How America Loves Killing More Than Life Itself (In 5 Graphs)
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: