hand off their ability and obligation to be a thorn in the flesh of those in power.

In the last chapter of Dan Rather's new book, Rather Outspoken: My Life in the News he describes what he has seen happen:

"The profit imperative also means that news has become conflated with entertainment. News is no longer what it was when I started: a public service. Today, few people talk about broadcast news in any other way than as a profit ratings getter and profit center. And as a network profit center, there is now every expectation that network news divisions will generate ratings and hence revenue, just like any drama or sitcom or sporting event--which is why the pope took a backseat to a tennis match, and why we now have four talking heads in a studio shouting at one another instead of four overseas bureaus covering real news."

While I was setting Hedges aside to find out what Rather had to say on this subject--what did I find? That ONE paragraph later, while lamenting the death of newspapers (just last week the Times Picayune announced it was going to a 3 day publication week)  Rather is QUOTING HEDGES :)

"Chris Hedges has written a riveting essay on the subject. Entitled 'Gone With the Papers,' he highlights what is at stake:

"We are losing a peculiar culture and ethic. This loss is impoverishing our civil discourse and leaving us less and less connected to the city, the nation, and the world around us. The death of newsprint represents the end of an era. And news gathering will not be replaced by the internet.
Journalism, at least on the large scale of old newsrooms is no longer commercially viable. Reporting is time consuming and labor-intensive. It requires going out and talking to people. It means doing this every day. It means looking constantly for sources, tips, leads, documents, informants, whistleblowers, new facts and information, untold stories and news. Reporters often spend days finding little or nothing of significance. The work can be tedious and is expensive...

The steady decline of the news business means we are plunging larger and larger parts of our society into dark holes and opening up greater opportunities for unchecked corruption, disinformation of power...A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth, and when civic discourse is grounded in verifiable fact."

 Read the essay in its entirety here.

“I don't so much mind that newspapers are dying - it's watching them commit suicide that pisses me off.” ― Molly Ivins

  I'm being sucked into a powerful vortex created by seeing the end of this book in sight, so feel free to dig in your heels and prolong the discussion as you see fit. I know there is a lot of quoting in this week's post but really--what am I going to say that is better than this?

Reverence

We interrupt our regularly scheduled blog to bring you this holiday message (yes, I know, this means I will be next week responding to TWO of Madame’s postings, but I believe I have some experience with that, lol).

It seems that our holidays have become disconnected from their purpose.  Where once they very nearly took on the character of their underlying name—holy—now they are, in too many instances, just a (albeit welcome) day off, or an excuse to overeat, overspend, or overindulge in some way.  Where people sometimes have a family reunion, large and small, which is a good side benefit, how many also take the time to remember, to revere, to commemorate, the holiday? 

I think you know the answer: nearly none.  Think of all the holidays, and then ask yourself if what you and your family did on that holiday was connected to the holiday’s supposed purpose, and if it was, for how long?  An hour?  Or even a minute? For most holidays, not at all?

Today on your (likely) day off, some spirits from the past may be wondering if you could be bothered for even a few minutes.  You know, those who served and died for your freedom.  I don’t mean the half-meaningless and half bull-expletitive “freedom” that politicians and their handlers throw out to keep us conned and diverted about the often horrible policies they make.  I mean that noble sacrifice for believing in a good America.  Yes, in the day to day, soldiers fight for each other and not for overarching lofty sentiments.  But in their collective striving, they fight (and have fought) for what they believe.  And they believe in you, their fellow citizens, and the good America you together represent.

Today, in about 10 hours, I will be the commemoration speaker for a presentation in honor of today’s holiday.  If any of you are this year or in future years going to give a speech to revere this holiday, and you aren’t sure how you want to proceed, you have my permission to use the following in any way you see fit:

MEMORIAL DAY COMMEMORATION MAY 28, 2012

On Veterans Day in November we honor all veterans, living and dead.  Today, on Memorial Day, we honor the dead from all our wars, from our War of Independence, from the War of 1812—the war from where our National Anthem came—from our own Civil War, from World War I—the War to End All War—and from World War II—the war that changed the world—from the Korean and Vietnam Wars that brought home the limits of the modern age, from the Cold War that transformed so much, from the Middle East wars, and the many other conflicts that American soldiers of all kinds have put their mortality on the line for.

