Every American budget is a murder-suicide pact

America's war machine is not new, therefore it's not news. It is nonetheless the greatest single threat to life on this planet. It's not just that America is the single greatest killing force in the world, though it is. The US military is also the single largest emitter, killing us all.

And it's not just the murder, this is also suicide. Americans are also human beings who live in a shared climate, and this kills them as well. Americans are also people that live without healthcare and basic social services so that arms dealers can loot them. Every American budget is a murder-suicide pact, but their corporate press doesn't report on it because it's not new. It is nonetheless true.

Just look at a few graphs (from the intrepid Stephen Semler) and see.

The Killing

America's Pentagon budget is more than they have spent on Biden's supposedly transformative investments in America itself. It's more than 4x the relief given to the American people during COVID-19. For reference, more people have died from their failed pandemic response than all US combat deaths ever, but you can see what the priority is. More killing than death. Always more killing.

Even if you look at regular appropriations spending, the priority is still death. Even under Democrats the budget is mostly militarized. America is officially fighting no wars, so in truth they are just out there murdering.  

Everything President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about in his 1961 farewell address has thus come to pass.

Whereas "American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well" now they just make swords all the time. Whereas "an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense," the population is dumb as fuck and the media just manufactures consent (Afghanistan, Iraq, any Muslim person walking the Earth, now China).

The military-industrial complex has corrupted the entire US government and the machinery of defense doesn't mesh with any 'peaceful methods and goals,' if it ever dead. America's war machine is purely offensive, and it grinds bones all over the world. As anthropologist Wade Davis wrote in Rolling Stone, quoting President Jimmy Carter, "America is the most warlike nation in the history of the world."

They are also the biggest losers. It's the only empire built on losing wars and looting itself. Today you can see the absolute corruption clear as day in the numbers, but the story is so old by now that it's not even news. For example if you look at climate collapse—the greatest threat to human life today—America spends less money fighting that than it gives to just one (1) arms dealer:

Thus private company Lockheed Martin gets more money to kill people (and produce emissions) than the total climate funding in the Build Back Better Act. Whatever Biden says he's trying to build, the numbers tell a different story. America's priority is still to destroy.

The point isn't even winning wars anymore, that's irrelevant. There's actually more money in losing. Just drop expensive bombs on poor people and profit. Seize their funds on the way out and let them starve. America spent 20 years losing their war on Afghanistan and it didn't matter because arms dealers got paid all the way.

Their media talks about 'losing' or 'wasting' trillion in Afghanistan, but it's not that. That money was stolen, along with hundreds of thousands of lives. It's just rank corruption, of the most violent and venal kind. It's blood money.

The Dying

This brings us to the most glaring graph of all. All of this killing, all of this very expensive murder, it would be one thing if it occured in a vacuum, but we live in a climate. Within this climate, the single biggest source of emissions is America's war machine. Hence it's not just that Americans can't have nice things because they're so devoted to murdering poor people. It's that no one can have a livable Earth. That's the nature of their moral black hole.

"The Department of Defense is the world’s largest institutional user of petroleum and correspondingly, the single largest institutional producer of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world" (Brown University).

Some people propose killing with electric tanks, but no. No no no. To stop the dying we have to stop the killing. We have to stop American empire fullstop. The answer is America's war on humanity just stopping, but this is something their media (and budgets) cannot even consider. Instead the funding (and emissions) just keep increasing and this is just considered implacable, untouchable reality. It is excluded from all (bullshit) climate agreements. And so we all die. This final graph is the most horrifying because it kills everyone.

The Pentagon budget, which produces the most emissions in the world, is over 20x whatever America is doing to mitigate emissions. America's whole climate policy is a non-starter. They remain far more committed to dying than to living. This is so unchanging from budget to budget that their media doesn't even report on it, but the numbers don't lie. Americans are just lying to themselves and the entire world.

The actual priorities America commits money to are so unchanging that they're not even considered news, but they are facts. Beyond all the pledges, committments, and statements, America is downright hostile to human life on Earth and even in America itself. Every budget is a murder-suicide pact, and it doesn't get reported on because this is every budget. In truth, America cares much more about death than it does about life. There simply is no living with this. We as human beings cannot hope live until American empire ends.

Stephen Semler does a lot of digging to produce these graphs, while America's corporate media just digs a deeper hole. Subscribe to his newsletter, it's excellent.