America’s Ingravescent Course
In medicine we diagnose before we treat
And sometimes this is no simple feat
In Beyond Vietnam (King’s greatest oration)
He bluntly codified the ills of our nation
Of racism and excess materialism, he spoke
In powerful words that do evoke
Images of injustice and corruption
But his words on militarism caused an eruption
In his movement and in the powers that be – and I surmise
This powerful speech led to his untimely demise.
For of the three ills militarism is the cancer
And the fundamental question we must answer
For it is the monster that’s devouring our souls
And depriving our citizens of our precious schools,
Social services, a clean environment, decent medical care
In truth it is robbing us of our virtue and humanity
And is leading us into a form of collective insanity.
The Military-Industrial-Complex is so pervasive
And the lobbyists behind it inordinately persuasive
That this horrible cancer is widely metastatic
Strategically distributed and never static
And backed by spineless politicians beholden
To the corporate few and their contributions golden
But how we control this abomination
Will determine the fate of our nation
For the military will constantly attract
An endless supply of enemies to attack
And thereby justify the trillions we spend
That will only provide us an inglorious end.
Clearly, we will end up thoroughly corrupt
And morally and fiscally bankrupt.
Howard P. Charman, MD 1-14-2012
Comment: Chalmers Johnson (Blowback Series Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire and Nemesis and the collection of essays, Dismantling the American Empire) states it succinctly. America can divest itself of its empire of bases and preserve the republic or preserve the empire and lose the republic through military or corporate dictatorship. Sheldon Wolin (in Democracy Incorporated argues that we already live in a state of Inverted Totalitarianism. We have no charismatic dictator, but the corporate state including the military industrial complex run the show behind the scenes. Lastly, and preferred by Johnson is fiscal bankruptcy. – where we go the way of Britain or the Soviet Union and are unable to support our war machine. In a similar vein, Johan Galtung (The End of the American Empire – And Then What?) predicts that the American Empire will fall by 2020, and that it will either descend into dictatorship, or be positioned to liberate the enormous creativity of the American people to be a positive force in the world –rather than the destructive force it is now.
6-10-2020
Comment: Wolin said we have no charismatic dictator. But Trump is well on his way toward dictatorship and a totalitarian state. HC