These honored dead have come from the seven services and more: from the Army, Navy/Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, Merchant Marine, Public Health Service, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and all the components within each of them.  They have come from both the active duty forces, and the citizen-soldiers of the Reserves and National Guard.

These brave men and women made the ultimate sacrifice, and in large part because of that sacrifice, we stand here today not only free men and women, but in a far better world than what might have been, had the forces of tyranny and injustice been left unopposed.  A proud and grateful nation, and a grateful world, salutes all those who by their efforts have given us so much—and the luxury of taking that much for granted.

This will not be a long address this morning, for there is little to say that has not already been said, and I am in any case far too humbled by the debt we owe these men and women.  They had aspirations, spouses, children, lives, and living that they deserved to fulfill.  But it was cut short; their mortal experience, the gift of life, snuffed out, so that others might have a future worth living.

Policymakers send soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines to war.  Whether you agree or not politically with the objectives and methods of the conflicts we now wage—or have waged in the past—you may be proud of the proficiency, professionalism, and patriotism of what is by far the best military in the world.  Be close to your military.  Be part of it and make it part of you, so that neither may become fearful, suspicious, oppressive, dismissive, or neglectful of the other.

The military may do the direct struggling in conflict, but we must be careful to keep our connection.  Once, Rome had been a republic, with citizen-soldier farmers who would leave their plows to serve in noble and selfless sacrifice.  Because of that, Rome was strong.  Its citizens felt a great connection and civic pride and responsibility, and reluctance to go to war unless absolutely necessary.

But as Rome changed, as the military became not a military of draftees or citizen-soldiers, but a totally voluntary professional force, the citizens lost their connections, lost their appreciation, lost their civic pride and responsibility, and even their gratitude for the sacrifice of the soldier.

Let us not be Rome.  A wise sage once said that it is the doom of men that they forget.  All those here today: Pass on, to the generations who follow in your wake, the compelling need to honor the memory of our soldiers, to keep the connections, to come out on Memorial Day and not let it be just another day off, to have civic pride and responsibility, to honor veterans, to be ever grateful for the sacrifice of their very lives.  For you, future citizens and strangers they would never meet, they gave up the life they wanted to have, so you could live yours.  Don’t ever forget.  

Rant~N~Ramble: Round 2

Professor J,

I'm not really sure my ranting is something you want to encourage. ;)

Yesterday I had coffee with a group of friends, and the subject of healthcare came up. In our small group of well informed women, it got a little heated as can sometimes happen when people are discussing things they are passionate about and speaking from a place of deep conviction.  The questions in our little microcosm of opinion that were most difficult to answer were ones about finding common ground that have been in the media spotlight of late.

What do we want to provide? Who is going to control it? How are we going to pay for it? Aren't we already paying for it in other ways? Wouldn't the new plan save millions?  How are we going to prevent fraud? Isn't it just going to be another wasteful bureaucracy? How are we going to give everyone what they want without violating anyone else's conscience? Can we get any meaningful change without doing something about lobbyists, the revolving door between the public and private sector, and campaign donations by corporations? And of course, my personal fave and one of the toughest things to deal with (and that you alluded to last time)--How are we going to fund healthcare for a nation of obese, sickly, self poisoning consumers? The flip side of which is do we want the government telling us what to eat? And if alcohol and tobacco are any indication then the carrot/stick method doesn't work as well as we would hope.

You can't discuss food and healthcare without discussing parenting. And education. If the seven, ten, or fourteen year old is obese, whose fault is that? There is a parent supplying them with bad food and allowing them to sit around in the house far too much. I can assure you that that parent is setting a bad example as well. You only have to look around at families at a park or grocery store to see that these things are household problems. Who is going to regulate parenting? We have built a country around cars, fast food, and sedentary entertainment.  We have designed cities for cars not people. We allowed advertisers to sell us (happily, I might add) food that keeps us sick and (according to new research at UCLA) stupid. 


One of the things that we agreed on at our noisy table was that if Congress had to participate in the system they create, it would be vastly improved. That idea seems to be popular as a solution for quite a few things.

In this last chapter Hedges moves quickly from the military industrial complex, to healthcare, breezes past NAFTA, welfare reform, and the disappearing middle class. His underlying focus is on the powerful corporations and how much power they wield in the new social and political landscape:

"There are few aspects of life left that have not been taken over by corporations from mail delivery to public utilities to our for-profit health-care system. These corporations have no loyalty to the country or workers. Our impoverishment feeds their profits. And profits, for corporations, are all that count."
(162)

"A corporation that attempts to engage in social responsibility, that tries to pay workers a decent wage with benefit, that protects workers' rights, that invests its profits to limit pollution, that gives consumers better deals, can actually be sued by shareholders." (163)

"Power lies with the corporations. These corporations, not we, pick who runs for president, Congress, judgeships, and most state legislatures. You cannot, in most instances, be a viable candidate without their blessing and money." (167)

On p. 68 he returns to the illusion concept: "We are fed illusions. We are given comforting myths--the core of popular culture--that exalt our nation and ourselves, even though ours is a time of collapse, and moral and political squalor."

The problems are (as we have repeated numerous times, now) knitted tightly together. The question is which loose thread to pull on first and how much do we want to unravel?

Rant If You Want To

Madame M:

Your rantings and ramblings are more coherent than many people’s supposedly highly focused thoughts and speaking. :)

Those who hold the real power know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, very well, as you point out.  Food, clothing, shelter, safety/security, etc.—our fixation with those first means we give up (all too readily, without thought or examination), as you say, too much for too little.  There is no perfect security, and we have forgotten Benjamin Franklin’s wise words on this topic.  And because of that, we as a populace are too easily manipulated by those with real power.

Twice now, those with power—from “health” insurance and pharmaceutical corporations to those directly and indirectly connected to the affliction causing and affliction “managing” industry—have undermined attempts to deal with one (this one, health costs, direct and indirect) of the prime monstrous beasts that are consuming the society.

And yes, Madame, as you rightly mention, Europeans look on us as, effectively, ignorant or uncaring consumers of poison who then wail about their individual and societal “health crises.”

The politicians are beholden to a money driven system, and so become bought and paid for by moneyed interests.  Those politicians may wail about the need for (and their campaign promise to do something about it that their opponent won’t) “jobs” and “industry” for the country, but they serve corporate interests who are largely only concerned with maximizing profit—and that often means the goods or services produced where labor is cheaper elsewhere.  Hedges relays on page 154 many striking facts about this from Seymour Melman, an academic who spent his career studying these things.  And Hedges shows us on page 155 that many of those who appear on the corporatized media as “experts” are in serious conflict of interest, and probably largely only in selfish service to themselves and their industries.

You mentioned that Hedges favors a universal health care system.  He quotes Dr. John Geyman, former head of family medicine at the University of Washington: “We cannot build on or tweak the present system.  Different states have tried this.  The problem is the private insurance industry itself. It is not as efficient as a publicly financed system.  It fragments risk pools, skimming off the healthier part of the population and leaving the rest uninsured or underinsured. Its administrative and overhead costs are five to eight times higher than public financing through Medicare.  It cares more about its shareholders than its enrollees or patients.” (155) He goes on to say how much Americans who can get insurance pay for it, and that premiums went up 87 percent from 2000 to 2006.    Hedges cites a Harvard Medical School study that showed national health insurance would save the country at least $350 billion a year. (156)

Yesterday, I went to a high school commencement/graduation, in which the speaker told the graduates that they were the optimistic change agents to solve the seeming insolvable, to come up with, he said, using all the wonderful tech skills their generation possesses, solutions.  True, at least in part, I thought to myself.  How much can be accomplished though, I wondered, if they do not help change the power structure?

Risk Assessment: American Style

Professor J, 

Is it freedom we're fighting for? Is it terrorism we're fighting against? 


We are terrified, and we should be, but the fear we feel however is directed at the wrong things. A terrorist attack strikes fear into the hearts of entire nations causing people to cede personal liberties in the quest for (impossibly absolute) safety. The average American isn't likely to be overcome with fear while driving through their favorite fast food outlet where obesity, heart disease, and diabetes (among the biggest slayers of Americans) are on the menu. The diseases caused by any number of chemicals present in pesticides and preservatives, the damage done by hormones fed to poultry and beef or the effect of eating pink slime (doused with ammonia to kill the teeming bacteria) do not appear for years. The damage being done by things like genetically modified food may never be fully made known to the public since the key players can afford lobbyist to support their interests and launch massive ad (propaganda) campaigns. 

