The Peace Dividend: Could It Really Happen?

 

I came up with the Peace Dividend strategy over two years ago.  At the time, recognizing that the plan was -- to say the least -- very radical, completely unprecedented, totally outside-the-box, I thought that if it had even the slimmest chance of getting any traction, it was going to be a long and winding road to successfully "sell" and implement it.

To get the plan underway requires that we package peace in an entirely different way, that instead of only appealing to individual conscience, we target individual self-interest.

This is not meant to be cynical.  It's not that people don't care about suffering.  It's that most individuals care first about the suffering of those immediately around them, not that of those in far flung nations they can barely find on a map.

The Peace Dividend strategy is a bottoms-up, grass-roots approach especially targeting those on the bottom of our economy -- the 160+ million who are hovering around or are below the poverty line -- because these folks are most devastated by the economic impact of our war economy.

The Peace Dividend strategy is about letting citizens know what's really going on with the military waste and the endless wars, and making them very angry!  Angry enough to do something about it, certainly for their country, but most of all for themselves and their families -- those whose suffering they see every single day in the struggle for survival.

Such a citizen's "uprising" would be premised on generating a widespread, critical mass understanding that in terms of America's prosecution of wars, aggressive foreign policy, promoting militarism both overseas and here at home, we as citizens are "being lied to", we are victims of a huge scam, that the "system is rigged", that a bunch of "insiders" are running the show who couldn't care less what the general public considered important, what we as regular citizens wanted done.

Do "being lied to", "system is rigged", "insiders are running the show" sound familiar?

Trump's election as president, leaves little doubt that a large segment of the population, viewing our government establishment as a whole, do indeed believe those things.  It's obvious to anyone paying attention that everyday citizens are being taken advantage of, that we have been and continue to be had by a ruling elite, that they will suck every last drop of blood out of the American economy and us individually if we let them.

Therefore, I'm now convinced that if we as peace advocates make the case for the Peace Dividend with boldness and clarity, it is all but inevitable.  Yes!  It could really happen.

As rigorously documented in The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World, the military-industrial-security complex allied with a lunatic inner circle within our foreign policy institutions have perpetrated over the past two-and-a-half decades the most odious fraud in history.  This conservatively amounts to stealing $4.82 trillion of tax payer money.  We have every right to and should demand not only that the deception and theft immediately end, but that as victims of this swindle we as citizens be compensated.  We deserve and demand full reimbursement:  The Peace Dividend Refund.



I consider the beauty of my approach to voicing our outrage and asserting our rights as citizens is that it is entirely legal, based completely on the official facts published by our government, assiduously aligned with the Constitution -- therefore not able to be labeled insurrectionist or illegal -- and consistent with democracy based on government of the people, by the people, for the people.

I'm not going to condense a mercifully short but still 86-page-long book for this article. What I will do is give you the "big picture" so that you don't so casually dismiss the idea.

RECOGNIZE:  No current elected official will go along with the Peace Dividend proposal. They and their ruling class puppeteers will oppose it with every dirty trick in the book.

CONSIDER:  When everyday people understand that they've been ripped off, defrauded, bilked out of at least $4.82 trillion, there might be a little bit of anger out there.

ACKNOWLEDGE:  When everyday people realize they have the power to demand this fraudulently collected tax payer money back in the form of a $14,952 refund to each and every living citizen, they might just get a little excited.  In fact, if the word gets around, I predict they will immediately, forcefully, uncompromisingly demand their money back -- every last dollar!

Let's put this together. The VOTING public demands their Peace Dividend refund.  The incumbents cannot, will not even fake interest in giving in to such an outrageous demand. They will dodge and lie and rail against it.  The VOTING public sees this as more evidence that the "system is rigged", that "they are getting shafted", that they are again being had by the establishment blowhards who never do anything for everyday citizens.  Here we have the seeds, the tinder for a MASSIVE VOTER REVOLT.  We unite these angry, frustrated voters into a VOTING BLOC, rejecting business as usual -- fraud as usual! -- behind the demand of justice and fair compensation in the form of a Peace Dividend Refund.  As a result, the vast majority of corporate lapdog incumbents are defeated and replaced by OUTSIDERS who agree to go to Washington DC and put into law . . .

