Frank Zappa famously called politics "the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex." And I'll admit there's an element of entertainment in the chilling performance of star-spangled children dancing and spouting exceptionalist invective at rallies for the demagogue with the bad hair. The lyrics go like this:
Cowardice
Are you serious?
Apologies for freedom, I can’t handle this.
When freedom rings, answer the call!
On your feet, stand up tall!
Freedom's on our shoulders, USA!
Enemies of freedom face the music, c'mon boys, take them down
President Donald Trump knows how to make America great
Deal from strength or get crushed every time
Far from representing a splinter group at this point in history, the demagogue has been elevated by corporate media platforms like Time Magazine to front-runner for the Republican nomination for president."Deal from strength or get crushed every time" is ironically well-illustrated by the crushing of Black bodies into for-profit prisons and police custody where they die regularly. I'm reading Ta-Nehsi Coates' long, meditative letter to his teenage son about fear and the impossibility of any meaningful safety for a young Black man in the USA. Between the World and Me explains what Howard University meant to Coates and his extended family as a life-sustaining "Mecca" of inquiry, wisdom and deep love. What are the chances that his Black son will also be able to beat the odds in a country that builds far more prisons than it builds universities?
The military-industrial complex needs an entertainment division because what they do in the way of business as usual is even more chilling than celebrating racist slogans: they kill people. Lots of people.
A telling victim was Prince Jones, a classmate of Coates', top scholar and future leader who was stalked and killed by Maryland police in a case of mistaken identity. Or was it? Coates argues convincingly that the Dream of white supremacy and exceptionalism celebrated in campaigns this season is built on the crushed bodies of the human beings relegated to the bottom of the pile.
And this leads me to the refugees pouring out of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Or dying in the rubble thereof.
The Washington DC think tank Council on Foreign Relations published a study of how many bombs my country dropped on the mostly Muslim, mostly brown-skinned people of the oil-rich countries in western Asia last year:
Source: Council on Foreign Relations. Estimate based upon Combined Forces Air Component Commander 2010-2015 Airpower Statistics; Information requested from CJTF-Operation Inherent Resolve Public Affairs Office, January 7, 2016; New America Foundation (NAF); Long War Journal (LWJ); The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).
The people of the U.S. tolerated this level of bombing civilians and even, in many cases, celebrated it. Because they've been led to believe that killing "them" over there means not having to kill "them" over here. Islamophobic ranting by demagogues suggests that Muslims are a threat to "our" security, and the corporate media reinforce this message 24/7.
Meanwhile, law enforcement and the judicial system handle the killing over here of those perceived as a threat merely by virtue of their skin color. Upstanding scholars and devoted Christians like Prince Jones look the same as hardened, violent criminals in this context: if they're Black, it's imperative to preserve the power structure that they be held back.
The U.S. elected its first Black president seven years ago, yet racially-motivated violence has shown no signs of slowing. Like the alleged socialist running for the Democratic nomination this time around (an oxymoron if there ever was one), Obama promised to address poverty and income inequality yet these problems have also grown worse on his watch.
A recent essay by Michael Glennon in the Boston Globe offered an explanation of why Barack Obama couldn't stop or even slow the wars he campaigned against, or prevent the start of a couple more. "Vote all you want, the secret government won't change" explains that the military and security[sic] bureaucracies are now far more powerful than Congress and the executive branch of government combined. I believe these agencies answer primarily to the corporate interests that fund the entertainment division, and they have momentum that appears to be unstoppable.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Black leader assassinated by the USA and whose birthday we celebrate on Monday, said in a 1967 speech against the ongoing war on Vietnam, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Amen to that, brother.
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