War Is a Racket
With apologies to Smedley Darlington Butler
Greetings, fellow sociopaths who are “citizens” of the United States!
We are getting along nicely here in the second quarter of the second year of the TACO administration.
By which I mean we are not on the receiving end of any missile or drone attacks, unlike those poor people in far off lands whose civilizations are threatened with annihilation.
It saddens us to see their plight, but as part of our program of “strategic sociopathy” we must carry on with our lives.
Have you called your Congress-person to demand action, and attended your No Kings rally? Perhaps this will absolve you a little of your complicity in mass murder.
Are you worried about your country committing war crimes?
All war is a crime, silly. There are no good wars, they only look that way sometimes when we win.
Are you worried about your country getting stuck in a Forever War? Weren’t we getting out of that game?
Don’t you know that history itself is a Forever War?
So shop as usual. Enjoy your streaming video. You can’t escape the trap you’re in anyway. Take comfort in knowing the rest of us are trapped here with you.
This is fine.
Are we winning the war? Are we losing the war? It’s so hard to know; you can easily find commentary online arguing for either conclusion.
Don’t you know that it doesn’t matter? Don’t you know that war is a racket1, and we simply need your tax dollars to keep it going?
The United States is at war.
The United States has always been at war.
The United States has vast resources and capital, and we can always create money for any desired purpose. You job is to keep the debt machine in gear.
Maybe you are in on the racket. More likely, you are simply paying your taxes like a good citizen, giving the insiders the leverage they need.
Shop as usual.
Enjoy your streaming video.
“To hell with war!” said Major General Smedley D. Butler, and he should know as he served in the U.S. Marine Corps his whole life. He wrote the book that explains how business interests profit from warfare and why they want to see it perpetuated, no matter the human cost. See: Butler, Smedley Darlington. War is a Racket. United States: Round Table Press, Incorporated, 1935.