ABOLISH DOD

 “Abolish ICE” is the moderate stance. If you want to be radical, remember Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, and abolish the DOD. 

This is the military industrial complex he warned us about. This is the standing army the “Founding Fathers” worried about. Cubed. On steroids. In the hands of an idiot, who is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. In ever sense of that final phrase.

The Constitution was never going stop this. Congress was never going to stop this. Trump only has to notify Congress by Monday morning. He probably thinks his video did that. And he has 60 days to commit mischief, if he even gives a wet snap about the War Powers Act. Which, notably, doesn’t require him to do anything whatsoever to justify his actions before he assaulted Iran at the behest of his BFF, Benny Netenyahu.

We are here because we didn’t listen to Ike. The Vietnam war protesters did. But nobody listened to them, either. We are here because we have a standing military that “keeps us safe” and “protects our freedom,” and that freedom includes the ability to bomb shit out of anybody we choose. Well, do long as they don’t have nukes. We are here because of Chekhov’s observation. If you have a gun onstage in Act One, it had better go off by Act Three. We are here because on this point the sentiment of the colonists was sound: a standing military allows the monarch (read: military commander in chief) to engage in mischief. Twain railed about it in the 19th century, when armies could be whipped up.  William Hearst/Citizen Kane did the same thing a few decades later.  Now all we need is Donald Trump and the price of eggs in an election year.

The problem is not the Constitution. The problem is us.

The activists in the sixties wanted to end the war and establish civil rights for all. They got some of the latter. The war finally ended because America got sick of it. Now we’ve buried those lessons. So it goes. The activists today want to abolish ICE. They are too timid. We must abolish the DOD. The justification for so many military bases around the world, was “keeping the peace.”

What peace are we keeping now? Or was Orwell right, and we all speak Newspeak now? Where ignorance is bliss, and war is peace.

Abolish DOD. It’s the only way to be sure. Or maybe Vonnegut was right when he imagined an America in the future, balkanized by the rest of the world, so we could never be a threat to the world again. More and more I’m wishing I’d kept my Vonnegut books. Some of the wisdom of the’70’s would be very useful right now.

Abolish DOD. And think about something besides the price of fucking eggs in the election years.