The Peace Dividend Refund Act of 2019!

Sound at all familiar?  Sort of the way an OUTSIDER got elected to president, via a voter revolt that basically said:  "Fuck you! We're sick of it. The hell with politics as usual."

Is this mere fantasy?  In these outlandish, ridiculous times?  Really?

I think it's pretty clear.  And it will especially true after Trump and the current pack of bloodthirsty, Wall Street/ruling class puppets in Congress totally muck everything up.

People are going to be ripe for revenge!  They'll want their money back, I guarantee you!

By the way, please take a few minutes and look at the way the Peace Dividend is funded.  You will note that it drives a lot of the very things on any sensible progressive reform wish list.  Meaning, the Peace Dividend is a watershed for revamping the way our government does business.  I would think that alone would make it worth the time to carefully study, with an open and alert mind, and some creative engagement.

I know that marching in the streets, getting clubbed, pepper-sprayed, manhandled and arrested, are good times and all.  But a lot of people are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet, and can't join in on the fun.  All the Peace Dividend strategy requires is that people look at it, then stand strong and united -- stick up for themselves and other good decent American citizens who have been getting the shaft -- then go into the voting booth and only vote for candidates who give us a legally-binding guarantee that they will go to Washington DC and do what needs to be done.

And even if a lot of folks have extremely demanding schedules -- thus are too busy to fly to Washington DC to attend a peace rally -- I'm confident most will find the time to deposit $14,952 in their bank account.  

How about you?


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



The Peace Dividend: Could It Really Happen?

Thought Experiment

 

Let's say that you spend $20 on two fifths of whiskey, get so drunk that you have a horrible automobile accident, hitting a school bus, killing over fifty elementary students, causing serious injury to several others.  Three of the children who survived are now quadriplegics, two others have permanent brain damage, a number are disfigured because the bus caught on fire, and they couldn't get out in time.  Moreover, enraged by your clearly irresponsible behavior, several of the parents, solid members of the NRA -- thus well-equipped with assault weapons and handguns -- have vowed to avenge the death and crippling of their children.  You find yourself being hunted down and must be on the alert at all times for a potentially lethal attack.

Now let's imagine that through the magic of quantum theory and Einsteinian relativity, we could take you back to before this entire incident.  You have that same $20 in your hands.  You're given a choice.  You have full knowledge of what will happen if you buy the whiskey but you have an option:  You can walk up to a complete stranger and hand him the $20.

To make it interesting, let's say the stranger is a bum.  Let's say that from all appearances the guy is not employable, lives hand-to-mouth on what he can panhandle.  It is also easy to imagine he will spend the $20 on cigarettes and beer.

Knowing what will happen if you keep the $20 for yourself -- the whiskey, plowing into a school bus, mangling a bunch of innocent kids, creating enemies who now want to kill you -- would you hand the $20 to the bum?

Since all of the good people who visit my website are the most intelligent, rational, decent and sensible humans on the planet, I will assume to a person that all of you would opt to hand the $20 over to the bum.  Not only would you be sparing yourself a monumental amount of grief, and a stain on your conscience from which you might never recover, I have no doubt that the warm bubbles of Good Samaritanism would fill you with giddy abandon, a tactile bonanza for your good sense and generosity.  What a splendid feeling!  Why, it would be better than a kick-ass dose of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors!

So what if the guy is a bum.  A lot of people never find their groove.  That $20 will make him feel like he won the lottery.  He can spend it on whatever he likes.  It's really none of your business, right?  And it's not like you haven't made some bad choices at one time or another.  What about that time-share you bought in the Bahamas that turned out to be a shed for garden tools?  Let him buy some cigarettes, a Hustler magazine, and Wild Horse.

