Hooray! A prominent voice from the US mainstream media finally spoke out against their Military Industrial Complex. And it was none other than the illustrious Bill Maher, someone who I once disparaged on this very blog.
Maher pleaded with the American people to do some well needed self-reflection on their own warmongering. After two centuries of perpetual war, it’s time Americans realized “We’re the gun country. Come on, we’re the war people.”
After breaking down the history and concluding the problem lies with America itself, Maher went on to say “America needs to start defining peace as strength. Do you know who the role model for every president should be? Jimmy Carter. He was the one out of all of them who figured out how to sit in office for four years and never fire a shot. And every president’s negative example,” he concluded, “should be Dick Cheney, who even shot his friends in the face.”
I cannot express how thrilled I was to hear these words on an influential US show. When a population of 313 million people – most of whom are surrounded by strife and a crumbling infrastructure – look to their sputtering economy, more and more people need to actively point out the giant elephant in the room.
Right now, America’s military industrial complex devours half of its government’s spending. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that drastic cuts in military spending would likely yield equally drastic improvements for American families across the land.
But, for the most part, politicians and mainstream media sources remain chillingly silent. This is, as you may well know, due to the entrenched talons of the Military Industrial Complex itself. With billions of dollars to throw around, the war machine can buy both political parties and align all the major news channels, effectively keeping enough anti-war rhetoric from the ears (and off the lips) of the American public.
So, as with all great movements, the struggle to rid our world of war falls on the shoulders of those outside the established seats of power. While it’s great when the Bill Maher’s and John Stewart’s of the world finally vocalize some anti-war sentiments, until there are millions and millions of us doing this every single day, the war machine will keep on rolling.
Fortunately, uniting against war is exactly what we are doing. All it will take is the right spark, the right catalyst, and a Occupy-esque movement can rise against the Military Industrial Complex, and the struggle towards peace will become the latest trendy battle for the masses, maybe even earning the privilege of being trivialized by the mainstream media.
