Sadly it appears as if we will be in a permanent state of war for a generation maybe more….having a life’s experience with the obscenity we lovingly call war I can tell you, my reader, that I fear for the future….if a constant state of war is what we have to look forward to in the future then……all is lost.
Okay before I get some mental midget trying to lecture me on national security I will save you the effort….I never said that I was completely against war or national defense….only that I have seen what it does to the human psyche and the body…..none of that is romantic or adventurous……
Since 9/11 the US has been on a war footing…..a condition that will last a lifetime or longer……
Yes, there are times when a nation must resort to the obscenities of armed conflict……but to do so in the name of profit is simply put….pathetic……
Money is raining down on the US military complex in the $1.15 trillion spending bill that was unveiled on Wednesday by various leaders of Congress. Of that portion, a good $572.7 billion is set aside for Pentagon expenditure. (These figures tend to be deceptive in themselves, given the notoriously unreliable accuracy of defence accounting.)
Source: The Permanent War State
Sorry to say, as long as there are arms dealers to sell arms. someone will buy them, and, they’re not going to use them to build a fence, or a bridge.
We humans have been at war for every day of my life, somewhere in the world. almost literally, I believe. I cannot remember a single day at all when there wasn’t an armed conflict going on somewhere.
When 0/11 took place, we already had “boots on the ground” in Afghanistan, AND the Middle East. That event, which we have been “instructed” to “never forget”, was a distraction, two-pronged in purpose… First, it took the American public’s, and the world’s, OFF the upcoming investigation into the Jr. Shrub’s election theft via voting results manipulation; it was in the headlines on, I believe, 9/7, or 9/8 of that year.Second, it provided the necessary feelings of terror and fear they manipulated into the search of Osama bin Laden, then parlayed into going after Saddam Hussein, who was, in spite of his despotic vileness, heading the only stable country in the area, at the time, other than Kuwait and the Saudis….
I don’t know a solution; it’s human nature to be vicious; we only have our will to keep us from being so. 95% or more of the human race has no interest in exercising that sort of will, in my estimation; moreover, they are not even self-aware enough to know they CAN.
I will refer you to the wisdom of Ron White…. “You can’t fix stupid.”
SIGH….
gigoid, the dubious
I see the problem is that we have kneejerk reactions….very few will step back and look at the big picture….and that is what happened in Iraq…..and these are the “leaders” so in my opinion there is little hope remaining……Ron White is a wise man….chuq
Funny how a lot of the top comedians, men AND women, are the most accurate & scathing social critics… which, in one sense, has always been true… The jester/joker is one of the most powerful Tarot cards, and the bards of humanity have always been the means of spreading culture amongst us…. Too bad so many people think it’s comedy; when it is actually not funny at all; merely irony they don’t ‘get’…. Carlin was an exception to that, which helps prove the rule- he told it just like it was, and people STILL didn’t get it…. not where it counts….
gigoid
Don’t forget Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce…..chuq
Even further… Chaplin, Ambrose Bierce in the nineteenth century, and probably all the way back to Sappho…. The poets and bards are the heart’s expression of the people’s culture… and, our reaction to it, in the mind/heart.
gigoid, occasionally more than just dubious….