The Enabler From Heaven

syria attack2

“Like the Platters said so long ago, only you can make the darkness bright.” — Annapurna Tosca Sriramarcel

With 105 Cruise missiles costing about $1.4 million each, $147,000,000 was blown away with lots of innocent lives, and the whole shebang turned out to be a lovely payday for Raytheon. Especially in the context of all that hardware having to be replaced… after our latest abomination in Syria. Replaced ad infinitum, yes?

Parents, teachers, students, writers and citizens concerned with all of our underfunded realms — like health — need to get really angry about shelling out for the shelling of the absolutely innocent… elderly, mothers, fathers, children and others abroad. The hell-on-earth we make possible by ignoring huge horrors such as Raytheon, Bechtel, etc. is avoidable, of course. But decent folks just have to accept their responsibility for it all. Respond to the clear call for action… to end destroying what is irreplaceable.

Raytheon threatens to open a Pandora’s Box in the heavens, making a new arena for war with their advocacy for creating a Space Corps which is comparable to the Marine Corps. Lots of new excuses for diverting funds from the educational, health and other realms. But — also — lots of reasons for being scared to the bone regarding the potential for earthly annihilation.

Karl Grossman and T.J. Coles conclude their recent article on the militarization of space by saying, “it must be stopped.” [Pause.] Well, yes… but how exactly?

Just about every single person I know thinks the dynamic can’t be stopped, or lacks a plan for action which they can sink their teeth into, and have silently given up. Capitalism — through its sacred institutions — has simply convinced them that they have no agency to deal with our horrid momentum.

My friend, Bill Blum, one of the speakers whose speaking services I secured for a summit I produced in 2004, recently repeated the words he spoke about capitalism at that event:

“Capitalism remains the world’s pre-eminent system primarily because of military power combined with CIA covert actions. It’s that combination that irredeemably crippled socialist forces in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, Guatemala, Haiti, Ecuador, the Congo, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Chile, Angola, Grenada, Nicaragua, Bulgaria, Albania, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, El Salvador, etc., etc., etc.

We’ll never know what kind of societies would have resulted if these movements had been allowed to develop without US interference; which of course was the idea behind the interference.”

All of that is spot on, of course. But I think that at this juncture we can add something to that business about “military power combined with CIA covert actions”… and must — must emphasize — because Leftist writers are not addressing the issue. Which is that the average citizen’s morality contributes as much to our collective demise via capitalism as military forces and government agencies.

What can folks do to stop the likes of Raytheon from absorbing the lion’s share of the national lucre? They can stop consuming everything from Silicon Valley products to cucumbers from Chile, as if there’s no tomorrow, as if there are no social, health or other costs to consider.

To see what might happen if they no longer thought of themselves first and foremost. To test the waters  respecting what habits they should get rid of, what unquestioned routines they should demand that others alter. And so on… along those lines.

We don’t know what might be possible if we backed up from our present selves and started to, then, be able to really hold the horrible forces Blum cites to account, insist that they change their ways. Refused to support them.

The powers that be, though, know we’re on our knees in obeisance to our own addictions. [Pause.] What does that make us for their purposes, their Hell?

The Enabler from Heaven.

Richard Martin Oxman can be reached at [email protected].  This piece is dedicated to Maggie, and the author wishes to underscore that Bill Blum’s “We’ll never know what kind of societies would have resulted if these movements had been allowed to develop without US interference” above should remind the reader that he/she cannot know what can bloom… from watering different flowers. The impossibility of knowing what is possible is one of the great mysteries of the universe.

 

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