Where’s the Rest of our Country?
Phillip A Farruggio
In the 1942 epic film King’s Row actor Ronald Reagan ( of all people ) played a down and out working stiff (Drake McHugh) who just had his legs amputated due to an accident. He was under anesthesia and did not know this. Thus, when he came to, he uttered that famous line:
Where’s the rest of me!?”
This is a very appropriate query for all of us working stiffs as to the nature of this current economic state of affairs. For decades this Military Industrial Empire has been whittling away at our safety net…from ALL sides!
Funding for so many necessary services has been continually cut to the bone, while the empire keeps funding that militarism beast to the tune of over half of our federal tax revenue. No one or rather so few seem to care. At least Drake McHugh’s friends did when he screamed that famous scream.
We have a Two Party/ One Party system that equally kneels at the altar of empire. Wall Street, Big Banking and the Pentagon call for more war related instruments of destruction and invasion.
Meanwhile, the Republican vs. Democrat political scam will have many ‘food fights’ over many issues, but never about the ones which could actually help pull back this empire. Yet, when it comes to saluting the flag and honoring our ‘brave warriors’ these two parties cannot give enough in way of accolades.
Well, the flag is MY flag too! As far as our ‘brave warriors’, well, our military personnel should never have been sent to ANY of those places in that hornet’s nest called the Middle East. What many other nations realize (even our empire’s allies), is that our illegal and immoral invasions and occupations have given rise to insurgencies/terrorists throughout the Middle East.
Plus, and most important, is that the entire refugee crisis throughout Europe was instigated by Washington’s schemes to reprint the map of that region. While performing these non heroic deeds, our taxpayers are footing the bill. To keep one soldier in Afghanistan costs you and me taxpayer at least one million dollars a year! Think how many more first providers we could hire for that money.
Think of how many teachers, library books, infrastructure repairs that one soldier’s pay could finance. Multiply that by thousands of such military personnel and then add the cost of all those WMDs (one Apache Helicopter costs $55 million…just one!) and see how insane we are as a culture. Does anyone care?
The empire narcotizes us with sports and electronic gadgets up the Kazoo. Of course, as the 18th anniversary of 9/11 is upon us, they make sure we see lots of camouflage wearing military personnel all over. They stand at the openings of the football stadiums as the players enter the field. They have the honor guard to bring out the flag and prepare for the anthem. Then everyone, sadly even most of the black NFL players, cross their hearts and solemnly honor this empire. Why? Well citizens of the Fifth Reich, we are at war!! Maybe we need Grouch Marx to come out and lead the hoopla.
Phillip A Farruggio is a son and grandson of Brooklyn , NYC longshoremen. He has been a free lance columnist since 2001, with over 400 of his works posted on sites like Global Research, Greanville Post, Off Guardian, Consortium News, Information Clearing House, ,Nation of Change, World News Trust, Op Ed News, Dissident Voice, , Activist Post, Sleuth Journal, Truthout and many others. His blog can be read in full on World News Trust., whereupon he writes a great deal on the need to cut military spending drastically and send the savings back to save our cities. Philip has a internet interview show, ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid’ with producer Chuck Gregory, and can be reached at [email protected])
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Dear Bevin: To recognise the futility of continuing to follow the same diadic capitalist/socialist economic rationality of growth: whilst expecting different results for the bourgeois socialist few …think of the bioshpere as a client, and the economic calculus of the capitalist/socialist diadic as their personal trainer. This PT gets paid, not by the hour, but gains profit only by increasing the maximal heart-rate of the client. Their rate of return (profit margin) is proportional to the net increase they can achieve and sustain in the short term. It is not a hard and fast scientific metric, but currently the heart-rate is at 170% of maximal output (70% ecological overshoot).The laws of motion and growth vectors of the current economic calculus require that heart-rate to increase to 175%, 180%, 200% (a new planet is required) …how long do you think the client will last? Or the capitalism/socialism that existentially must keep… Read more »
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Thanks for that. I’ve just started Chris Hedges new book “America: the Farewell Tour”, I think it could be of some interest.
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@ Bevin
As you say:
Never. in the History of Politics has the MSM attacked the Leader of the Opposition – in such a prolonged, unremitting manner as they have Jeremy Corbyn. Which proves categorically that his honesty and policies are a threat to their very existence..
And also leads us directly to the conclusion that the US and UK MSM presstitutes are paid agents of the Deep State Establishment Corporatocracies on both sides of the pond and beyond.. Telling the truth would be the end for them.
Absolutely agree; we are experiencing what we laughingly think of as our democracy being undermined daily by the BBC and our national press.
In the case of the worthless and I believe now unreformable BBC, made worse by the fact we are forced to pay for the lies and propaganda we’re subjected to.
9/11 was a tragedy for social democracy.
9/11 will live in infamy
9/11/73 Allende and democracy murdered.
it’s architect Kissinger who is still fetted was there ever a more longlived bloodied monster?
Bombing the bejesus out of Cambodia cost him not a moment of sleep. A discredit to his species, no matter what that species might be.
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I hate to seem picky but it applies to the whole world doesn’t it? We’re- the 99%- getting “taken to the cleaners” so it’s not just what Sarah Kendzior calls “Flyover Country” people- it applies globally… part of the difficulty is we are all separately complaining when if we acted as a cohesive group we might be able to effect some real changes… the two party system has got most separate countries tied up in knots: Signed, sealed, delivered.