The consumer is not completely powerless (though sometimes nearly). These corporations would grind to a halt some of their more egregious ways of doing business if an informed citizenry simply stopped buying what they are selling. The consumer is however at a distinct disadvantage when ownership becomes a web of interlocking interests and holdings. We have in many ways created prisons of consumption for ourselves and forgotten where we put the key of self reliance.
The number one cause of death last year was (gasp!) heart disease. Homicide (which is something people greatly fear, by terrorists or anyone else, comes in at number 15. We seem unable to rationally look at risk assessment if numbers are scattered among the population over time.  We suffer from undo fear of things that are statistically highly unlikely events, while ignoring information about how our personal choices may decrease both quality and quantity of life.

It's a short step for Hedges from the defense industry and their corporate cronies to the insurance companies and health care:

"The grip of corporations on government is not limited to the defense industry. It has leeched into nearly every aspect of the economy. The attempt to create a health-care plan that also conciliates the corporations that profit from the misery and illnesses of tens of millions of Americans is naive, at best, and probably disingenuous. This conciliation insist that we can coax these corporations, which are listed on the stock exchange and exist to maximize profits, to transform themselves into social service-agencies that will provide adequate health care for all Americans. "(155)

Hedges clearly falls on the side of doing away with the privatized system we now have:  "The for profit health-care industry, like the defense industry, has vigorously fought to protect itself through campaign contributions and lobbying. They have placed profit before the common good." (156)

For me the health care discussion cannot be separated from the food discussion. It seems that in countries that provide their citizens one style of government health care or another, the rules about what can be done to or go into food are a bit more stringent.   The E.U. has much more strict guidelines about things like genetically modified food, herbicides, and pesticides. Many things widely used here (bovine growth hormone for example) are banned in Europe. 


Have the Europeans connected the health care-food dots in a way that we would never be able to given how corporatized our diets are?


"We eat corporate food." (Followed by a list of other things we depend on corporations for on p.162) And of course we take corporate medicine. In large part to combat the corporate food we've eaten all our lives. More than just a swap in the health care system would need to change.
The web is vast and sticky.

I'll admit to ranting and rambling this week. ;)

Do The Hosts Feel Their Parasites?

Madame:


Madame, your ideas are excellent.  Both our schools and our foreign policy would be different and likely better if every graduate had to serve 2 years before starting college.  Service would not even need be in the military, so great is the nation’s need in so many areas.  But it would be a wise provision to say that any who advocated war would have to transfer their children or their children’s children to the military at the earliest opportunity.   And yes, public officials should have to send their children to public schools—of their constituents’ choosing.

Your pointing out Kennedy’s first State of the Union speech shows how coldly alarming it is that the language we hear now is more militarized than it was at the height of the Cold War.

How we shifted from production, investment, financial propriety, and communal good to the unaffordable consumption, to a sociopathic and oligarchic form of capitalism, is well stated by Hedges on page 151.   We got told that the old ways of  achieving prosperity by making things and providing real value were outdated.  The criminally sociopathic minds then cast their collective spell over a society woefully deficient in critical thinking and willingly ready to be diverted from partially hidden truths or ugly truths.  The outlaws of the new West said they could police themselves, even that it was BETTER FOR EVERYBODY IF THEY DID SO.  And we collectively nodded—if we paid any attention at all.

And when it collapsed due to their criminality, were they hanged liked 17^th century speculators?  Au contraire.  They received (and receive) “billions in taxpayer dollars and huge bonuses.” (152)

For its part, the Defense establishment, the military-industrial-think tank-politician complex, is self-perpetuating.  Like the rest of the corporate state, they make their investments in elections, then carefully manage their retinue of politicians, and have lobbyists write what they want into laws.  Contractors make exorbitant profits—often wrung from those least able to pay, the middle class taxpayer—and laugh all the way to the banks their friends own or control.  Like nearly everything else in this constantly churned society, they plan for product replacement, so that profits are ever born anew.  Whether it’s setting a short “expiration” date for supplies they have directly or indirectly mandated the government buy (and that any reasonable person would say upon examining wouldn’t expire for many years, perhaps decades), or the constant higher tech (and high cost) replacement of usually junked (or still usable but sold for a pittance) military equipment (planes, tanks, naval vessels, submarines, etc.), the complex drains our economic lifeblood like vampires to feed their insatiable appetites.   The Chinese and others laugh their way into the future while we exhaust our economic strength on these unproductive things that will see little to no relevant use.  We spend our resources preparing to fight it all: the previous major war between big powers (WW2), the war that never was (the Cold War), the wars of now (terrorism), and the wars of the future (a catch all to justify anything). 

