A few years back Representative Barney Frank coined an apt phrase for many of his colleagues: weaponized Keynesians, defined as those who believe “that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.”…. Republicans — who normally insist that the government can’t create jobs, and who have argued that lower, not higher, federal spending is the key to recovery — have rushed to oppose any cuts in military spending. Why? Because, they say, such cuts would destroy jobs.
I’ve always wondered about those possessed of the mindset that building tanks and bombs is economic salvation, but building bridges and maintaining infrastructure is “pork.” There are Republicans, like Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), who still decry the 2009 stimulus as a wasteful failure, but warn that cutting defense spending would eliminate jobs and raise unemployment. So, the lesson here is simple, right?
BAD: Any spending that might accomplish something positive, in particular social programs designed to address social ills. It’s “SOCIALISM!!!”, don’tchaknow??
GOOD: Any spending that creates weapons and/or other highly efficient means of killing people.
If there’s one thing that so very quintessentially American, it’s the preference for building bombs over bridges. Never mind the hypocrisy clearly inherent in this attitude; Americans love things that go boom. Republicans REALLY love things that go boom. I don’t know; perhaps they’re compensating for certain embarrassing shortcomings, but they really do resent investments that produce long-term results. (That’s money that doesn’t go to blowing things up, right?)
Indeed. Spend money on some useful goal, like the promotion of new energy sources, and people start screaming, “Solyndra! Waste!” Spend money on a weapons system we don’t need, and those voices are silent, because nobody expects F-22s to be a good business proposition.
Military spending helps feed our definition of America as a place that will kick ass and take names if things get out of hand. These folks worship at the feet of Carl von Clausewitz: “War is foreign policy by other means.” If you can’t defeat someone by occupying the moral high ground and defeating them through diplomacy…well, guns and bombs are ALWAYS a great way to enforce your worldview, no? Solving foreign policy problems from a personal/social perspecitve is kind of touchy/feely, and the definition of success can be somewhat squishy. Blowing things up and rolling over an enemy militarily can be cause for some serious chest-thumping.
Cue Toby Keith singing “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue”….
Hey, Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list,
And the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist.
And the eagle will fly and it’s gonna be hell,
When you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell.
And it’ll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you.
Ah, brought to you, courtesy of the red, white and blue….
Oh, justice will be served and the battle will rage:
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage.
An’ you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A.
‘Cos we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way.
Kinda makes you want to roll over and blow the bejesus out of some defenseless Third World country, doesn’t it??
Yeah, we might not have the will to clothe you, feed you, or heal you…but we can sure as Hell turn your country into a smoking ruin. Kinda makes you proud to be an American, knowhutimean??
