The whole country has fallen prey to the warmongering tools of the M-IC….it has wormed it’s way into Congress and even into our higher education….
I can attest to the power that the War Department has over higher education….I was head hunted in college to work for a think tank that was majorly funded by the War Department….I chose another route for my education….as an antiwar person I refused their offer for I would not work for a group that justified war of any type.
But the M-IC is heavily involved with higher education…..
Throughout history, most academics have been the witting or unwitting servants of power. Socrates was accused of failing to honor the gods of Athens and corrupting the youth with his ideas. He was canceled in the ultimate way: sentenced to die. Aristotle, by contrast, tutored the young Alexander the Great, future King of Macedonia, which at the time was occupying Athens. During the rebellion, Aristotle fled to save his skin.
Today, some academics refusing to toe the line are also threatened with death. Chicago University’s John Mearsheimer was placed on the US-funded Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation’s blacklist, where he and others, including myself, were accused of committing “informational terrorism” by expressing fact-based opinions about the war with Russia. At the same time that Ukrainian fascists were placing me on their list, a cabal of liberal staff at my military-funded institution, the University of Plymouth (UK), terminated my position without warning or right of reply.
If we look at the US imperial apparatus, we see that higher education plays a major role.
The Military-Intelligentsia Complex: How Higher Education Enables US Militarism
Then there is the fact that the M-IC wholly owns our do-nothing Congress (do nothing in the sense that the country goes to Hell while they enable war and denies help to the people of the country)
It’s important to note that the $842 billion proposed price tag for the Pentagon next year will only be the beginning of what taxpayers will be asked to shell out in the name of “defense.” If you add in nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy and small amounts of military spending spread across other agencies, you’re already at a total military budget of $886 billion. And if last year is any guide, Congress will add tens of billions of dollars extra to that sum, while yet more billions will go for emergency aid to Ukraine to help it fend off Russia’s brutal invasion. In short, we’re talking about possible total spending of well over $950 billion on war and preparations for more of it — within striking distance, in other words, of the $1 trillion mark that hawkish officials and pundits could only dream about a few short years ago.
The ultimate driver of that enormous spending spree is a seldom-commented-upon strategy of global military overreach, including 750 U.S. military bases scattered on every continent except Antarctica, 170,000 troops stationed overseas, and counterterror operations in at least 85 — no, that is not a typo — countries (a count offered by Brown University’s Costs of War Project). Worse yet, the Biden administration only seems to be preparing for more of the same. Its National Defense Strategy, released late last year, manages to find the potential for conflict virtually everywhere on the planet and calls for preparations to win a war with Russia and/or China, fight Iran and North Korea, and continue to wage a global war on terror, which, in recent times, has been redubbed “countering violent extremism.” Think of such a strategic view of the world as the exact opposite of the “diplomacy first” approach touted by President Joe Biden and his team during his early months in office. Worse yet, it’s more likely to serve as a recipe for conflict than a blueprint for peace and security.
Congress Has Been Captured by the Arms Industry
All this just proves my point that Congress and the White House are owned by the defense industry….and that does not bode well for the poor or the needy in this country.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
In the UK, the Secret Service is dominated by rich kids who went to private schools, and the best universities. The idea seems to be that the children of The Establishment make the best spies, because they have more to lose if everything goes wrong. During the 1950s/1960s, that came back to bite them, when the ‘intlligentsia’ of the Cambridge Spies turned out to be pro-Soviet because they felt guilty about their privilege.
Best wishes, Pete.
I refused to work for the think tanks that head hunted me in college…..I was antiwar then and still am. chuq
I’m a card carrying member of the MIC (intel not industrial), so my perspective is going to be obviously different…..but the dividing line between defense v. war, and innovation v. stagnation (more important than ever in the cyber/digital age)….is going to plague every society until societies cease to exist.
Sorry for the snarkiness….I ave been fighting a malfunctioning keyboard…..I have no problem with different opinions….I can understand why your view is different but there are others that cannot make understand their point of view. chuq
I agree that it is all shit and getting worse every day but it is all we have and we need to make the best we can out of it and forge ahead with whatever we have .. It is still better than a lot of shit hole countries I could think of. And no amount of complaining that we peons can do on blogs is going to change a damned thing.
I agree and that is the problem….most views are skewed by false information…..and you are right that cannot change because no one wants it to do so. chuq
It is not that no one wants to change .. it is that no one knows what to do to make the changes happen .. all we have running the country is a bunch of unseasoned dolts (with few exceptions) who haven’t the slightest clue about statesmanship, politics, foreign affairs or anything else.
I can agree with your premise…..change takes work and most Americans are too lazy. chuq