As a person who has always been labeled a ‘ conspiracy theorist’ , readers of my columns will enjoy this latest one. One need not even have to read the scores of research publicized on this Amerikan empire’s military madness. The main point of contention is this:
Over half of our tax dollars goes down the rabbit hole of military spending;
We keep close to 1000 bases in almost 100 countries and have our WMDs poised to attack anywhere we deem necessary!
On top of that our occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have cost us thousands of dead military personnel and tens of thousands of innocent civilians in those countries AKA Collateral Damage. The Congress keeps spending our money on these things regardless of who sits in the White House. With few exceptions from a handful of true blue progressive and libertarian politicians, the empire gets what this beast of war requires.
This writer can turn on to any (so called) news show on the boob tube and never see or hear any mention of what has been transpiring. Silence! All the shows that parrot either of our two sellout political parties simply will never discuss my aforementioned facts. Speaking of facts, when I attempt to bring up anything pertaining to this obscene spending and militaristic mindset… Silence!
It seems as if the majority of my fellow citizens just could not give a rat’s ass about it. Yet, those same people will lament how there is not enough money for whatever needs they think are important to them and their families. Let’s take a need that many of us feel is so overlooked: The need for comprehensive health care reform. Even most of the doctors I have interviewed tell me that, if a gun was placed at their heads and they had to choose between private insurance as it is or Medicare as it is, they would choose the latter… even if it was not what they really wanted. When one attempts to go deeper into the ‘ How ‘ of implementing a Medicare for All system, the argument always is that ‘ The government just doesn’t have the money to run that system properly’. Well, when over $ 600 Billion dollars (not even counting the black budgets) goes yearly for military spending, if even 25% of it was cut, that savings would more than be enough to jumpstart such a program. Actually, with that much money available we could have not only a complete Medicare for All , but also a complete Dental Care for All as well. Imagine all those folks you pass each and every day with holes in their mouths (where there used to be teeth) that could smile at you with a ‘Sea of shining white ‘. I am one of that army, by the way.
This writer remembers the Vietnam (so called) War era when I was in high school and college. Perhaps in its early stages, 1964 to maybe ’67, the empire was able to fool many of us, especially our parents. However, ’68 and ’69 revealed the utter catastrophe of hundreds of thousands of our young men conscripted and imprisoned for one year in that quagmire.. if they did not return home sooner in a box! It may have begun with we students and returning vets, but soon after it was many of our parents’ generation who soon wanted and even demanded for the shit to end and the empire pulled back. The chaos at the ’68 Democratic Convention in Chicago was really mostly about Vietnam. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered for a score of reasons, as was Robert F. Kennedy, but the focal point of it all was Vietnam. King’s 1967 speech at the Riverside Church in N.Y .C. was his ‘coming out party’ against this empire. RFK’s late announcement to run in ’68 was equally focused on Vietnam. Yet, when the ‘forces that be’ did their dual dastardly deeds within a few months, it did not deter the movement that was gaining steam… these events most likely sped that train up.
As terrible as those days were in the late 60s, at least there was hope that this insane empire be curbed and pulled back. Sadly, today it seems as if most of our 20 somethings and their parents do not even know what is going down. The Conspiracy of Silence is winning!
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Philip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 300 of his work posted on sites like Consortium News, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust, whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected])
