We the people need to take an immediate and sobering look at the stark realities of “defense” spending. That United States military spending is called “defense spending” is one of the greatest and unquestionably the most dangerous propaganda achievement in human history.
Consider these damning realities – the United States military spending accounts for 38% of military spending worldwide. A nation with approximately 5% of the world population spends 38% on war and holocaust planning. The US military emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon emissions between 2001 and 2017. This is twice the annual output of the nation’s passenger vehicles. The juggernaut that is our war machine is spending 1.2 trillion to “modernize” our nuclear arsenal. “Nuclear modernization” has absolutely nothing to do with “defense” or safeguarding the nation. “Nuclear modernization” is a looming and immediate threat to human survival.
If we were honest and objective about the realities of United States military spending, we’d drop the time entrenched title of “defense spending” and replace it with the far more accurate “Endless war planning” and with regards to our insane nuclear modernization “Global extinction planning”.
United States military spending will not safeguard nor protect the nation and the world from two existential threats that with immediacy threaten human survival – catastrophic climate change and nuclear war. In fact, the opposite is true. The uncontrollable juggernaut that is the United States military is the number one causal factor for both climate catastrophe and pending nuclear Armageddon. Shining light on the realities of both current United States war planning and nuclear holocaust planning is critical if humanity is to survive. As essential first step is eliminating the fiction that United States war planning has anything to do with the “defense” of the nation.
Your columnist Mary Sanchez deserves praise for so often dipping her pen into her heart rather than her inkwell, as shown in her compassion toward Haitians. [“Biden is acting no better than Trump toward Migrants,” 10/15/21 TPP]
In the teaching of US History, our grammar and secondary educational system has swept America’s ignoble deeds under the rug. Otherwise, it would lay bare the truth that our country is an accomplice to Haiti’s centuries of suffering.
The US abandoned Sainte Domingue (as Haiti was then called) at the moment of its birth in 1791. In that year, Toussaint L’Ouverture led the first insurrection against the French occupiers of that island.
Haiti was the first nation in the western hemisphere (after the United States) to declare its independence from a colonial power. Thus, as a gesture of brotherhood, our country should have heeded the Haitian patriots’ plea for assistance in their struggle for independence. Instead, to our everlasting shame, the United States turned its back on them.
Why? Because the Haitian patriots were ex-slaves who had broken out of bondage … and since our Constitution sanctioned slavery, America’s founding fathers didn’t want to encourage their own slaves to fight for their freedom,
Doesn’t that sound like a betrayal of idealism? Or, to put it bluntly – hypocrisy? Imagine! If the United States had helped Haiti in 1804, when it officially declared its independence from France, Haiti would now have enjoyed 217 years of democracy.
Instead, it has only known a succession of corrupt, inept, and tyrannical regimes installed by America, including a 19-year occupation by the US military, which lasted from 1915 until 1934.
In short, Haiti was (until it could no longer be exploited) a US colony whose people and resources enriched American corporations for many years.
In my opinion, we should not only offer humanitarian aid and refuge to Haitians — but also a long overdue apology.
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, Calif.
There’s a theme that runs through the whole Bible: Freedom. It begins in Exodus with the Israelites set free from slavery in Egypt, wandering for 40 years before that freed generation had all died and those left qualified for entrance into the land God promised Abraham’s descendants. And to keep their liberty they were given God’s laws, beginning with the Ten Commandments under Moses, and more after that in the Old Testament books we can still read today.
By the time Christ came, the laws had become less God-inspired and more a matter of keeping customs and traditions passed down by rulers and religious leaders, and we see Christ rebuking that group for doing that. Those laws were resulting in hurting, not helping, individuals and society. Jesus Christ annoyed and alarmed these people, the Pharisees and Sadducees, because His teachings threatened their power. This is why Christ was crucified.
Christ came to free mankind from the slavery of sin. Just keeping laws wouldn’t make a person righteous. In the Old Testament, one had to offer a literal sacrifice, an animal such as a lamb or dove, or even an ox, once a year. The Bible explains all this.
