Politics Has Ruined The Ability of Many to Think Rationally

Can America today afford to be the military power it was? No

By JIM PURCELL

Politics and militarism have become a haven for people of limited intellectual capability today, at the expense of the greater society.

Science has become politicized by Conservatives, just as economics have become politicized by Liberals. And, what is lost is amazing, immense. As the United States, we, as a people, should be leading the world in scientific innovation, not to mention manufacturing and industry. It is a combination of Conservative and Liberal politicians that created the catastrophe that is the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Meanwhile, the notion that the United States has either the moral authority or the inherent mission to be a global policeman must be addressed once and for all if this nation is going to progress -- or be left like some antiquated ship foundering at sea. Any nation that acts under the impression that it is a global policeman must dedicate vast sums of its spending to militarism. Yet, for a nation-state that does not have its own organic manufacturing capability to pursue military adventurism is fiscal suicide and lacks any kind of linear thinking about it.

Americans used to accomplish great things.

The greatest and most devastating change to the United States happened in 1994, when NAFTA went into effect. It changed the atmosphere of the United States, it cracked the earth beneath our feet. Most people throw around the phrase "NAFTA" and leave it unexplained. I will not.

NAFTA was an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico and the United States. It created a trade bloc in North America. NAFTA has two supplements: the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation. And, the first supplement of NAFTA hobbled American Industry and business and the second utterly decimated the American working family.

If America cannot be the manufacturing and industrial giant it was in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, then it cannot be the international military presence that it was during those eras. Economics is invariably linked to a nation's military capabilities and obligations. The idea that someone would build a military expansion program that is dependent upon foreign factories, foreign parts and foreign workers is patently insane. Despite this, it is a fact today that the United States' most ambitious military budget to date, in 2017, is based almost entirely on foreign manufacturing.

Why? Why would Americans undertake the greatest stupidity it has since embarking on its ill-fated and totally unsubsidized war in Iraq? Politics. Politics should be reduced to a four-letter word today. Many ordinary citizens have become so indoctrinated in political thought that dogma operates large portions of their lives. When the world is viewed through a lens, regardless of what that lens is, then it is colored by that lens.

After Japan's surprise attack on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt roused American passions to save a world being threatened by the governments of Japan, Italy and Nazi Germany. During the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy ignited the imaginations of a generation by daring Americans to conceive of a man going to the moon. Neither Roosevelt or Kennedy were asking people to become Democrats. They were not trying to sway public opinion or get them to drink some beverage laced with political poison. They were daring people to achieve things.

In one case, to save a world, and in another to move beyond it.

Politics is the death of thought. People who are not our best or brightest gravitate to politics because it is a safe haven for those who want to move as a herd. They follow people and not issues, and they believe in doing as they are told by certain leaders that are endowed by a given herd with positive qualities that are not actually there. In the cases I just pointed out, where President Roosevelt motivated Americans for one thing, and President Kennedy another, I do not bring them up because, personally, either Mr. Roosevelt or Mr. Kennedy were any gold-standard of personal conduct.

Franklin Roosevelt was a good president. He knew how to stimulate an economy and he sure as heck knew how to win a world war. But, he was imperial in his presidency, and that cannot work as an institution that can be accepted in his role within a democratic republic. In fact, a two term limit on the U.S. presidency was instigated by his political ambitions, and rightly so. Meanwhile, Mr. Kennedy had many shortcomings personally. He was a playboy, and the American presidency is not the institution that can accept that kind of behavior from him or anyone else. Still, these very fallible men were able to accomplish great things with their power.

The environment and regulation has been a Liberal cause that has spurred Big Business outsourcing factories.

Today, the United States is beyond a crossroad. We have moved past that. Americans are in a place that is dwelling in its own worst-case scenario. We have no manufacturing anymore. We have no industrial complex anymore. We have out-sourced everything as an expedient to line the pockets of Big Business and it has bankrupted the American society for the sake of the top 1 percent of earners in this country. This move is not able to be explained sensibly. So, Conservative Politics attempts to wrap stupidity in a flag and call it nationalism. Meanwhile, Liberal philosophy has become so 'green' that it has threatened, with regulation, the very manufacturing that sustained this nation for more than 200 years of its development. Yes, some concessions must be made to abate very poor health practices -- but this should be tempered with some sense. The United States is not some remote village that resides along the Amazon River in South America. Not everything can be done, nor should be done, without leaving some carbon footprint or other, let us face this.

So, Conservatives yammer on about school prayer and Liberals kvetch about automobile emissions and, the whole while, our society quietly dies from a lack of industrial and manufacturing jobs. Unwilling to accept the fact that we have devolved to neither an agrarian, a manufacturing or an industrial economy, Americans choose to ignore this and continue to tell ourselves the lie that we are still in a position to play world policeman, when we are not.

Can America continue to be the world's policeman? No.

The United States can no longer afford to subsidize foreign governments, no matter how 'beloved' as they might be, it cannot afford to keep tens of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines scattered throughout the world, it can no longer afford to embark on big unilateral military escapades. Yet, this year, more is being spent on the American military than ever before. And, it is not a reaffirmation of our values but a reaffirmation that we are not able to grasp the facts about who America is today and what it is actually able to do and not do.

Someone needs to send every American the memo -- we are not the economy of our forefathers and, because of that, we cannot be the nation they were. Want to change it, turn back the clock? Well, so do I. Big Business would hate having to give up its cheap foreign labor markets, though, and that is why it will never happen. So, let's live in the world as it is and not try to convince ourselves it is something it is not.

In years gone by, and I am referring to the latter part of the 20th century, our public schools offered a thorough and efficient education for children. Today, our public schools do not turn out students who are able to compete with other youngsters in the First World. I blame Conservatives for that, because where one's own religious beliefs interfere with offering scientific educations to children then we have gone too far in being permissive about this dynamic. In the home, one's religion can be absolute if one likes, but to the point where it interferes with delivering science curriculum then it has gone too far. And, it has gone too far.

Being 'political' is easier than learning things. Limited people substitute politics as religion. To a point politics informs, but without a thorough, well-rounded education about the world, politics becomes a trap where the various cows in the herd tend to 'moo' similar sounds without knowing what 'moo' means. This is the case today, right now. And, it is why we are not currently the nation we once were.

Yes, America can rise again. But, frankly, our heads are so far up our collective backsides that I cannot see how anytime soon.