USA is a sinkhole: What’s worth fighting for?

“Now come on Wall Street don’t be slow, why man this war is a-go-go. There’s plenty good money to be made, supplying the army with the tools of the trade. Now come on generals let’s move fast, your big chance is here at last. Time you got out and get those Reds, because the only good commie is one that’s dead. You know that peace can only be won, when you blow ‘em all to kingdom come.”—Vietnam Song, Country Joe and the Fish, 1969

“Corruption is strangling the land. The police force is watching the people, and the people just can’t understand. We don’t know how to mind our own business, ’cause the whole world’s got to be just like us. Now we are fighting a war over there, no matter who’s the winner we can’t pay the cost. ‘Cause there’s a monster on the loose, it has got our heads into the noose. And it just sits there watching. America, where are you now, don’t you care about your sons and daughters. Don’t you know we need you now, we can’t fight alone against the Monster.”—Monster by Steppenwolf, 1969

First, reduce the masses ability to reproduce

A nation that refuses to take care of all of its mothers and all of its young children has no future.

“The United States was among just eight countries that experienced an increase in maternal death rates since 2003—joining countries including Afghanistan and El Salvador. . . . ’There’s no reason that a country with the resources and the medical expertise that the US has should see maternal deaths going up,’ said Dr. Christopher Murray, Director of Institutes for Health Metrics and Evaluation and a co-founder of the Global Burden of Disease. ‘The next step would be to examine local-level differences in maternal deaths to look for patterns and the drivers behind those patterns,’ reports Jennifer Abel writing in Consumer Affairs. Actually there is a very good reason why the maternal deaths are rising in the USA. Most American leaders really don’t care who in America lives or dies—or why—and neither does the bulk of the American population. The elected representatives are merely a reflection of the callous, hollow nature of a long warring republic.

Emergency preparedness is no longer just for the tornado or snowstorm but for the misery of austerity, job loss, and the aging relative with Alzheimer’s who must move home with the newlyweds because federal benefits have been cut, or, more likely, the diversion of more US resources to the nation’s national security apparatus and its defense industrial base. Mattress savings techniques are coming back.

If there were fully functional representative democracy in the USA—and with that a coherent US National Security Strategy that includes the health and welfare of its domestic infrastructure and its people—the USA would not be collapsing from within even as it stirs up mayhem, enmity and civil war nearly everywhere around the globe: Ukraine, Georgia, Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Egypt, Pakistan and Xinjiang (PRC) are home to scores of overt and covert US officials, if not activity duty foreign internal defense operators. Dozens of 501(c)3, not for profit, non-governmental organizations—funded directly by the US government or subsidized indirectly through federal tax exemptions—are a key part of the shape-shifting mix of American ideologues abroad that instigate/lobby for “democracy” in capitals around the world: The Open Society Foundations and the National Endowment for Democracy are two of the most well-known rabble rousers.

It is laughable that they proclaim as their mission “the teaching” of American values to foreigners. More’s the pity is the millions of US dollars being given to the usurper government in Ukraine to ensure a “free and fair” election in that country. President Obama says this: “The United States is contributing an $11.4 million package to support the integrity of the May 25 elections. These funds are being used to advance democratic processes—not to support a particular candidate or electoral outcome. These efforts include voter education programs, transparent election administration, effective oversight of the election process, election security and a redress of infractions, and a diverse, balanced and policy-focused media environment.” In short, American law firms, press relation groups and assorted consultants will be under contract to make sure the USA gets the outcome it wants in Ukraine. Some of those organizations that have done business in Ukraine are listed in the Foreign Agents Registration database. Wiley Rein and Tauzin Associates are among them.

Just what are those American values? Maternal death rates on the rise in 2014; 16 million children on some sort of food aid in 2014; 8.2 percent of children born below 2500 grams; 14 percent of Americans unemployed; and crushing debt loads for the bulk of students graduating from America’s colleges and universities. One would never know that the USA has severe structural issues with both its physical and mental infrastructure. Yet those problems are normally blamed not on American citizens/government but rather on the Russians, Climate Change, Immigrants, the Chinese, “unqualified American workers,” Big Government, and Welfare Moms.

Second, take away the people’s livelihood (but legalize pot first)

According to Work in America: Report of a Special Task Force to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (1972): “Our Nation is being challenged by a set of new issues having to do, in one way or another, with the quality of life. This theme emerges from the alienation and disenchantment of blue-collar workers, from the demands of minorities for equitable participation in “the system,” from the search by women for a new identity and by the quest of the aged for a respected and useful social role, from the youth who seek a voice in their society, and from almost everyone who suffers from the frustrations of life in a mass society. Rhetorical, ideological, and partisan responses to these issues abound. But truly effective responses are far more likely to be made if the obscure and complex sources of discontent are sorted out, and the lever of public policy is appropriately placed.

Atonie is a condition of deracination—a feeling of rootlessness, lifelessness and dissociation—a word which in the original Greek meant a string that does not vibrate, that has lost its vitality. Besides lending vitality to existence, work helps establish the regularity of life, its basic rhythms and cyclical patterns of day, week, month, and year. Without work, time patterns become confused. One recalls the drifting in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland: What shall I do. . . . What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do? When duration of unemployment has been prolonged, unemployed workers progress from optimism through pessimism to fatalism. Attitudes toward the future and toward the community and home deteriorate. Children of long-term unemployed and marginally employed workers uniformly show poorer school grades. There are so many unconscious and group needs that work meets that unemployment may lead not only to generalized anxiety, but to free-floating hostility, somatic symptoms and the unconscious selection of some serious illnesses.

Albert Camus wrote, ‘Without work all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.’ Our analyses of Work in America leads to much the same conclusion: Because work is central to the lives of so many Americans, either the absence of work or employment in meaningless work is creating an increasingly intolerable situation. The human costs of this state of affairs are manifested in worker alienation, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other symptoms of poor mental health. Moreover, much of our tax money is expended in an effort to compensate for problems with at least a part of their genesis in the world of work. A great part of the staggering national bill in the areas of crime and delinquency, mental and physical health, manpower and welfare are generated in our national policies and attitudes towards work.”

Third, create war and send the people to fight and die

Well come on all of you big strong men, Uncle Sam needs your help again. He got himself in a terrible jam, way down yonder in Vietnam. Put down your books and pick up a gun, we’re going have a whole lot of fun. And its 1, 2, 3 what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn, the next stop is Vietnam. And it’s 5, 6, 7 open up the pearly gates. Well there ain’t no time to wonder why, we’re all going die—Vietnam Song, Country Joe and the Fish.

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer. Reach him at captainkong22@gmail.com.