The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex

In the latest issue of Duke Magazine (March-April 2012), there is an article (page 8) dedicated to a recent visit that the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey (a Duke alumnus--A.M. '84), paid to the University in Durham, North Carolina. The article notes that "At Duke, [Dempsey] studied English, and he counts poets William Blake and W.B. Yeats as important influences in his preparation for military leadership."

One wonders what Martin Dempsey could have possibly found in Blake or Yeats to "influence his preparation for military leadership."

Was it, perhaps, Blake's aphorism, "Art Degraded, Imagination Denied, War Governed the Nations" [Blake, Laocoon, c. 1820]?

As our academic institutions continue to aid and abet the slow suicide of American intellectual life and pander to the military-industrial-complex, one can only stand aside in bewilderment and tragic wonder.

The article also noted Dempsey's "wry sense of humor," on full display (according to the article's author) when he mused: "People say, 'How do you like [being the new chair]?' ... and I say, 'It's good. I have my own jet.'"

Yeah, that's wry alright. About as wry as Marie Antoinette's witticism, "Let them eat cake."

Some days it is difficult to absorb the sheer effrontery of life in these Misguided States of Amnesia.

Union Sundown

Dear Fellow Citizens of the Planet:

I would just like to take this opportunity to apologize to you all for the bleak future that the United States, a country of which I am a natural born citizen, is creating for all of us.

President Obama is a pathetic tool of the Corporatocracy and the Republican candidates are ALL, without exception, certifiably nuts.

The unholy alliance between the Christian Right and the Military-Industrial-Complex has combined to create Yahoo Nation. It is a recipe for inevitable disaster.

Here in Yahoo Nation, white people are scared to death of losing their privileges to people of color. And the threat to white privilege is a real one, only it's not coming from people of color. It's coming from the very rich white people who are robbing the white middle class and underclass blind while successfully manipulating them into racist and anti-muslim frenzies with their culture of fear.

In the early 1980's, Bob Dylan sang: "Well, it's sundown on the union/And what's made in the U.S.A./Sure was a good idea/'Til greed got in the way..."

He was protesting the dismantling of organized labor and with it the only real political leverage the average American had against the Corporatocracy. But nobody was listening.

Now we reap the whirlwind.

The Insanity Of U.S. Military Spending In One Chart

The Insanity Of U.S. Military Spending In One Chart

Afghanistan’s Latest My Lai

Afghanistan’s My Lai

The Rule of my Russian Shaykh

"... all compromise with institutions of which your conscience disapproves--compromises which are usually made for the sake of the general good--instead of producing the good you expected, inevitably lead you not only to acknowledge the institution you disapprove of, but also to participate in the evil that institution produces."

--Leo Tolstoy, 29th March 1898.