As Ike feared, economic expansion of the defense industry since World War II helps explain the existence of the biggest problems we face today. The industry’s impact on our politics and thus our families, careers, schools, freedoms, and future are overwhelmingly negative. He would no doubt agree that economic growth based on defending Earth’s essential diversity is a far more healthy, lasting, and lucrative prospect.
The defense industry juggernaut is not a widespread corporate conspiracy; it’s a bad-policy business trend running on inertia. Instead of calling for contractors to give up their profits—an unlikely scenario—the people have the power to demand a defense policy that invests this vast industry in a healthy planet.
Meanwhile, “we must stop the terrorists in Iraq!”
Terrorists, communists, whatever. Business-wise, Vietnam never ends.
That’s where we are.
At a 1992 University of Oregon event discussing the American people and their government, author Ken Kesey declared, “There are times when you gotta stand up in church and shout ‘bullshit!’”
That’s what time it is. Thank you Sally Field.
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