“The defense industry is a virus.  It destroys healthy economies. We produce sophisticated fighter jets (Prof’s Note: even though there has been no serious air threat for many decades) while Boeing is unable to finish its new commercial plane on schedule and our automotive industry (Prof’s Note: nearly) goes bankrupt.  We sink money into research and development of weapons systems and starve renewable technologies to fight global warming.  Universities are flooded with defense-related cash and grants yet struggle to find money for environmental studies.  The massive military spending, aided by this $3 trillion war, has a social cost.  Our bridges and levees collapse, our schools decay, our real manufacturing is done overseas by foreign workers, and our social safety net is taken away. And we are bombarded with the militarized language of power and strength that masks our brittle reality.”(153)

Oh, how we lost our way when we largely abandoned the militia model for a standing armed force.  Yes, dare I say it once too many times, like a people we resemble in so many stark ways.

The Georges (Washington & Carlin) Warned Us

Professor J,

Let's start with the link to the documentary you recommended and quoted last time: Why We Fight.  I watched it twice. Excellent, and disturbing. Some illusions are foisted upon us and some we readily embrace because the truth is very nearly unthinkable. Unspeakable. The chunky thinking about things like "freedom" and "democracy" is so much easier than untangling the twisted filaments of truth. We have trouble wrapping our brains around what it would mean if another game was afoot. We let those thoughts recede and dam them up with, in many instances, more vehement arguments and emotions. Acknowledging the uncomfortable truth presented, shakes people to their foundations. "What if much of what I believe is a lie?" isn't a question very many people want to ask. That the misinformation is intentional and elaborate means that our trust is misplaced. Something in us shrinks to imagine what else that might mean.


Our national discomfort, and suspicion is evident in the quote from the guy who said he thought we fought for freedom "...at least I hope that's why." I couldn't help thinking in the back of his mind he doubted his own words even as they came out of his mouth. But then, it's so much easier to just believe. Others noted a dislike for war and questioned the need for it, but in a complex and rapidly changing world, and without a historical view to help read the road signs they've acquiesced the right to ask too many questions.

Besides what is really the point when the media (Have you noticed that journalists and the press have been melded into that new all encompassing term?) is in collusion and keeps the carefully scripted info-tainment flowing?



As I watched this I once again  thought about how different our foreign policy might look if every high school student were required to serve for two years before going to college. (Just as public schools would change rapidly for the better, if all elected officials were required to send their children there.) While Daddy's being a senator might have enough influence to get you a desk job, I think we'd see an immediate effect when the children of executives, doctors, and local politicians were being put in harm's way for the sake, not of national defense, but instead to earn massive profits for defense contractors.

 We spend 8.9 billion on ICBM missile defense systems that would be useless in stopping a shipping container concealing a dirty bomb. The defense industry is able to monopolize the best scientific and research talent and squander the nations' resources and investment capital. These defense industries produce nothing that is useful for society or the national trade account. the offer little more than a psychological security blanket for fearful Americans who want to feel protected and safe. (153)

"The Pentagon, Melman noted, is not restricted by the economic rules of producing goods, selling them for a profit, then using the profit for further investment and production. It operates, rather, outside of competitive markets. It has erased the line between the state and the corporation, and it subverts the actual economy."(154)

The film points out that many young people with limited choices make up a large part of the all volunteer military. This is depicted painfully by showing us a young man with few other options. I wonder what happened to him. I couldn't find any information about him but I did find this quote by the film's writer/director/producer/ Eugene Jarecki:


"The crucial notion is that we have a poverty draft. It may look voluntary, but it's not. It's not semantic to say so, but joining the military is the best game in town for people in the inner cities and forsaken heartland. Adam Smith's invisible hand is drafting people instead of Uncle Sam's pointed finger." 


The country is involved in wars, the support of which is based on lying to the public through massive media campaigns and carefully constructed language.  Americans don't know how we got here, can't understand why they hate us, and make no personal sacrifice in whatever conflict we are involved in. Indeed apart from members of the military and their families, there is nothing to indicate that we are in a prolonged conflict. They are tolerated because they indirectly affect a relatively small part of the population.  I was cleaning out a trunk this week and found family ration cards from WWII for coffee and sugar. Sacrifice shared by everyone meant that the entire population had a stake in seeing the thing through and looking forward to the END.

