The Enemy From Within

The war industry, a state within a state, disembowels the nation, stumbles from one military fiasco to the next, strips us of civil liberties and pushes us towards suicidal wars with Russia and China.

America is a stratocracy, a form of government dominated by the military. It is axiomatic among the two ruling parties that there must be a constant preparation for war. The war machine’s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored. Its military fiascos in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East have disappeared into the vast cavern of historical amnesia. This amnesia, which means there is never accountability, licenses the war machine to economically disembowel the country and drive the Empire into one self-defeating conflict after another. The militarists win every election.

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.

Egypt, which receives some $1.3 billion in foreign military financing, is required to devote it to buying and maintaining U.S. weapons systems. Israel has received $158 billion in bilateral assistance from the U.S. since 1949, almost all of it since 1971 in the form of military aid, with most of it going towards arms purchases from U.S. weapons manufacturers. The American public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and then buys these same weapons systems on behalf of foreign governments. It is a circular system of corporate welfare.

[chrishedges.substack.com]

In other words. Since WWll the US has been successfully turned into the Hitman for the organized crime syndicate of international ruling elite. For all our accomplishments of reaching the top indicators of being a successful society of all aspects at one time, today we are merely a nation of people wrapped in floating vest in an ocean, stuck in a current moving towards death in deep dark waters.....

{Between October 2021 and September 2022, the U.S. spent $877 billion on the military, that’s more than the next 10 countries, including China, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom combined. These huge military expenditures, along with the rising costs of a for-profit healthcare system, have driven the U.S. national debt to over $31 trillion, nearly $5 trillion more than the U.S.’s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This imbalance is not sustainable, especially once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency. As of January 2023, the U.S. spent a record $213 billion servicing the interest on its national debt.

The public, bombarded with (false perception managed) war propaganda, cheers on their self-immolation. It revels in the despicable beauty of our military prowess. It speaks in the thought-terminating clichés spewed out by mass culture and mass media. It imbibes the illusion of omnipotence and wallows in self-adulation.}

.....achieved by the very nations that once centuries ago were the originating sources of the fascist colonialism we've become the primary strong arm for. There are a few more of them Hedges did not mention though also. Who spread that authoritarian system throughout civilizations within our southern neighbors and Africa centuries ago. While others of Asia have also been assimilated into the system.

We, many peoples, are assimilated into eating our own. Today my news feed has a story of a African-American man from Cleveland Ohio who was recently killed in Ukraine who went to help an element of the very system that has been oppressing his people for centuries. An aspect of the story was in regards to whether the family would get his body back. According to most accounts I've learned of following that war, the chances are slim. The fascist don't take time to collect their fallen in most cases as they are fleeing. They're to busy burning the house down and avoiding the land mines they've planted previously during an 8 year period. As I have stated on occasions, it bewilders me why anyone outside of the supportive structure of these crime ridden actions that have been proven time and time again, especially those who have ancestors that have been primarily targeted, would allow themselves to be assimilated into it....

{A society dominated by militarists distorts its social, cultural, economic and political institutions to serve the interests of the war industry. The essence of the military is masked with subterfuges — using the military to carry out humanitarian relief missions, evacuating civilians in danger, as we see in the Sudan, defining military aggression as “humanitarian intervention” or a way to protect democracy and liberty, or lauding the military as carrying out a vital civic function by teaching leadership, responsibility, ethics and skills to young recruits. The true face of the military — industrial slaughter — is hidden.}

....the story was of helping to evacuate civilians. Supposedly he was killed by mortar fire. Most witness testimony coming from citizens in the Donbass regions are of being forced into their basements and denied leaving on their own. A large degree of the people in these areas are older citizens who wouldn't or couldn't leave as the fascist moved in 8 years ago, the younger population having moved out to Russia or closer to their border knowing what was coming. If you watched the documentaries from RT you would have learned a part of the operations once an area was cleared when Russia finally moved into the Donbass regions, that part of the mission was to help reunite families in areas they took control over. Witness testimony from those citizens clearly outlined how they were forced into basements and use as shields as their homes and essential buildings were turned into fortified positions. As the fascist were pushed out of each area, the only time they took was to burn and blow up any evidence that might incriminate them while killing of civilians were a common result of such actions to blame on Russia. If I was a member of this family, I would highly question the reports of how this man was killed.

{After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev and later Vladimir Putin lobbied to be integrated into western economic and military alliances. An alliance that included Russia would have nullified the calls to expand NATO — which the U.S. had promised it would not do beyond the borders of a unified Germany — and have made it impossible to convince countries in eastern and central Europe to spend billions on U.S. military hardware. Moscow's requests were rebuffed. Russia was made the enemy, whether it wanted to be or not. None of this made us more secure. Washington’s decision to interfere in Ukraine’s domestic affairs by backing a coup in 2014 triggered a civil war and Russia’s subsequent invasion.

But for those who profit from war, antagonizing Russia, like antagonizing China, is a good business model. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin saw their stock prices increase by 40 percent and 37 percent respectively as a result of the Ukraine conflict......}

The rest of the article addresses a lot of my past comments. It exposes the chaotic insane nature our representation is delivering towards the potential of our own demise.