An Irresistible Force with an Insane Rationale by Edwin L. Young, PhD

An Irresistible Force with an Insane Rationale
by Edwin L. Young, PhD

Imagine that the Dept. of Defense is allocated one-half trillion dollars annually to conduct these vast operations. Now imagine that you are the head of Dept. of Defense and each of the eighty Homeland Security Agencies. Now imagine that you are the head of the FBI, the Pentagon, the NSA, and the CIA with offices flung around the globe. Now imagine you are the CEO of each of the large corporations that are researching, developing, and manufacturing the major, deadly, weapons for the Pentagon, Dept. of Defense, and the various branches of the military. Imagine how many supportive corporations are providing those machines, parts and knowledge; providing materials; providing research on theoretical and applied physics, theoretical mathematics; chemistry, biology, demography, geology, aeronautics, the various branches of engineering, and computer and information systems necessary for the manufacture of those weapons.

All of these agencies sustain vast networks of supportive corporations. Many of the supportive corporations are widely known for producing non-defense-related products such as automobiles, cosmetics, internet devices and systems, television, physiology, pharmacology, psychiatry, and medical research and devices, food production, botany, agronomy, and agronomics, oil discovery and production, clothing, construction related products, marine life, oceanography, ships, and underwater machines, meteorology, animal training companies, astronomy, and on and on. Furthermore, imagine that you are on the faculty of a university and you are dependent on Federal, namely Dept. of Defense Grants (however, most large private foundations disburse largess for similar purposes on the Q. T.) for your research which is required for you to get tenure. Next, imagine that you are in the radio, film, and television industries and have vested interests in subtly, or not so subtly, promoting the agenda of the Defense Department.

Now imagine that you, as head of every government agency, corporation, educational institution, or other endeavor, have been requested to come together in one large convention. The coordinator of the convention rises, addresses the crowd (you as many heads) and says that all contracts and grants are immediately suspended as the United Nations has successfully orchestrated a universal treaty to end all wars and destroy all weapons and means of producing weapons, and end all weapons and military related research. The coordinator asks the conveners to applaud as peace has now come to the entire world.

There is deadly silence in the auditorium.

You see, you, as many heads, are faced with immediate and permanent loss of future income. You know all of your employees are facing the same terrifying ultimatum. Neither you nor they will have any conceivable way for providing for your and their families.

Now do you see why war and the threat of war and terrorism are so necessary? Now do you see why reversing the deadly path of civilization would be so unlikely?

The progeny of Little Boy (Hiroshima) and Fat Man (Nagasaki) and their legacy proliferates forever to the profit of the Corprocrats and their ‘serfs.’ Amazing how uninterrupted and geometrically accelerating is the continuity of collaboration between the military and corporations from 1945 to now, is it not? How disproportionate is our military buildup and expenditures in relation to actual threats to us from abroad. How convenient it is that there always has been some strangely and yet at the same time effectively manufactured, drummed up if you will, distant minor skirmish or unimaginably devastating undeclared war to provide the excuse for funding more and more expensive weapons with capacities for ever increasing, bewildering, and unnecessary overkill? How easily we are deluded into believing that some artfully concocted barbarian horde, in reality pitifully equipped, is about to invade our shores and destroy our so enviably luxurious American way of life?

Updating to the daily news, what about this? Consider all the commotion about this kid with the dy-no-mite underwear? Or the hype over the Jordanian triple agent suicide bomber in Afghanistan? The Yemeni arrests, the Pakistani capture of a few Al Qaeda guys, bombing in Mumbai, and the like? You must be familiar with the bombardment coming from the media about the numerous similar, inconsequential, ineffectual, pseudo terrorist acts emblazoned Ad Noiseum in the news lately? And consider those tiny bands of illusive, cave dwelling, donkey born, ‘world destroying’, ‘horrifically dangerous to us’ Al Qaeda guys that seem to so brilliantly elude our massive intelligence apparatus? On the other side of the ledger, how about the predator drone killing of innocents who were suspected of being enemies in Afghanistan or Pakistan that then the predators are turned around and kill the indigenous, friendly, rescue workers? Who can argue that our expensive, super-sophisticated weaponry that always somehow freakishly seem to go awry are not worth every trillion we spend on them? Who can argue that our military bases in 145 nations, most of them underdeveloped countries, are not crucial to our national safety? What sane person would not agree that we must expend billions to patrol the stratosphere checking out far below even every millimeter of every tiny, primitive hamlet around the globe? You can see how necessary and practical that is . . . can’t you???

The many ‘Breaking News’ terrorist incidents keep TV audiences monitor-glued so they don’t miss the next episode of ‘Mini Shock and Awe’. Think about it.



Metaphorically, TV commentators are the true drones, droning on and on, for days at a time, over the minutiae of these ‘almost were catastrophic’, or ‘aborted by civilians at the last minute’, insignificant acts of terrorists while perpetuating and exacerbating an alarmist mentality in the American public. All the while, the President is bemoaning the trivial fiascoes of intelligence failures lest he be skewered by the right. The public is being made to swallow an elephant while watching on their couches as its government feigns futile swats at the far away, harmless to homeland, gnats. The media and government’s magical, video grafted, sleight of hand so deftly blinds their public’s perspective on proportionality.
Here is a parable. The renowned but harmless roadrunner circles the deadly rattlesnake and darts in and out making its near miss strikes. The arrogant rattler venomously retaliates. The roadrunner is much faster and wily so the rattler misses. On and on and round and round the roadrunner goes until the rattler becomes dizzy and tires and then swoosh, bang, the road runner’s spiky beak jabs and kills the fainting, fulsomely full-of-self, would-be fulminous rattlesnake.

Al-Qaeda is the roadrunner, striking in vain at insignificantly tiny targets around the world, claiming responsibility, and then retreating with a loud and gleeful ‘ho hum.’ The US is the rattler, marshalling its enormous, deadly forces in counter-attack. The roadrunner dances its jig and dashes away proudly cackling “ahah ah hah hah hah, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh hey” over its fabricated, exaggerated victory and the pittance it has expended to garner such worldwide media coverage while their witless, humungous enemy, the rattlesnake, repeatedly and futilely over-extends and over-spends in retaliation.

With such a tightly spun web of intelligence cast around the globe, why is this super-intelligent superpower so ineffectual? Why does it grumble and bray so loudly over the planet’s air waves about its failures? Well, remember what we imagined in the beginning paragraphs? To perpetuate this multi-trillion dollar, military-industrial complex, scam, there must be an enemy; there must be a credible or at least plausible rationale.

Oh, yes, now you see. The vain pecks of the roadrunner provide a perfect, relatively harmless, foil for the US’s rattlesnake-like, pseudo-defense budget rationale. No matter the cost! The very survival of the American Way is at stake!

The elephant will never get rid of the gnat. Perhaps it is not so odd that the rightwing politicians (elephants) secretly celebrate as they let the lowly gnat fly annoyingly and freely about. The unwary populace will never suspect that trillions are being wasted. They know the public will never object to filling the elephant’s treasure chest and arsenals as long as the annoying gnats are filmed ostentatiously flitting about.

Let the rattler keep clumsily missing the skinny paisano (roadrunner) of the scraggly desert as long as it keeps providing the militant corporate lobbyists and their war-mongering, right-winger, politicians credibility for history’s most insane, most bogus, bank-breaking, world destroying rationale.



Author bio:

You can read more of Edwin's work at The Natural Systems Institute.