"What we are seeing is a disconnection of our American foreign policy from the American citizen." ~Karen U. Kwiatkowski 
 
We never see an end to conflict now, the names of countries and "evil" leaders we must depose just change as we go about our business.

You mentioned Kennedy and the "missile gap" which is also mentioned in a book I'm currently reading revolving around events during his first year in office. I was watching his first State of the Union Address online and was struck by the militarized language in that speech just ten days after inauguration. Still by comparison it was fairly tame compared to what we have been hearing since then.


http://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/jan-30-1961-jfks-state-union-9272368

Knew Not New

Madame M:

Madame, it seems you have answered your own question about affordability.  If we were like, well, EVERYBODY else in the world who didn’t spend so much on ”Defense,” we would be like all of the other major industrialized countries that have and afford universal health care, and that average less spending per capita.  Of course, those countries don’t have to contend with, and certainly not to the same extent, a sickly, obese, car-chained and sedentary population.  And all that works so wrong against HEALTH.  Similar explanation exists about society’s investment in higher education (although that one is not as “universal” as is often assumed—competition for a spot is usually the order of the day).  Once again, many “sides” to the argument have valid points, and yet their arguments become weak when they believe they have all the answers and all their answers address everything.

Of course, our willing embrace of illusion and evasion of accountability have now presented us with many real measures of unaffordability to go along with our disastrously misplaced resource allocations.

People don’t read much of either of those works you mentioned previously, and when they do it is pretty selective.  While the Constitution is much shorter, much more recent, written with one general thought thread, and is much less self-contradictory, it too can be twisted to suit purposes—or evade them.  With our collective attention deficit disorder and endless diversionary stimulation, confusion is more common than un.

Ever see the documentary film “Why We Fight”? It begins with Eisenhower’s famous farewell address, which everyone promptly ignored at the height of the Cold War.  Indeed, Kennedy had partially won because of first a “bomber gap” and then a “missile gap.” “Weakness is provocative; strength deters.”

It has a lot of telling quotes in it from famous/infamous Americans: “Get the American people behind the war.”  (So that public opinion can be manipulated)  Outright falsehoods spoken by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz.  And this one by George Bush, 2003: “Iraq and Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including Al Qaeda.”  A few years later he would say that wasn’t true, but never apologize or even admit he said the other. And nothing happened to him.   One can see where power lies.

The Office of Special Plans, headed by ideologue Richard Perle, “produced” intel for what VP Cheney wanted prior to the Iraq War.

How embedding journalists usually taints and causes the media to favor the military’s view.

How the rise of defense/security think tanks added another leg to the traditional triad of military, industry, and politicians.

It also includes some quotes and short interviews with some lesser known people, all of whom, in one way or another, comment, as Eisenhower did, on the disastrous rise of misplaced power, with no accountability to the American people (who, to their discredit, demanded little to none).

Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia.  Not that hard to get a country to go to war.

Chalmers Johnson: Blowback is what comes back to haunt us from covert operations the public doesn’t even know about (and certainly not right away).  “Why do those people hate us?” is what the ignorant American public is heard to say.

The National Security State of endless arming and defense and security posturing has turned democracy sideways.  The people—the owners of natural rights and who the Framers deposited ultimate power in—are often excluded. There is, in the self-serving intelligence, defense, and security complex, the belief that the public doesn’t need to know.  Truth is obscured.

Why do we fight (in whatever conflict or conflicts we’re involved in)?, Americans are asked by the documentary team. “Fight for freedom” is what most people say.  Such vagueness, so easily manipulated.

What if, instead, we really fight to enforce a One-Superpower world, to maintain the new Rome (like that is a successful model to follow).

What if, instead, we fight to sustain injustice and selfishness?

What if, instead, we fight to sustain profits for the few?

What if those people who profit then lie to not just us, but the military that does the fighting? The MIC (Military-Industrial Complex) sold “undreamt of precision” to the military, when it wasn’t true.  The weapons missed.  Plenty.  Even when intell was good, which it often wasn’t.