Alright.  Now through the magic of Blog World -- where anything can happen because the person writing the blog can make up whatever he wants and being somewhat disconnected from reality or just plain nuts is no barrier as long as he can afford the $27.95 a year for an internet domain -- let's say YOU are suddenly in charge of the entire federal budget.

Now you don't have just $20 to spend or giveaway.

You have $1.16 trillion dollars!  That's the total discretionary federal budget for 2016.

Here's the choice.  Do you continue to spend the majority of the money on defense, buying unnecessary junk, building and maintaining military bases -- the U.S. already has close to 1000 in 143 countries -- starting wars, bombing nations into complying with our agenda, killing tens of thousands of innocent people, spreading even more terrorism across the planet?  Do you inflict carnage and suffering on undeserving citizens in distant countries, blowing up not just school buses, but whole schools, hospitals, villages, whole cities?

Or do you give some aid and comfort to those who for one reason or another have fallen on hard times here in the U.S.?

Despite the putative recovery from the 2008 crash, despite America still being by far the wealthiest country in the world, despite having the largest economy in the world with a whopping GDP of $18.56 trillion, there are some 45 million Americans living below the poverty line.
There are over 500,000 homeless people in America!

Does that compute?  Over a half million human beings, many of them children, without a place to live in the richest nation in the history of the world?

Just considering the enormous amount of waste the direct result of Department of Defense incompetence and skewed priorities, it seems obvious something could be done about this.

The $1.5 trillion which is being spent on the biggest boondoggle in military history, the F-35 fighter jet, could push every single one of the 45 million poor above the poverty line for at least the next five years.

The $1.0 trillion which is being allocated to upgrade our already excessive nuclear arsenal, which currently has over 7,000 nuclear bombs -- enough to destroy the entire planet forty times over -- could put every homeless person in a $1,000,000 mansion and give them $50,000 to live on every year for the next twenty years.

Is this so outrageous?  The idea of "helicopter money" to the homeless?  Helping those folks who struggle every day to make ends meet pull even with the rest of us?

Finland is right now testing out the idea of a guaranteed minimum income for citizens who are now unemployed, a no-strings-attached, tax-free stipend of $630 per month.

Yeah, some of those homeless and poor people might not be employable.  And a few might buy beer and a Hustler magazine. 

But the truth is most of them will feed their kids and replace the bald tires on their car.

I'm not suggesting we give million-dollar mansions to every homeless person.

The point of this article is to put things in perspective.  We hear these figures bandied about all of the time.  $3 trillion for the Afghanistan war.  Another $4 trillion for the Iraq war.  Figures so mind-boggling, it's almost impossible to wrap our heads around them.

Can anyone out there say with a straight face we can't find some money in the vast wealth of the U.S. of A. so that everyone can have at bare minimum a decent life?  So that we can be proud of our country and the way it treats its citizens, especially its most vulnerable?

We can do whatever we decide to do.  That's what a democracy is, if we still have such a thing in America anymore.  It's a matter of getting over the brainwashing we have been subjected to all of our lives.  It's a matter of reconnecting with the values which allegedly are the foundations for our Christian nation.  Granted, Jesus wasn't a U.S. citizen but it seems a lot of people here claim to align with his teaching.  Does this sound familiar?

“Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” - Matthew 25:34-36

So, returning to our "thought experiment" . . .

Does the comparison of America's leadership to an inebriated driver plowing into a school bus full of children hold up? 

Is there any doubt?

Our foreign policy has the U.S. military careening across the planet spreading death and destruction, chaos and fear, violence and terrorism.  The whole bunch -- Obama, Biden, Carter, Clinton, Power, Rice, Nuland, Kerry, Clapper -- are drunk on power.  Yes, they are drunk on their sense of entitlement and destiny.  They are drunk on psychopathic fantasies of conquest and empire.  They are drunk on delusions of becoming deities.

And a school bus of innocent maimed and dead school kids, however horrifying and tragic, is small potatoes compared to the tens of thousands murdered, mutilated, crippled, driven from their homes, subjected to the worst possible conditions, by U.S. military aggression over the past 15 years, with the fraudulent War on Terror, pursuit of regime change, and wholesale destruction of nations which posed no threat to the U.S. or its citizens.

