Progressive Ponderings: 'Assisting' Recession – Part 3

By Joe Mayer

Earlier in this "Assisting" Recession series I stressed that those in control of our government and economy are in complete denial that our government's economic decisions are the cause of our economic crisis.

Empires especially are prone to believing in their invincibility because of the strong military establishment they've built to ensure their civic and economic security. As the empire decays, it refuses to consider that their empire-building military would become the empire-devouring military. The U.S. has reached that stage in history where its security-by-dominance is turning into collapse-by-misguided priorities.

Another human "assist" to recession/depression: Empire and War

Part of Webster's definition of "black hole" is "intense gravitational field." Our federal government has within it such a "black hole" which continues to enlarge as this gravitational suction moves more and more dollars into its avaricious ambush. This insatiable hole created an empire-war mentality that Eisenhower warned us about, and which is expanding far beyond the military/industrial complex. This vortex of American arrogance and imperial expansion has birthed:

• A privatized mercenary force supplementing our military. This occurred without informing the people and without budget scrutiny by Congress;
  
• A "Star-Wars" missile system that keeps inhaling dollars without showing evidence of either its necessity or its operability;
  
• Over seven hundred military bases in nearly two-thirds of the countries in the world;
  
• The theft and deployment of the states' National Guards for federal imperial ambitions;
  
• A mentality among Congress, the mass media, and thus the people that spending more than fifty percent of our discretionary budget on the above is necessary for our national security.

Finally, a few of us are asking why.

Besides drowning us and the next generations with debt, this empire-war mentality seems too formidable for us to acknowledge. We are in denial that our democracy isn't a democracy, that many politicians are bought and paid for, that we are not a "peaceful" nation. Our sense of justice is spelled r-e-v-e-n-g-e. We are hypocritical in the difference between our words and our deeds. Corporations and wealth now rule us and the rest of the world, and corruption contaminates our government from the very top on down. We don't understand that violence begets violence, and we deny that we don't follow the "golden rule." Today, Fascism is closer than a "we the people" government in the United States.

Our current debt along with no plan to live within our means resembles a third-world economy more than the economic giant we once were. More frightening is that our leaders are in denial that we did this to ourselves. Truth, honesty and compassion are in short supply in America. As we've lost them, so have we lost our sense of accountability and responsibility. Could our salvation as a nation lie in our history and our world prophets – King, Twain, Gandhi, Jesus, Tutu, the Dalai Lama?