20170521 Would ending war end our "Lifestyle"?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-american-way-of-war-is-a-budget-breaker_us_5911d17de4b0a58297df7f59

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to ask, “Is our ‘lifestyle’ worth anything, if we can keep it only by preserving war?” Do you think for even a second the people dying at the end of our missile strikes care whether our vainglorious and self-indulgent culture deserves to persist if it can do so only by a periodic purge of the lives of other nations?

A similar question could be raised, “Will American men still be able to be boisterous, outgoing, and filled with self-confidence, if as a body they are required to forego any and all manner of rape?” It is far more important that men end their aggressive dominance over women than whether as a result of assuming responsibility for control of their urges somebody thinks they’re less manly.

So as far as I am concerned the economic feasibility of giving up war is a non-issue. Whether we are financially better off or worse has no bearing. We have to give up war. We have to give it up so sincerely as no longer even to prepare for war.

How will a capitalist society manage if it cannot seize the minerals and resources of other nations? It will manage. Just as the buggy whip makers adapted to the rise of the automobile, war workers will be available for other needs. I will not speculate here what those needs will be nor how we will meet them, but if we can have the wisdom to turn from wantonly killing, surviving and caring for each other will be a far easier problem to overcome.

We know the earth cannot sustain the total exploitation involved in our “lifestyle.” If somehow everyone worldwide would be jacked up to American consumption levels the air would be unbreathable in days. There might be enough iron available to give each of the 170+ nations a dozen aircraft carriers to plough the oceans menacingly, but not enough time to train their sailors, or sufficient uranium to stoke their reactors. The concept is so brainless yet many Americans think we can continue being rich as Croesus forever, always wealthier than others.

Giving up war, its hellish waste of all that is good in the world and in us, and living sustainably without question is our only course. We could get back to the things that are true marks of human civilization—education, health, meaningful work for all, and living in peace and mutual respect for our brothers and sisters over the whole world.

c. J.S.Manista 2017

20170504 War makes us monsters

UN Poster for Peace 2016 - disarmament

If it were possible to calculate the costs accruing to the world in terms of reduced agricultural output, damaging weather, loss of quality of life ranging from no water to drink or higher costs of air conditioning, etc., from each additional ton of CO2 produced, so as to allocate fairly to industries, farms, NASCAR races, etc., those damages which society as a whole could collect from given offenders, it is conceivable that laws passed to effect such environmental “taxes” might make corporations (and citizens who barbecue on backyard grills or profligately use decorative natural gas consuming lamps and fireplaces) think twice about using fossil fuels.

Such a system might change behavior if, as economists hold, people are creatures of reason naturally unwilling to incur added costs. But what can we do about the unaccountability for war’s destruction of the environment and society? Victors try passing the costs onto the vanquished but we know what future enmity results from that (WWII born from the agreements following WWI).

I wouldn’t ask Americans who in truth came away relatively unscathed from WWII and who know only the devastation they can visit on others with impunity (see Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.). The nation as a whole picks up the tab and figures it into the costs of an unquestioned military-industrial-congressional complex. Noteworthy is the fact that the Department of Defense is the only body of government which cannot be audited year after year despite laws mandating it should be. 

These costs, including the opportunity cost of things which could have been done but for the war and war provisioning, however severe they may be, pale in comparison to the damage we inflict on our moral selves and on those with whom we fought. Together we each forsake the notions of civility, nobility, and intelligence to remake ourselves as mindless barbarians who know no limit to brutality in our quest for the good that we previously treasured. This tax falls upon us all. And we are expected from this depraved state to rise from the ashes to forge a new, more just, more lasting comity among the nations?

We have no choice anymore. Foreseeable conflicts will destroy us all. Better to turn from war altogether–even defensive war–than risk accomplishing our moral demolition. We can start with unilateral nuclear disarmament to demonstrate that we will threaten other nations no more and can ask other nuclear powers to follow our example. 

We can pull back from our present conflicts, bring our soldiers home, refit our aircraft carriers for international emergency service, step back from our worldwide military bases, destroy all chemical/biological/radiological stockpiles, and revise our public purpose to become a generous aid to nations in difficulty and remake ourselves to be nobler members of a courageous and hopeful community.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

20170502 There'll be nothing left to save if we first don't end war

Almost every comic's favorite standup, George Carlin delivered a wonderfully timed set on "Saving the Planet."*

George Carlin, whom I revered for many reasons, was an environmental skeptic. He’d joke, “Why worry about saving the planet? The planet is going to make it. It’s huge. It’s been around a lot longer than we have and it will be around a lot longer than we will.” But George was wrong.

We now face two certainly effective ways to end the planet: thermonuclear conflict and total environmental collapse. Either will summarily rid us of those tiresome buggers, humanity, who will decide which way wins (or loses).

Should we place all our dollars and hours into one big fight many fear cannot succeed? Aye, there’s the rub. People disagree massively on whether humanity can permanently end war. They offer, “At least we’ve had success on laws protecting air and water. Oh, yeah? Let them talk to any of Dump’s idiot cabinet. 

Like Rex Tillerson, economically, they know only one solution: Growth. Growth will save us. It has before. It will always save us. These are not farmers who let one third of their fields lay fallow in yearly rotation. They have no concept of the overgrowth which is poison.

Mine, fish, plant, speculate until the earth, the seas, the ground, the markets cease to yield anything of value—then take from your neighbor. Comics reproach, “Why did God put our oil under their sand?”

Now, as many have-nots comprehend how they came to have nothing, and desperately envision a future they will likely never see, countries of disappearing and depleted resources have nowhere to turn for relief than to the fictions of murderous dictators, who assure them of an abundance at least beyond death which they cannot deliver on earth. 

Is there a hope the wealth of the industrialized countries will be selflessly invested in such under-developed countries? Without establishment of an unprecedented reign of justice it won’t happen. In the past investment has occurred only in an extractive strategy as a political or economic colony. Consider most nations where oil has dealt them a “resource curse,” where companies made agreements to share profits with the government. 

How much of that wealth became Mercedes, Bugattis, and McLarens, for the families of the governors, Western educations and lavish homes for their playboy sons (but not daughters), and multiple palaces for themselves instead of schools and hospitals for their citizens, or worse, into paid bodyguards, armies with every weapon on the market? The severely oppressed will find a way to free themselves and they will remember who first helped produce their chains.

Today there are operative in this world too many maniacs, too many disputes, too many weapons of far too much destructive capacity, for us to conclude reasonable people can afford mounting two campaigns—one to save nature and one to prevent war? The risks almost guarantee there will again be wars of untold violence, destruction, maiming, and death.

This presentation then comes down to the question, “How do we want to die? Inhaling radioactive dust? Or starving, when no food can be grown, and dying of thirst because all the water is poisoned?” I can say this for certain: If we take no action first to end war, it will make no difference. There will be nothing left worth conserving.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c