October 02, 2024
“You don't need a weatherman to know which
way the wind blows.”—Bob Dylan
A water main
breaks every two minutes somewhere in the U.S., resulting in contaminated
drinking supplies and boil water notices.
One out of three
bridges in the U.S. needs repair, endangering hundreds of millions of
commuters. More than 42,000 bridges across the country, carrying about 167
million vehicles each day, are in disrepair.
It is estimated
that 300 million people could face power outages across the United States
between 2024 and 2028, due in large part to widespread power grid failures.
No wonder U.S.
infrastructure received a C- on the Infrastructure Report Card.
America is
falling apart.
Collapsing
bridges, buckling roads, overheated railways, deteriorating power lines,
contaminated water lines, outdated public transportation, overtaxed power
grids, aging ports and waterways, unsafe tunnels and highways, and spotty or
insufficient telecommunications assets are all becoming frequent hallmarks of
the American way of life.
If the nation is
woefully unprepared to deal with climate disasters such as floods, hurricanes,
wildfires, and droughts, despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars
that have been pledged to shore up the nation’s infrastructure problems, it is
because politicians across the political spectrum have failed us.
The devastation
wrought by Hurricane Helene makes this failure by the government to put the
needs of the American people first painfully evident. Entire towns are under
water. Roadways have collapsed or are otherwise impassable. Potable water is
scarce. More than 1.5 million households are still without power.
Clearly, our
national priorities need to be re-examined.
While the
politicians play partisan games with our tax dollars, the nation’s critical
infrastructure—both the physical foundations of the nation and the figurative
foundations of our freedoms—continues to be neglected and deprioritized in
favor of grandstanding, bloated military budgets on endless wars abroad,
foreign aid to shore up the infrastructure and military defenses of
international allies, and all manner of graft and pork barrel spending.
When all is said
and done, the bread-and-circus distractions and sleight-of-hand political
theater being trotted out in order to keep Americans distracted, deluded,
amused, and insulated from the government’s steady encroachments on our
freedoms adds nothing of real value to the lives of the average American.
It’s time to fix
what’s broken in this country.
For starters, we
need an overhaul of the nation’s infrastructure.
According to
Time magazine, “Throughout the country, millions of Americans don’t have access
to or can’t afford broadband internet service. In excess of 2 million people
live without running water or basic plumbing. For too long, the American public
has had to carry on while these deficiencies have gone unattended. The
political will has been weak or inattentive, the rewards too far removed from
electoral advantage.”
In other words,
the politicians who dance to the tune of the oligarchic elite aren’t motivated
to do anything about our failing infrastructure because they get nothing out of
it: no votes, no money, no power.
This isn’t about
whether the Republicans or Democrats have better policies.
Indeed, both
parties’ priorities are disconcertingly alike: both parties support endless
war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights,
have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business,
care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government
and shrinking liberty.
This is about
the plight of the American people who continue to be treated like a permanent
underclass.
Anyone who
believes that this presidential election will bring about any real change in
how the American government does business is either incredibly naive, woefully
out-of-touch, or oblivious to the fact that as an in-depth Princeton University
study shows, we now live in an oligarchy that is “of the rich, by the rich and
for the rich.”
When a country
spends close to $10 billion to select what is, for all intents and purposes, a
glorified homecoming king or queen to occupy the White House, while 38 million
of its people live in poverty, and nearly 7 million Americans are out of work,
and more than 600,000 Americans are homeless, that’s a country whose priorities
are out of step with the needs of its people.
Overhauling the
nation’s infrastructure will take a significant amount of money, which won’t
happen as long as the U.S. government continues to fund the military industry
complex and its voracious appetite for endless wars.
James Madison
was right: “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual
warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is,
perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of
every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes…
known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”
We are seeing
this play out before our eyes.
The government
is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through
neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money
with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.
The American
Empire is approaching a breaking point.
This is exactly
the scenario President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against when he cautioned
the citizenry not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties
or democratic processes. Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the
Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the
profit-driven war machine that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to
keep waging war.
Yet as
Eisenhower recognized, the consequences of allowing the military-industrial
complex to wage war, exhaust our resources and dictate our national priorities
are beyond grave:
“Every gun that
is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final
sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and
are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending
the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its
children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in
more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of
60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50
miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million
bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have
housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be
found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all,
in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging
from a cross of iron.”
We failed to
heed Eisenhower’s warning.
The illicit
merger of the armaments industry and the government that Eisenhower warned
against has come to represent perhaps the greatest threat to the nation today.
As I make clear
in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its
fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is how tyranny rises and
freedom falls.
If we are to
have any hope of restoring both the structural and freedom foundations of this
nation, we’ll need to start by getting our priorities in order, and that means
focusing on what really matters: shoring up our battered Bill of Rights and
investing in the American homeland.
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