America's "Shoot 'Em Up, Lock 'Em Up" Mentality Is Its Undoing

Remember all the talk of a peace dividend at the end of the Cold War? Seems like a long time ago, doesn't it? Since that time, U.S. defense spending has ballooned, nearly doubling since 2001.

Now that Osama bin Laden is dead, it will be hard for the war hawks to defend keeping American troops in Afghanistan. But they will, even as a majority of people want to cut military spending in order to reduce the deficit, rather than cut important social programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. There's lots of money in the Pentagon, and a group of experts has recommended cutting almost $1 trillion from defense over the next decade. People know that the military-industrial-complex is a drain on the nation's economy -- a threat to economic security, and a parasite that is eating its host bit by bit.

It is hard to shake off bad habits and the U.S. has a number of them. This addiction to remaining in a permanent state of war is one of the largest and most problematic. There is the war on terror and the war on drugs. The former is used to justify the behemoth that is the national security apparatus. Meanwhile, the latter facilitates the growth of the prison-industrial-complex, and the incarceration of predominantly poor, uneducated black and Latino men, in a country with no jobs for them. These two systems are equally exploitative and destructive to human lives, and corporations have found their niche in profiting from the suffering of others.

And while profiting in such a manner is an unsustainable model for the long-term success of a nation, some remain undeterred from pursuing this path. America spends almost as much on military as the rest of the world -- combined. We imprison more people than any other nation, including the most repressive dictatorships you can imagine. In fact, the land of the free is home to only 5 percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of the world's prisoners.

Here, we lock 'em up and shoot 'em up. And we'll go visit someone else's backyard and lock 'em up and shoot 'em up too. And our voracious appetite for guns at home perversely complements our lust for senseless war abroad. With 90 guns for nearly every 100 people, the U.S. is the most armed nation on the planet, and we have shocking homicide statistics to prove it. The second amendment is used as a pretext for an astounding level of gun proliferation that is unheard of in -- and incompatible with -- a stable democratic society. But we know that the National Rifle Association, which, by the way, is increasingly allied with right-wing extremists, militias and domestic terrorists, is funded by the gun industry to the tune of millions of dollars. This, as illegal firearms ravage our urban communities

If so-called American exceptionalism is to be found in war, then Americans are in deeper trouble than they realize. The U.S. has the most advanced military weaponry and high-tech toys for its soldiers to kill and destroy, while American cities crumble under the weight of their low-grade, early-twentieth century infrastructure. Europe and Asia are decades ahead in high-speed rail because they actually have it, and this nation elects politicians who attack high-speed rail as some big government welfare giveaway program. And the rest of the world laughs as we wage war on ourselves, with culture wars, a war on intelligence and progress, and assaults on women's rights, workers and immigrants.

Sounds like a winning strategy, if your goal is to fail miserably -- exceptionally miserably.

Class Warfare Is Ugly but Necessary to Get Rid of the Bad Blood

Harvard University, my alma mater, has decided that students from low income families -- earning less than $60,000 a year -- will pay no tuition and have no student loan burden. This was a forward-thinking policy decision by a wealthy institution sitting on $27.6 billion, the largest university endowment in the land. Implicit in Harvard's decision is an acknowledgment that things are getting out of hand in higher education, and in society in general. A quality education, often prohibitively expensive and out of reach to many, should not be accessible solely to the wealthy or those who are able to afford it.

Harvard's spirit of equity and fairness should be shared around the country, in the Congress and in state houses throughout the wealthiest nation on earth. Despite what some people would tell you, America is a nation of plenty, the world's largest economy. The only problem is that in the so-called land of opportunity -- not unlike Egypt, Libya, and the various other unraveling countries in the Mideast -- only a few people are actually enjoying the wealth. Here, the bankers received their bailout, a reward for their greed, incompetence and inflated sense of self-worth. Meanwhile, the super duper-rich had their Bush-era tax breaks extended under a Democratic president whose idea of compromise has been to grant Republicans whatever they want.

The Obama budget reflects an acceptance of the conservative narrative that the poor must suffer in the name of austerity and balancing the budget. Wall Street enjoys record profits and bonuses, while the working poor must endure cuts to social programs, home heating assistance programs and access to graduate education. But the talk of deficit reduction is pure grandstanding. After all, the Bush tax cuts are driving the deficit, and significant cuts to America's bloated military behemoth are off the table.

In their quest to shrink government down to nothing, conservatives have found their new welfare queen in the form of public labor unions. Everyday people who are just trying to earn an honest living are suddenly scapegoated, blamed for the nation's financial and fiscal woes. Of course, there is a larger picture at play, which is why thousands of Wisconsin workers have protested against Gov. Scott Walker's plan to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights. The Democrats in Wisconsin fled the state to deny Republicans the quorum to vote for the union-busting legislation, with Democrats in other states like Indiana following suit, and Republicans locking protestors out of the Ohio Statehouse. The Republican Party wants to remove all vestiges of union power in this country, so that corporations are allowed to roam, unfettered and unchallenged, and trample over the rights of American workers. The Supreme Court has allowed corporations to buy what was passing as democracy, and now Tea Party legislatures and governors would render this a full-fledged nation of serfs and sharecroppers.

In all manner of Talibanic extremism, the unhinged, lunatic rightward fringe is using this opportunity to push all of the foolishness they could imagine when they lived in the political wilderness and were jonesing for power. The lunatics are running the asylum, literally. It is a nasty little sideshow, and there would be some entertainment value in it all if actual lives were not at stake. Congress voted to defund Planned Parenthood. In South Dakota, a bill would sanction the murder of abortion providers as justifiable homicide. A bill in the Georgia legislature would punish miscarriages with the death penalty. A Missouri lawmaker wants to do away with those "over the top" labor laws that prohibit child labor. And Texas could allow college students to wear concealed weapons on campus. After all, what better way to deal with campus gun violence than to recreate the Wild West on campus, in Texas of all places? Meanwhile, the NRA, further revealing its kinship with rightwing extremist groups, advocates the formation of armed militias -- private police forces unanswerable to government authority.

In the midst of all of this, ordinary citizens are waking up, and thousands are taking to the streets in nonviolent protest. Although Glenn Beck would paint the workers marching in Wisconsin as anarchists, socialists and communists, not to mention allies of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, there is a thread which binds the protestors in the Middle East and the U.S. They all know authoritarianism when they see it, and they realize the government, reeking with oligarchy and plutocracy, is working to undermine their interests. As F.D.R. once said, in the words etched in his memorial, "They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers... call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order."

Class warfare is ugly, but sometimes it is necessary. It can be a liberating thing, and it is the best thing that can happen to a progressive movement that needs a president to "make me do it," as F.D.R. urged A. Philip Randolph. And as they said in The Godfather, "These things have to happen every five, ten years. Gets rid of the bad blood." Getting rid of the bad blood could also mean getting rid of an overreaching GOP living on borrowed time.

Playing both sides of the fence in the class wars, Democrats must choose a side, lest they get swept away, too.