The 7 Choices Left to the US Military-Industrial Complex

FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE: Since 2002 the US government has presided over one of the most dramatic financial bubbles of all time: the bubble of the military-industrial complex. (A few will remember that Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans about this in 1961.)

This bubble, like all others, will pop, and it looks to be deflating right now. The amounts of money that have been spent in the past decade can only be characterized as obscene. But the point that really matters is this:

Military spending is just part of the bubble.

In addition to the military complex, we have a massive intelligence complex.
Not only that, but we also have a massive law enforcement complex. The Department of Homeland Security has given them at least $34 Billion in the past several years, on top of their take from local taxes, state taxes, fines, seizures, and other Fed money.
Take a look at these graphs. First, defense spending:

Then, intelligence spending, or as close as I’ve been able to get to real numbers:

Lastly, War on Drugs spending, which we’ll use as a proxy for overall law enforcement spending (numbers that are more difficult to acquire):

Needless to say, this multi-headed beast is huge, requiring oceans of money… and it’s about to have its rations cut. Actually, that may be why they’re so hot for a war in Syria – they need to goose spending again, and quickly.

Power Corrupts, but Arrogance “Stupidizes”

Yeah, I know that word’s not in the dictionary, but it should be.
These agencies are drunk on power and stupid on arrogance.
There’s no other way to describe a situation where the intelligence and law enforcement branches of this beast have been waging a war against the American people for the last few years.
Think of the endless search for “domestic terrorists,” the sickening NSA spying on everyone, and the 135 SWAT team raids per day in America. Apparently it has never entered their minds that people might eventually resent being abused.
It’s also useful to understand that “intelligence agency” is the same thing as “secret service,” and very little different from “secret police.” They’ve had secret courts for some time, after all.
I won’t even talk about the rampant corruption that runs through all of these departments; you can either trust me on that one or not.
And this situation reaches all the way to local cops. I had a conversation recently with a young man who recently completed a stint with the US Marines and didn’t know what he wanted to do next. At one point, he said that he thought about being a police officer (an easy fit for a Marine), but he rejected the idea.
“Why?” I asked.
“Cops are bullies,” he responded.
And indeed they are. They lie all the time, they intimidate people all the time, and they treat everyone as a violent perp. (Except if you’re rich or politically connected, of course.) Like the rest of the military-industrial complex, they are out of control.
There used to be cops who were exceptions to this young man’s “bully” statement, but they have been vanishing rapidly. Cops are routinely taught to intimidate and lie.

What Dooms Them

So, while things look absolutely horrible at the moment, the rug is being pulled out from underneath these wastrels.
The issue here (as it so often is) is fiat currency. The money for all of this War Welfare has NOT come from taxes. Instead, it has come from deficits, a.k.a. money printing. The problem is, the money printing game is sputtering. And without a strong money printing program, future increases in military spending will have to come from increased taxes – and there simply isn’t any more to be taken.
American workers already have about half their money taken from them. The now-denuded middle class is surviving on food stamps, disability payments, and a dozen other programs that dish out federal money. They’ve undergone a long, hard fall, from working machines to working government programs.

Their Choices

The military-industrial-intelligence-law enforcement complex has only a few choices left in front of it. (Aside from rational things, like giving up their immoral and abusive game.)
Those choices include:

1. Find a way to legitimately juice the economy. (Good luck.)
2. Make people want to be poorer. (Again, good luck.)
3. Act like Stalin and terrorize your populace openly. (Americans still have guns.)
4. Create a really, really scary foreign devil. (A tough sell these days, but not for lack of trying.)
5. Create an iron-clad, world monetary system and government. One that can feed them no matter what. (Probably requires a nuclear war first.)
6. Create a truly scary war, with piles of dead people in US cities. Then folks will be frightened enough to hand over the rest of their money.
7. Down-size: Work with their politicians and bankers to dominate only the major cities, the major corporations, and those who will live as dependents to the system. Abandon most of the rest and stop meddling in all the world’s affairs.

The one other possibility for them is to convince the Fed to print faster and damn the consequences. And they may choose that option first, since it would allow them to kick the can just a little bit further down the road.
But once that’s done, they’ll be right back to these seven choices.
Paul Rosenberg
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