Yes, these lunatics are DUI alright.  They are driving America and the world to the brink of destruction, under the influence of greed and profit-seeking by the defense industries and a fanatic loyalty to the bogus pseudo-ideology of neoconservatism, a brain-eating, morally debilitating virus spread by sociopaths like Robert Kagan and Paul Wolfowitz.

So there's the choice.  Help some people who need help.  Or continue to let the crazies get behind the wheel of the mightiest military machine in history so they can perpetuate the destructive rampage that makes the U.S. the greatest threat to peace in the world today.

I titled this piece Thought Experiment.  But in reality, this is no cerebral exercise at all.
Because when you step into the voting booth on November 8th, you will have this choice or some version of it staring you in the face.  Every decision you make is another iteration of this choice.  Who you choose as your congressman, who you select as your senator, who you vote for to become president.  Their priorities become your priorities.

No one who has read even a handful of my articles will have any doubt about where I stand on the election.  I believe everyone who has regularly breathed the toxic brew of cronyism, self-serving lies, and monomaniacal propaganda, which currently permeates our nation's capital, must go.  We cannot make progress without complete and total regime change in Washington DC.  A clean sweep!  But I'm extreme that way.  I keep thinking we can have a government which truly represents the people, looks out for their best interest, one which puts the enormous wealth and resources of the U.S. to proper use, promoting the general welfare of its citizens.  Realistically, for starters that would require kicking our addiction to war and then becoming the world's greatest purveyor of peace.  Without that, we can never escape the moral and financial bankruptcy which will inevitably destroy our nation, if not the entire world.

Just remember.  There's a reason why America is one of the most feared, and increasingly hated, reviled, and targeted nations in the world.  There's a reason why the world is in the screwed-up state it's in.  And if you return the same people to office who caused this mess, then you become part of the reason too.

It doesn't have to be this way.  We don't have to have perpetual war.  We don't have to live under the thumb of the rich and powerful.  We don't have to be the victims of grotesque wealth inequality.  We don't have to sit back and watch as our country is looted and our democracy becomes a standing joke.  We don't have to march to the constant beat of war drums and drink the Kool-Aid of ultra-nationalism and exceptionalism.

Which America will you choose?

November 8th.  Voting is not a thought experiment.  It's the real deal.

By the way, as noted in the fine print on the image at the head of this article, that is an unretouched photo of contiguous rich and not-so-rich neighborhoods in Santa Fe, NM.  Bernie Sanders made wealth inequality central to his recent presidential campaign.  People responded to his message for good reason.

It's not just embarrassing.  It's unacceptable.  It's immoral.  It's unconscionable.

It's un-American!

Maybe we can't all live in mansions.  But the poor and homeless certainly deserve better.

Let's spread the wealth around a bit, eh?  We begin that with peace in the world and peace right here at home.  Peace with one another.  Peace with our own souls.

Does this make me a socialist?  A hippie?  A peace-and-love Pollyanna?




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



Thought Experiment

Bulging Waste Line

 

I am not anti-government.

What follows is not an argument for reducing government.

It is evidence that we need . . .

Good government.

Smart government.

Honest government.

Visionary government.

Representative government.

The following is hardly an exhaustive list. But let me just offer some examples and some numbers on vast, incomprehensible, mind-numbing, breathtaking, destructive, possibly suicidal waste by government misadventures and boondoggles over the past few decades.

I am focusing on defense squandering and pursuit of unnecessary war.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, pictured at the top of this article, has been judged by many knowledgeable military analysts as the largest boondoggle in the history of the world. It is plagued with design flaws and technical problems. So far it has cost nearly $400 billion and total outlays to bring it into full production and implementation are projected to exceed $1.5 trillion.

The Department of Defense spent $40 billion between 2001 and 2014 on a missile defense program called Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System. It has been a complete flop. 

