Quote:

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”--Martin Luther King

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Michael Moore

I've found through the years that many people detest Michael Moore, find him bombastic, hypocritical, naive, etc. Well, I like the guy.

In this piece he references Eisenhower's farewell speech, perhaps the most honest muttering ever spoken by a former U.S. President. For this rhetoric alone Eisenhower would not be welcomed in today's Republican Party, and the lonely ex-warrior would have few Democrats as friends, either.

Eisenhower warned us of the nascent power of the military industrial complex, of course, in 1961. Now the power of the generals is firmly entrenched on the U.S. economic/political landscape. It is somewhat emblematic that the last decent Republican to reside in the White House was a general. That he was as forthcoming as he was in the revved up Cold War era is really a remarkable aspect of our history.

It is time to dress down the idolatry, fatuousness and insane trust Americans keep for their military heroes. It is time to overthrow the militaristic mindset that keeps the U.S. economy tethered like a nation of slaves to the savagery of occupation, robbery and murder across the globe.

If you do not believe the powerful want our present wars, and many more to follow, to keep their mansions and billions afloat, you are the naive one.

Michael Moore, as rich as he is, has every good intention in saying militarism is fucked.


TS

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