The major influx of Tea Party Congressmen came primarily on the basis of promises to reduce the budget deficit, and with the tacit understanding that the already record military budget cannot possibly continue to grow unchecked.
The prospect of not pouring endless money into endless wars is terrifying to many, notably major arms makers, and it is perhaps unsurprisingly that they are scrambling to court those Congressmen and ensure that they are “educated,” to quote one company official, on the importance of runaway deficit spending.
Boeing’s Jim Albaugh insisted it was vital to “educate” the new lawmakers about exactly how much of the American economy, such as it is, is centering around the construction of big expensive tax-payer funded things that blow up other big expensive tax-payer funded things.
But while most of the long-standing officials seem keen on the idea of an economy that operates almost entirely around the construction of elaborate weapons systems that don’t work to defend against attacks that will never come, it seems the freshmen are at least asking the question of whether or not this is a sustainable system. That the question scares so many should provide a pretty clear hint of the answer.
And the lies continue as to who our enemies are. Iraq was our made-up enemy, then the Taliban in Afghanistan, a couple of hundred al Qaeda. 19 terrorists that attacked New York and were headed toward the Capitol. For these meager threats we started a “global war on terror” from which we probably cannot wxtract ourselves for at least the next 20 years. We put ourselves in trillions of dollars of debt to finance these wars, while our infrastructure crumbles at home and many thousands of our young men and women are sacrificed at the altar of the military/industrial complex. What has happened to the America that used to lead by example within my lifetime? Greed has happened, and they call it Capitalism. God help us.