Really, there is not a single congressional district without some form of military spending and weapons research or manufacturing or parts manufacturing, etc.
The "defense" budget has for years been the only successful "jobs" program from Washington D.C. The re-allocation of that money and the re-purposing of the spending should have been a priority for a very long time already.
The real threats are never the ones we are prepared to face or spend money on to prevent...
Prior to 9/11, we KNEW of terrorist cells and plots and bombs and Tom freaking Clancy even wrote fantasy books about crashing jets into Washington D.C. (Debt of Honor circa 1994). When it happened, what did we hear?
"No one could have expected THIS!"
Prior to the dotcom bust, when ANYTHING with a ".com" attached to it was receiving funding and was creating bizarre offices with games and sofas instead of desks and working...no one was prepared for the bottom to inevitably fall out when people began to realize how fanciful and fake much of it actually was...
"No one could have expected THIS!"
Prior to the real estate bubble and Great Recession, people with $2,000 a month income were being approved for interest only loans at $500 no principle monthly payments on 5-year ARM loans, and of course:
"No one could have expected THIS!"
Prior to leaving office, the Obama team TOLD Trump's team of the playbook for handling a global pandemic, delivered it to them, spent time trying to get them to act...then the jackass in charge started casting doubt on science and played himself up as some kind of uber-genius expert with ideas like ingesting disinfectants and shoving light "in there, from the inside"...
"No one could have expected THIS!"
Our mass media are largely ratings whores. Once profits became essential to news divisions, journalism was sacrificed to sensationalism and content was squeezed to smaller, shorter attention spans until people actually just gave up and started getting NEWS from Facebook posts and fucking 'tweets'.
Our government, despite some good intentioned members, is largely a graft and swamp of liars and thieves - if it works at all, the 'rules' and procedures and sheer gall of one side to bend or break the same rules makes it a joke, an incompetent, seized up from inside joke.
Our military is bloated and ineffectual against the real threats to the nation - fighter jets, bombs and air craft carriers are USELESS against a gang of thieves protected by Russia and operating out of seedy hotels? or terrorists plotting bombings and attacks from mountain caves?
Our economy remains extractive and doomed to eventual collapse on fiat money and a paradigm of infinite growth within a finite system and supply of resources.
Even today, with evidence in front of our eyes, studies piled up to the ceilings and insects, birds and fish dying off by the TRILLIONS...no one is acting on global climate change with anything close to enough urgency.
Its all as the owners want it to be. And sadly, those owners have done the math, consulted the actuarial tables and decided that the course of action for all of these things is clear - MORE FOR ME, AND LESS OR NONE FOR THEE.
Trying to restructure this global con game MIGHT have been possible if it was started in earnest in the 60's. Knocking off JFK, MLK, Malcolm, Medgar and RFK made sure that those things stayed off the front burner...
Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Trump - all had ways to make sure no one watched the real issues too closely.
Bill was reckless in his personal life and it was pounced on it to basically make Hillary an issue on healthcare and then his own personal failings as a way to kneecap his final 3 years.
Barrack was disciplined and upright in his personal life, a model citizen and statesman; a truly aspirational president and the GOP found its racist core was still potent and managed to steal a SCOTUS seat, shut down any legislation and seized power over census and redistricting as well as turning the Senate into its current state of complete useless loggerhead.
I am having a real hard time dealing with the current nonsense with Sinema and Manchin as GQP-lite insurance policies for McConnell and his assholes.
This car is speeding towards the cliff, with half the people in it making sure the accelerator is nailed to the floorboards and the steering wheel is locked in place. We're in a lot more than a little trouble now...
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