The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Dennis Kucinich on the folly of the proxy war in Ukraine and how the military-industrial-complex has become the enemy from within.
The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Dennis Kucinich on the folly of the proxy war in Ukraine and how the military-industrial-complex has become the enemy from within.
There was once a wing of the Democratic Party that stood up to the war industry. J. William Fulbright. George McGovern. Mike Gravel. William Proxmire. But that was decades ago. The new Democrats, especially with the presidency of Bill Clinton, became shills not only for corporate America but the arms industry. No weapons system is too costly. No war, no matter how disastrous, goes unfunded. The massive military budget, with $858 billion in military spending allocated for Fiscal Year 2023, an increase of $45 billion over the Biden administration’s budget request, and nearly $80 billion over the amount appropriated by Congress for the current fiscal year, keeps growing. When 30 members of the party’s progressive caucus recently issued a call for Joe Biden to negotiate with Vladimir Putin they were forced by the party leadership and a war mongering media to back down and rescind their letter. What happened to the Democratic Party? Why has it become impossible to question war and the massive expenditures on arms? Why is such questioning political suicide? Why can’t a Democrat ask, especially at a time of economic hardship and huge deficits, how much we are going to divert to the war in Ukraine which has already consumed some $ 60 billion – as much as we spend on the State Department and AID -- with no end in sight? Joining me to discuss the extinction of anti-war Democrats in Dennis Kucinich, a former presidential candidate, who served eight terms in the House of Representatives before the Democratic Party gerrymandered his district to ensure his defeat.
The Chris Hedges Report Podcast with Dennis Kucinich on the folly of the proxy war in Ukraine and how the military-industrial-complex has become the enemy from within.
Even here in Canada the media is pro war and Justin Trudeau mouths the same patriotic claptrap! His father P.M Pierre Eliot Trudeau on the other hand was antiwar and welcomed American Draft dodgers from the Vietnam war without question! I remember then the pro war voices called him a "Pinko" and lambasted him when he supported Castro against American hegemony. The USA's permanent war economy makes Orwell's War IS Peace dystopia the American nightmare that we live in today!
Military-Keynsianism that pulled us out of the Great Depression in the 1930’s continued after the war.
Boeing, for example, made sure that there was a factory in every state to assure coin-operated politicians vote for them or they are told that their state will lose jobs.
They were not alone.
Military-Keynisanism is now full throttle with the new racket: --- Cold War 2.0.
And military-Keynsianism has morphed into fascism.
A corporate state beholden to six military contractors and multiple ancillary entities to keep the stock market open and to assure super-imperialism.
Politicians care little about our destiny. The Beacon on the Hill is a haunted house, much like that displayed in the movie Psycho.
As for the politicians that wear the garb of democrat or republican:
Marx writes: “As for the individual bureaucrat, the purpose of the state becomes his private purpose, a hunt for promotion, careerism.”
----- “Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of State,” in Karl Marx: Early Writings, trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (New York: Vintage, 1975), 111.
We live in a class society. The oneness you speak o Dennis, is a metaphysical 'one'.
We live in a class society. And this is what causes divisions, alienation, war, government overthrows and eventual social collapse.