Saturday, March 08, 2008

You Have Been Played

The US is concerned because China has increased it's defense budget by 17 percent because it's unclear as to what China's intentions are. Even with the Chinese increase, it is still but a fraction of what we spend on our defense budget ourselves. We spend nearly as much as the rest of the world combined does on our military, and yet, we are still worried about national security in this election.
The economy is slipping into a recession, the dollar is falling as the price of oil rises, and all any of our presidential candidates can use to mobilize voters is fear. Not fear that the economy is in rubble, but fear of attacks from people with no standing armies on the other side of the world. People, you have been played.
Since we are outspending the rest of the world on security, we should be fairly secure, whether it's a high noon or three o'clock in the morning. If we are not, than we are spending way too much money on a system with no guarantees. The US is involved in two wars, fighting the alleged enemy, which has not made of safer than we were before the wars, and has, in fact attracted more people to the cause of the "Islamofascist". These wars, which were supposed to be relatively cheap(around $60 billion, according to administration officials) has actually cost us trillions of dollars. They are a drain on our economy and yet not one single presidential front runner has suggested we end these boondoggled quagmires.
There is one candidate who thinks we should cut the huge, bloated, wasteful military budget, or that we should reverse U.S. policy in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the nation of television-watchers, with their minds turned to mush from being fed a diet of constant fear are being herded like lambs to slaughter by the corpocracy's lesser of two evil strategies that will have people actually not voting for a decent candidate with good ideas, but against a candidate with whom they do not like.
Suckers.

4 comments:

Frederick said...

Well put, Sir.

DBK said...

Spot on.

Fear is profit should have been in 1984.

Anonymous said...

All I can say is no matter who wins, I feel like we're doomed.

Snave said...

I know, I did refer to Ralph as a dumbass on my blog recently, but not because I disagree with what he has to say. I have my reasons for thinking his candidacy might be a bit wrong-headed, this year in particular, but I don't need to waste a lot of space on it here. I doubt he will have a whole lot of impact on what happens in November anyway.

I tend to view the two evils in the election as McCain and Clinton. I tend to look at Obama more favorably than I do the other two, and if he can somehow beat the Clinton machine and then survive the Republican smear machine, I will be a reasonably happy camper... despite him probably not being able to get military spending reduced or get us out of the wars as quickly as many of us would like, or do enough to reverse our disastrous Middle East policy... I at least view him as more of a consensus-builder than I do the other two.

Anyway, I like Obama enough that if he somehow, against all odds, can get the nomination I won't feel like I have to hold my nose when I fill out my ballot this fall. Even though he is ahead by something like 133 delegates after the win in Mississippi, I think Clinton will find a way to wrest the nomination away from him. She has too many friends in high places, and too many resources. Too much politics as usual...