I’m confused.

Is America spreading democracy or enriching the military/industrial/complex (MIC)?

Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Here’s arch-neocon Victoria Nuland, trying out multiple arguments for more Ukraine spending: “We will do what we have always done, which is defend democracy & freedom around the world … And by the way, we have to remember that the bulk of this money is going right back into the U.S., to make those weapons”

Likewise, Biden has vacillated between narratives. At first it was plucky, democratic Ukraine defending themselves against the evil, autocratic Russia, but lately he’s been making the argument that arming Ukraine is good for our economy as he advocates for more money for Ukraine. “We send Ukraine equipment sitting in our stockpiles. And when we use the money allocated by Congress, we use it to replenish our own stores… equipment that defends America and is made in America: Patriot missiles for air defense batteries made in Arizona; artillery shells manufactured in 12 states across the country — in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas; and so much more.”

So, the basic question remains–is it democracy or MIC enrichment? And, with the Blob, it’s hard to tell because of the sea of lies. If we are being lied to about the progress of the proxy war, and we are, there is a pretty good chance that we are also being lied to about every aspect of it.

And it’s not like this is a new situation. Does any American still believe that Washington was “defending democracy and freedom” when it used a pack of lies to get us into Iraq, where a country was destroyed and perhaps a million people were killed? Was Washington “defending democracy” when Nuland and the rest of her neocon buddies successfully overthrew a democratically elected government in Ukraine in 2014?

And, what about our democracy? Does anyone believe we live in a democracy when soldiers are protesting US complicity in genocide by setting themselves on fire?

When you’ve got people setting themselves on fire, you’ve reached a point where the people really feel as if they have no ability whatsoever to influence the policies of the government. Democracy is now a fading myth, where the views of the people are effectively the diametric opposite of the policies of the government.

And that’s pretty much where we’re at. We’ve got an election coming up with two shitty candidates, and a deep state that is poised to continue the same shitty policies that we’ve come to know and loathe: more tax cuts for the wealthy, austerity for the rest of us, and never-ending war.

In these years Pentagon spending has soared and the defense budget continues to head toward an annual trillion-dollar mark, while the prospects of tens of millions of Americans have plummeted. More than 140 million of us now fall into poor or low-income categories, including one out of every six children. More than 44 million of us suffer from hunger in any given year. An estimated 183,000 Americans died of poverty-related causes in 2019, more than from homicide, gun violence, diabetes, or obesity. Meanwhile, ever more Americans are living on the streets or in shelters as homeless people hit a record 650,000 in 2022.

Shockingly, the United States now has the lowest life expectancy of any industrialized country, even as the International Institute for Strategic Studies reports that it now accounts for 40% of the world’s military spending. Four times more than its closest rival, China. It’s more than the next 15 countries combined. It’s certainly not “defense” and long past time for reconsidering what kinds of investments truly make Americans safe and economically secure–an out of control military budget or money spent on meeting people’s basic needs.

To answer the original question, I lean towards Orwell’s 1984, where Emmanuel Goldstein explains: “The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.”