The Ukraine War is a US jobs program; supporting the flourishing US middle class
And yes, there is a grander vision, for those who want to make the future
Jordan Schactel, writing at The Dossier:
Senate Minority Leader Mitch “Glitch” McConnell spoke at the defense industry-funded CEPA Forum in Washington D.C. on Wednesday and made a very revealing comment about the state of the war in Ukraine.
“As a result of the weapons transfers that we’ve made to Ukraine, we are reindustrializing our base here in the United States,” McConnell added. “And we’re employing a significant number of Americans, in this country, building our industrial base again.”
The conversation gets even more bizarre and yet clarifying, with the host asking, “how does supporting Ukraine actually support U.S. jobs in the military industrial complex.”
Yes, she really said military industrial complex, a term coined by President Eisenhower to warn about the perverse incentive structures in the defense industry.
McConnell answers:
“As we ship weapons and ammunition to the Ukrainians, we rebuild those in many instances with more modern, cutting edge equipment.”
—Where to begin? Understand, this is a US Senator, the Senate Minority Leader, making these comments.
Representative government? Are you kidding?
Killing lots and lots of people in a foreign war is good for the US economy. It’s a big plus. That’s not news, but a Senator saying it with praise is definitely news.
Building our industrial base again? McConnell is saying the base is broken and NEEDS rebuilding. And war is how.
Well, well.
It’s a party, folks. Killing is our business.
And guess what? Presidential candidates who are wringing their hands over the collapse of the American middle class should realize: all these jobs in the killing business (defense industry) create middle class workers. Lots and lots of them. So don’t assume shrinking the defense budget will solve “the middle class problem.” The problem is much deeper.
But don’t worry, be happy. When the Ukraine War ends (maybe just in time for the election in 2024, a “triumph” for the Democrats), we can pave over the War with new positive economic reports and projections. “Forecasters paint bright outlook.”
Then everyone can go back to “peacetime production.” This is how FDR bailed the US out of the (engineered) Great Depression. Wartime factories humming, followed by the post-war “peacetime economic engine.” In other words, a fairy tale about The New Deal saving America.
When WAR is an absolute necessity for making the US economy work, there’s trouble. Big trouble. Systemic trouble.
Realizing this, you have to ask what kind of economy we really have. All the talk of centuries about America being “the most powerful nation on Earth,” “the greatest flowering of prosperity the world has ever seen”—based on the free market—who’s been telling that story?
The free market IS the greatest economic invention in all of history. It would be terrific to get back to it.
What we’ve had is the government-bankrolled American Empire economy.
And that economy has done much to (listen up, Robert Kennedy) create the American middle class. Which would be ripped apart if we suddenly axed the US defense budget.
Not only that. What’s the fastest growing sector of economy right now? The sector that may soon reach prime number 1 status?
The medical/healthcare industry.
How many middle class jobs do you think THAT sector is creating, as we speak?
Yet this sector is responsible for, recently, the COVID kill shots. As I’ve written about for more than decade, the US medical system KILLS, at minimum, 2.25 MILLION Americans per decade. (Dr. Barbara Starfield, JAMA, July 26, 2000, “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?”).
Is THAT the free market at work? No. It’s the US Corporate State at work. The “public-private” partnership of government and medical companies. Backed up by a blizzard of laws and regulations attempting to create a monopoly.
Disable that sector, drive a stake through its heart, and you smash the middle class people who work in it.
So let’s stop the shit-for-brains easy chatter about solving the ongoing tragedy of the middle class.
The trouble we have is much bigger and deeper.
There are answers and there are solutions. I’ve been writing about some of them for a long time. But the bottom line is: they take courage. They take businessmen who stand for FREEDOM and INNOVATION, and also have a sense of unshakable MORALITY. Where are these men?
Masturbating over transhumanism in Silicon Valley?