Where are the counterweights to these mighty millstones dragging the tired American swimmer to the bottom?  Absent, Hedges tells us.  What traditionally has been “the Left,” or “Progressives,” or “True American Liberals,” is now a Democratic Party largely merely an occasionally reluctant henchman of the corporate state (of which the MIC is but one large facet).   That party “has abandoned the working class, which has no ability to organize and little political clout, especially with labor unions a spent force.  [Prof’s Note: Ironic given the conservative talk show blathering].  The universities are mills for corporate employees. The media churn out info-tainment and pollute the airwaves with fatuous pundits. The Left, he [Wolin] said, no longer has the capacity to be a counterweight to the corporate state, and if an extreme right regains momentum there will probably be very little organized or effective resistance.” (150)  Perhaps we see a little of that now: Protests are half-ignored or marginalized/ridiculed by a corporate media in service to their masters.

Wolin cuts to the dead heart of the matter: The true Anti-Right is an amorphous blob, with no coherent organization, and certainly no powerful one. “A few voices here, a magazine there, and that’s about it.  It goes nowhere.” (150)

Are there positive things:? Yes, a number of them.  But we would fall into the positive thinking trap Hedges lines out if we supposed that merely looking at the positive and ignoring the negative is going to save us from the probability pattern. It won’t—not as individuals, not as society, not as civilization.

Nouveau Empire

Professor J,

Let me start where you ended. Just for clarity (I know how you LOVE those qualifiers!) My last paragraph is suggesting the re-readings for people who spout those sources most readily and seem to be without a firm grasp of what they actually contain. Perhaps you should place your computer in front of a mirror while answering. ;)

 Glad to see you banish brevity for now! Let's keep it in exile for the rest of our discussion of this book.

I had intended to leave the defense industry part of this discussion almost entirely to you, but events and columnists worked together this week to thwart that plan. Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and housewives...

I remember, in the early 70s, hearing my father comment that car companies probably had an engine that got 100 miles to the gallon.  He didn't have any vast conspiracy theory in mind, only that nagging feeling that so many of us have, that certain powers that be aren't necessarily interested in solving some of the problems we face:

"The corporate forces that control the state will never permit real reform. It would mean their extinction. these corporations, especially the oil and gas industry, will never allow us to achieve energy independence. That would devastate their profits. It would wipe out tens of billions of dollars in weapons contracts. It would cripple the financial health of a host of private contractors from Halliburton to Blackwater/Xe and render obsolete the existence of U.S. Central Command. This is the harsh, unspoken reality of corporate power." (152)

"Melman coined the term permanent war economy to describe the American economy. Since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, current, and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government. The military-industrialized complex establishment is especially lucrative to corporations because it offers a lavish form of corporate welfare. Defense systems are usually sold before they are produced, and military industries are permitted to charge the federal government for huge cost overruns. Huge profits are guaranteed. (153-154)

I ran across a book this week called The Rule of Empires and an article very relevant to our discussion. Here are a couple of quotes (and they seem extremely timely after the president's speech yesterday from Afghanistan and the complaints of lots of the Occupy protesters in May Day events about his foreign policy) from How Empires Really Work:

"America’s wars are very expensive. Bush and Obama have doubled the national debt, and the American people have no benefits from it. No riches, no bread and circuses flow to Americans from Washington’s wars. So what is it all about?

The answer is that Washington’s empire extracts resources from the American people for the benefit of the few powerful interest groups that rule America. The military-security complex, Wall Street, agri-business and the Israel Lobby use the government to extract resources from Americans to serve their profits and power. The US Constitution has been extracted in the interests of the Security State, and Americans’ incomes have been redirected to the pockets of the 1 percent. That is how the American Empire functions."

That the wealth is being extracted from US even as we are (pick your term: liberating/occupying) and not from a foreign nation is an interesting slant. Plenty of reasons there to keep fear levels artificially  high thus making your advice to "cease militarization" an unlikely scenario.

Agree whole heartedly with your comment about societies (as well as the individuals making up those groups) needing "a positive vision to aspire to."  Sometimes in order to inspire fear and thus action we focus on all that is wrong and how dire the situation is. It can have the opposite effect. People are prone to giving up instead of waking up when they feel defeated and hopeless. When problems seem too vast you get the result of individuals feeling their actions will have little or no impact. It's a fine line. We cannot afford paralyzing despair.

On a different (sustainable) note, here's a video about the resourceful Dervaes family who are doing something amazing in downtown Pasadena.  We don't know what's possible until we try. They are a pretty good example of that balance between individual self sufficiency and a cooperative community.

Home Grown Revolution--The Urban Homestead