Comments on: A Commonsense Solar Defense

By: Charlie

Charlie — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 22:06:23 +0000

Do your data include real defense spending? The Pentagon budget is only one slice, although possibly the largest one, of that ugly pie. Many billions are given to the Office of Homeland Security to wage the battle against the enemy du jour, and the Department of Energy rakes in many billions for the nuclear weapons program. Other agencies, Agriculture and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission come to mind, grab their billions for developing “counter-terrorism” measures, and FEMA, of course, is lavished with many billions to keep up the heck of a job they do preparing for a terrorist attack. Intelligence agencies are given billions, both on and off the public records, to do whatever they do. (Running secret torture rings ain’t cheap, you know.)

In short, every major government office gets large amounts of money that should be included under the general umbrella of “defense spending.” In fact, and with no small irony, if some nutcase (terrorist or otherwise) were able to eradicate the entire US in a single blast, I suspect the human and financial cost would be less than what the US has spent trying to stop a guy from exploding his shoes on an airplane.

The ruling financial and political elites in this nation, the pathocracy as Mulga rightly calls them, will not easily surrender their trillions and turn instead to the noble cause of empathy. They are too busy beating plowshares into swords and selling them to the Pentagon.

In addition, I am baffled and beyond dismayed that many in the US still heartily believe that America is a Christian nation. One might reasonably conclude that empathy is a Christian value to be righteously cultivated, or should be, but the current array of country clubs that pass themselves off as churches seem more concerned with non-issues such as gay marriage than with the damage inflicted by American military misadventures abroad. Moreover, it is well documented that the American military service academies harbor an alarming mob of nitwit Christian fundamentalists who will not rest until they stand high-fiving each other while knee deep in the blood of non-believers.

The lack of empathy, in both civilian and military contexts, is a reflection of the masterful work of the elites, whose morals often fall far short of those Nature gave to my cat and other beasts. The elites learned long ago that religion is not merely the opiate of the people but, more importantly, it is a tool to make evil acts seem like good deeds if done in service of the American agenda. In what universe, for instance, is torture of children in Abu Ghraib something to be left uninvestigated and unpunished? To this day, I am haunted and deeply saddened by thoughts of what we have done as a nation, and yet the national outrage at the time was over almost as quickly as it began. The Christians explained it all away and went back to watching American Idol.

Nevertheless, despite my obvious pessimism, I agree that a change in leadership is needed to give the nation a different definition of “defense.” I do not know how to make that happen. I am convinced that change will not begin at the top, so I suspect it will have to begin at the bottom of the power pyramid. New leaders will have to come from the rank and file, not the corridors of power.

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 01:31:56 +0000

And now, oh, does the weather jest?
the wind has shifted to the west.
The furious storm has finally passed,
unburdened clouds are clearing fast.
The stars – oh yes! – the stars appear,
the wind-washed sky is crystal clear!

-Doug Zubenel

By: Mulga Mumblebrain

Mulga Mumblebrain — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 22:48:34 +0000

The money micturated up against the wall by the Great Satan in ‘defence’ spending, was wasted for a number of reasons. First was to dominate, intimidate and where necessary violently coerce the entire planet into serving as the Empire’s booty, to be looted and pillaged at will. Second, the vast moneys distributed accrued to the ruling Yankee parasite class, and kept a few lucky serfs in high-paying jobs as they prepared the tools of child murder and terror. Third the money, being effectively wasted, was not available for the tasks of making the planet a decent, humane place.
The author speaks of empathy, but, as we know, the ruling global parasite class under capitalism has none. Indeed empathy is one of those virtues that are entirely antipathetic to capitalism, and so have been selected out, over generations, from the capitalist caste. Capitalist ‘virtues’ reinforced by fabulous pecuniary reward, are unscrupulousness, indifference to the fate of others, gigantic egomania, facility in lying and presenting a false persona etc. You know, the features of the psychopath. Capitalists believe in a vulgar distortion of natural selection, that Social Darwinism where every other human being is seen as competition, if not enemies, and the capitalists’ inhumanity and pitilessness is projected onto these ‘others’, particularly if they differ in race, religion, ideology or whatever (categories of ‘otherness’ are always being invented, the better to divide humanity against itself). The USA, being essentially a capitalist state, hence a mostly hereditary plutocracy, and being set since 1776, by its ruling elites, on forging a global empire, cannot suddenly acted empathetically. It is not in its DNA to so do. Human empathy as a principal operating process of the USA can only emerge when the current US system has gone, and its ruling pathocracy been replaced by true humane beings. Getting there is the problem, and, given the multiple crises facing humanity, it’s probably not going to happen.