April 09, 2021

David Swanson, Let’s Try Democracy

Activist journalist David Swanson reminds us that, amidst a pandemic and headlines of social and economic reforms, the military industrial complex grinds forward with a momentum of its own.  

“President Joe Biden is proposing a level of Pentagon spending so close to that of Trump’s last year in office that Bloomberg calls it a 0.4% reduction adjusting for inflation while Politico calls it a 1.5% increase and ‘effectively an inflation-adjusted budget boost.’ I call it a disgusting violation of the will of the public spent in the hypocritical name of a grand battle against autocracies by so-called democracies, driven in reality by the influence of war profiteers and contempt for the fate of the planet and the people on it. …

“… The United States, every year, takes $2,170 from every man, woman, and child for wars and war preparations, while Russia takes $439, China $189, and Iran $114. … ‘Takes’ is the right word. President Eisenhower once admitted it out loud, saying, ‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.'”

Read Swanson’s entire essay on his blog Let’s Try Democracy.