Anyone who reads the New Testament will learn about freedom as God intends us to have it. Freedom from the fear of death, free from ignorance, sickness, evil, bondage. In Luke 11, Christ covers all of this and ends with saying, “Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! (Verse 46) for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.” And in verse 52: “Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.” Chapter 12 continues the ideas.
The point is that the lawgivers and religious leaders of today — as well as today’s followers — could profit by reading the Bible as it speaks to exactly the same things today that were happening ages ago. Why? Because this is still planet Earth and people are people.
Learn from one’s own experience as well as from others. That’s the whole point of education. That’s why this country has public education for all. That’s why we need good, smart political leaders as well as citizens. That’s God’s intention for us. “The good [enough] is the enemy of the best” — and that’s the truth.
CHERYL LOVELY, Presque Isle, Maine
I am filled with renewed patriotic pride after learning that Charles Koch and his capable cabal of dissembling democracy disassemblers have been rehearsing for years on how to guide America to a second constitutional convention for the purpose of writing a more capitalist-friendly document!
The current constitution certainly has flowery language, but that doesn’t mask its obvious flaws. It is written so vaguely that individual rights can and have been interpreted as applying to people of all races and faiths; that can’t be right! And what’s worse is that private capital is not technically part of the government; in fact, it’s not even mentioned. Hey, corporations are people, too!
With only three more states needed to call a convention, it won’t be long before all of us real patriots will be meeting in historic Wichita (where else) to craft a new American covenant!
To help get this project off the ground, I’ve taken the liberty of writing a new preamble to more accurately reflect America’s core values and mission:
We the chief executives of the United Corporations, in order to form a more profitable venture, extinguish justice, insure domestic passivity, provide elite security, promote individual privilege, and restrict the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our rightful heirs, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United Corporations of America.
You’re welcome!
JEFFREY HOBBS, Springfield, Ill.
While I was recently watching an episode of “Amanpour And Company” on television, the host and the interviewee were discussing President Biden’s “Build Back Better” proposal. Amanpour suddenly said something like this: ”Of course, we here in Europe already have most of his social program proposals, and we take them for granted.”
That happens to be true.
But I asked myself this: ”I wonder what percentage of Americans know this? I wonder what percentage of Americans know that our allies in Western Europe, Canada, Australia and Scandanavia already have most of these social programs that we do not have?”
My guess would be that only 10% of Republicans do and that only 20% of Democrats do.
My best guess would also be that close to 0% of our allies consider themselves to be some kind of “Socialist” or “Marxist” or “Radical-Leftist.” They know that they are mostly “social democrats” and that they do not live in a socialist country.
STEW EPSTEIN, Rochester, N.Y.
It is claimed that a majority of Republicans now accept the premise of the Big Lie. The enforcement of laws and norms will only meet greater resistance as time passes. The possibility of state legislatures using their new powers to game future elections will be established, if not checked before the next cycle.
Passing HR 1 paired with the charges and conviction of all of the participants of the attempt to ignore election results will not in itself lead us back to the more secure democracy we assumed we had. This did not happen because of a lawless few. A lawless few used the corruption of our current political system and the resultant cynicism to mobilize its victims to be their unlikely allies.
We live with billionaires, private jets and Super Bowl suites in the same country with fast food wage and a mom and pop economy replaced by franchise replications. The largest force pushing these two worlds apart is uncontrolled donor-based campaign financing.
Legal response to the attempted coup needs to come to a head soon. Equally important are reforms stopping our legislatures from being linked through donation to the schemes of predatory forces. “Dictators never invent their own opportunities.” (R. Buckminster Fuller)
PAUL BENSON, Hawarden, Iowa
It’s strange that “human nature” is commonly spoken of in pejorative or derogatory terms. We could as easily assert that the Neanderthals were concerned about their brethren, and that it’s quite possible that we’re still evolving into better creatures.
Coronavirus could have plunged millions into crippling mental depression, insanity or despair as disease swept worldwide. Instead, “human nature” brought forth the compassionate good in troubled humankind.
We cannot all be philosophers amid mysterious menace. But we can master fear through intellect and quell unreasoning dread through rationality.
WILLIAM DAUENHAUER, Willowick, Ohio
From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2021
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us