Monday, September 10, 2012

Who, Exactly, Do Americans Fear So Much?

It has become axiomatic in American federal politics that anyone seeking office must support increasing the country's military spending.   The United States already spends more than the rest of the industrialized nations combined and fields the indisputably dominant army, air force and navy in the world.   First in subs, America.   First in bombers, America.   First in missiles, America.   First in everything else military, ditto.

"Gott [Mitt] Uns" Romney is now attacking Obama, claiming his rival wants to cut the military budget.   Obama, instead of defending the obvious rationale of trimming his government's most bloated expenditure, claims he actually wants to increase the Pentagon's budget but wants tax increases on the rich to pay for it.  Romney wants further tax relief for the rich and more billions for the Pentagon which, presumably, will have to be extracted from blue and white collar wage earners.

Obama is pandering to the voting public, so is Romney.   The American people, it seems, have been powerfully indoctrinated to support ever more military expenditure without any rational scrutiny of the threats their country faces.   Fear is no longer a response to threats, it's a commodity in American society, one that can and is ruthlessly exploited for political gain.

And Romney is also claiming that God [Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, even Mormon] is indeed on his side.

Mr Romney appeared with the televangelist Pat Robertson on Saturday in the swing state of Virginia and seized upon the row at last week's Democratic convention sparked when delegates removed language about God from their platform.

After reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, Mr Romney told the crowd: ''I will not take God out of … our platform. I will not take God out of my heart. We are a nation that's bestowed by God.''

The former Massachusetts governor also appeared to imply that Democrats wanted to remove the phrase ''In God We Trust'' from US currency.

 
"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition."

2 comments:

kootcoot said...

Meanwhile the Mighty Excited Snakes of Amurica gets their ass kicked by little yellow dudes in the jungles of Vietnam or medieval tribesman armed with Korean era small arms in Afghanistan. Money well spent!!!

They better pray that the real guys like the Ruskies or the Chinese don't get pissed at 'em - besides if the piss off the Chinese there goes the electronic parts of their defense, which is already probably full of back doors to exploit.

Anonymous said...

I asked a group of Americans on a message board who their enemies were when they mentioned enemies... The response was "throw a dart at a map of the middle east".

People irritate me sometimes.