Another missile defense fiasco called X-Band Radar, a floating sea-based system, wasted $10 billion of taxpayer money. This was a project of the Missile Defense Agency, which still gets funded $8-10 billion annually, despite producing practically nothing of value.

At the end of 2014, Congress allocated funds for programs the Pentagon didn't even want:

• $1.46 billion for fifteen EA-18G Growler electronic warfare planes
• $1 billion to begin work on an additional San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship
• $479 million for four additional F-35 fighter jets (bringing the total number funded to 38)
• $341 million to modernize twelve Apache helicopters and nine Black Hawk helicopters
• $200 million for an additional Joint High Speed Vessel ship
• $155 million for twelve additional MQ-9 Reaper drones
• $154 million for an additional P-8A Poseidon Navy surveillance aircraft
• $120 million for M1 Abrams tank upgrades
• $150 million for medium and heavy tactical vehicles

Let's up the ante a bit. Look at this chart.


The U.S. has spent $1.5 trillion so far fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mind you, both of these wars were completely unnecessary. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And the Taliban offered to turn over to us Osama bin Laden, who was on a dialysis machine in Kandahar, if we didn't bomb them. So we bombed them!

Analysts are predicting that when all of the ancillary expenses are added in, including the interest on the money we borrowed to fight these two bogus wars, the combined total cost will be $4-6 trillion.

Now to add insult to injury, I'll take this a step further.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, Americans were promised a peace dividend. With the Cold War competition over, we could now reduce the defense budget and devote more of our tax dollars to those domestic items which would make life for everyone in the country better __ schools and libraries, parks, community and infrastructure investment, better education, recreational facilities, maybe child care services, improved health care.

The peace dividend never happened. For 16 of the 24 subsequent years, military spending increased. In fact over two-and-a-half decades, the U.S. spent over $2.5 trillion beyond the level of military spending in 1992.

$2.5 trillion!

Instead of us getting a peace dividend, defense allocations went up __ way up __ adding enormously to the national debt and cutting short all of those wonderful things that were supposed to happen since we were entering a new, more peaceful phase of our history.

Interestingly, the more we spent on military, the more conflict and war there was.

You have to wonder if this was a mere coincidence.

Now with the military budget more than twice what it was in 2000 __ and this is just the official military budget which doesn't include a mind-boggling assortment of black budget allocations and defense spending tucked away in other departments __ we live in a more dangerous world than ever, with whole countries destroyed, jihadists, like ISIS, the Nusra Front, al Qaeda rampaging from one end of the world to the other, and a whole multitude of crises brewing in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Africa, and the South China Sea.

Not surprisingly, the U.S. is being called the Empire of Chaos in some parts of the world. Recently, in an international survey by WIN and Gallup, America easily won the #1 spot as “the greatest threat to peace” on the planet.  China and Pakistan were a distant second and third.  Yaaay!  Go America!

We are without any doubt militarily the most powerful nation on Earth, arguably the most powerful nation in history.

We already spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined!

With all of this military might, we have lost every single conflict __ except one which could have been won by a high school soccer team __ since World War II.

The obvious question is . . .

What drives this extraordinary squandering of taxpayer dollars?

Actually . . . that's easy.

The defense industry in its relentless pursuit of profits building a lot of junk that doesn't work; the misguided neocon agenda of Congress and the White House commending the purchase of a lot of weapons we don't need; the hunger to be the preeminent power in the world; the paranoid preoccupation of the security agencies with the potential for terrorist attacks from both within and from outside our borders; our bombing-is-the-only-solution foreign policy which creates far more enemies than it destroys; our sociopathic infatuation with American exceptionalism which creates resentment internationally and makes us the easy-choice target for aggression; the dubious distinction of being the biggest exporter on the planet of weapons and military hardware, which may bring in a lot of profits for the military-industrial complex, but perpetuates chaos and carnage, endless threats and conflict . . . all combine to destroy any sense of proportion, perspective, and fiscal responsibility.

The verdict . . .

America's obsession with the military is bankrupting us.

It will probably destroy us.


[ This originated at the author's personal web site . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


Bulging Waste Line