Wars are mass-murder, massive theft, and unrelenting propaganda. In this country they’re lucrative overseas entanglements, as government diverts loot from taxpayers to the war industry. They’re also perpetual, as war embellishes the sanctity of the state as well as providing grounds for increased plunder of its population. Wars are government as Houdini—drawing attention to the bloody far-away while relieving attention on the corrupt close-at-hand. For the victor, the propaganda is inked as truth in the history books. War is the health of the state, Randolph Bourne concluded, but not for the people under it:
In the freest of republics as well as in the most tyrannical of empires, all foreign policy, the diplomatic negotiations which produce or forestall war, are equally the private property of the Executive part of the Government, and are equally exposed to no check whatever from popular bodies, or the people voting as a mass themselves.
Government-controlled monetary policy is cover for counterfeiting, an insidious form of taxation that creates gross economic distortions and inequalities. Presidential elections are extravagant contests between straw men owned by those behind the throne. Formal education is indoctrination into dominant narratives. The US Constitution is a feel-good distraction from the larceny and depravity of the political class.
Blogger J.D. Breen has published a brief history of the 21st century in two parts (here and here). “As last century was launched when the Maine sank in Havana harbor, this one turned when the Twin Towers were toppled. . . . The remnants of the U.S. Constitution went in the shredder.” Shocking, but not surprising, he said, given the destruction wrought by US intervention in Muslim countries over the decades.
But government, as we’ve learned, is never accountable for wrong-doing. If it was, it would imply the state is fallible, a blasphemous idea.
Hellbound and Down 