In Booman’s recent post Simple Observation on the Newtown disaster, mainsailset made the following comment:
—snip—
This is now a moral discussion, a societal contract debate and if we can label the side effects on drugs, disallow cigarette purchase for teenagers, and watch Bloomberg limit the intake of soda, surely our culture can recognize we can do better.
Those were beautiful children, brave teachers and a courageous principal.
I began a reply, but it grew. Here it is.
—————————————————————————————————-
———————
Yes, but…as always, follow the money.
Labeling the side effects of drugs, making cigarettes unfashionable and limiting obesity are simple monetary plusses. The health costs that they produce are more than the money made on them. (With the possible exception of drugs, which are so heavily hyped that people take them even after hearing the horrific litany of possible side effects repeated over and over again on every TV advertisement. Dr. Big Brother is one hell of a hustler!)
Limiting public weaponry? That could have disastrous effects on the economy long-term. Gun companies are of course big business and have a very effective lobbying/political funding presence, but an even bigger business is our so-called justice system. Police, courts, prisons? ( I am not being sarcastic here.) They all thrive on the gun culture. Without a healthy daily murder rate, a large sector of what we laughingly refer to as “our economy” would rapidly wither and die. You think that this idea is too far out? I don’t. Big government feeds on trouble. Look at the incredibly rapid metastasis of the whole Homeland Security boondoggle for only one relatively small example of how the hustle progresses. From the real horror of 9/11 to a massive state surveillance system that intrudes on every detail of our lives yet produces no real results whatsoever from most of what it does. Pure bullshit, most of it. No shoes or belts at the airports. Pure bullshit. But expensive bullshit, bullshit that pays real wages to hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions.
Extend that through the justice system. Gun reform? Talk about unemployment!!! Jeez…what would the media talk about if there weren’t nightly shootings all across America? School reform? Who’d tune in?
Follow the money to understand the system, mainsailset.
Follow the money.
Bet on it.
Read on.
Yes, those were beautiful children, brave teachers and a courageous principal. They went down because of where this culture and society has gone in a business sense. A financial sense.
Violence…and its depictions and results…makes money. Wars make money. Wars are fought to make money on one level or another. Bet on that as well. No potential for broad profit? No war. “War” on drugs. “War” on terrorists. “War” on illegal guns. “War” as a profit machine. Both domestically and internationally the United States has become without a doubt the most efficiently violent country that has ever existed. Change even a small part of that violent system and the “butterfly effect” would take over.
You know…the butterfly effect?
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions, where a small change at one place in a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. The name of the effect, coined by Edward Lorenz, is derived from the theoretical example of a hurricane’s formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before.
Those who question why effective gun control has not already been put in place here? The answer is quite simple, really. Our controllers fear the butterfly effect that gun control might have on their profit system.
Follow the money. It’s not at the end of a rainbow; it’s in offshore banks. Bet on it.
Later…
AG
P.S. War. The real deal? Here it is, from an old…and regretful… pro.
WAR IS A RACKET
by Smedley Darlington Butler* Major General – United States Marine Corps [Retired]
* Born West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881
—snip—
* Awarded two congressional medals of honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914
* and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917
* Distinguished service medal, 1919
* Retired Oct. 1, 1931
* On leave of absence to act as director of Department of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932
* Lecturer — 1930’s
* Republican Candidate for Senate, 1932
* Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940—snip—
1: War is a Racket
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
—snip—
Follow the link. Read the whole thing and then tell me that what he is saying isn’t as applicable to today’s news as it was to the events of his time and place. I dare ya.
I repeat:
Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
Sound familiar? Deny it. I dare ya.
This is not new info I am presenting here. Smedley Darlington Butler knew about it way back in 1935. So did Dwight Eisenhower in his “Military Industrial Complex” speech in 1961. The pros know, and the ethical ones try to tell us about it. But we don’t listen.
Too bad, but so it goes.
WTFU.
P.P.S. Alla you loyal Dems. The ones who are so vociferously lauding Obama’s Newtown speech? Watch. Follow the money and watch. I’ll believe it when I see it.
It was a powerful speech, but I am saving my plaudits for the day when Barack Obama or some other person in a position of real power in this country speaks as directly as did Major General Smedley Darlington Butler.
Until then?
I’m still waiting…
