Garrisoning an Unsettled World

Nothing is happening, really. For all the activity – the presidential nomination campaign, a war in Afghanistan, a financial crisis in the EU/Greece and our own stumbling economy – none of this engages America as an existential threat or a promised land. Nothing is settled and at the same time there is no vision. Maybe we are waiting for the revolution to come to us.

We live in an unsettled world. "Unsettled" is the best word I can come up with. It projects neither revolution nor stability. Neither does it promise any direction or progress.

The American response to this unsettled world is to set up a garrison state. A garrison is, according to the dictionary, a permanent military installation. We are garrisoning our society, making it a military installation. The Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security stand ready to defend us against any and all threats. That is strange because we really don't have anything to be afraid of.

Internationally, there is no serious threat to the American status as the only military superpower. Even economically, the American economy is still the 800 pound gorilla, dominating the information age and the technological spinoffs of our military spending. We might be losing some ground, but we are not behind and not collapsing – despite Wyoming's consideration of a bill to prepare for the apocalypse..

The threats that could justify imposition of a garrison state, are just not there. Russia is still sitting on thousands of nuclear weapons but Prime Minister (soon to be President again) Vladimir Putin demonstrates all the imagination of the second-rate KGB agent he is. China, a more worthy adversary, has chosen to compete in commercial markets and space exploration, our strong points. The rest of the world still looks to the American economy as the market that sustains the whole globe. The world remains ready to lend us all the money we want at an effective zero rate of interest despite our burgeoning deficits and long-term debt.

The Arab Spring, Syria, Iraq and Iran may have unsettled the Middle and Near East but much of that results from our own meddling. The Middle East, even in it's worst scenarios, does not present a threat worthy of 10 carrier task forces. Men and women are dying in Afghanistan but that does not give that neglected war any discernible purpose. It is true that the nature of warfare is changing, becoming ever more remote with drones, cyber attacks and who knows what else behind our screen of secrecy. But that has got to be be cheaper than boots on the ground, aircraft carriers, atom bombs and F 35's. So why are we spending $700 billion a year, as much as the rest of the world combined, on our national defense?

Domestically we are doing the same thing: arming ourselves and garrisoning our communities for some unknown Armageddon. Local governments are taking huge amounts of federal money to set up black-helmeted, armored SWAT teams with 50 caliber sniper rifles and tank-like personnel carriers. The number of these SWAT teams has grown tenfold since 1980. Individual Americans have armed themselves with 65 million handguns. Why?

All of this expense and attention is crazy when there is no threat of war and violent crime is half of what it was in the 1990s. In movie land and the game world, it may all be glamorous and distracting but in the real world it is a stupid waste of attention and resources.

It is a paradox. Nothing serious is happening even as everything is up for grabs. All of the things we thought were settled are being doubted. The Republican nomination campaigns are the source of incredible absurdities that are met, first, with disbelief, then with pompous editorializing and, finally, laughter on Saturday Night Live. Nonetheless, the candidates persist in their game of "can-you-top-this." Gingrich promises $2 a gallon gasoline; Santorum gags on the separation of church and state; Ron Paul wants to abolish the Fed; and Romney insists corporations are persons. Maybe those guys are reason enough to be scared. But they shouldn't be because, basically, they are just theater.

All this fear of the ephemeral is cutting off debate on enduring issues. If we had a vision, we would be applying it to the reality of our poverty and injustice, our dysfunctional media, the perverted healthcare industry, the corrupt political party structures, the greed of corporations, the military-industrial complex, the domination of our economy by the financial sector and, of course always, our educational system. Then, we would be making history and not just letting it happen to us.

It is as though we think we can stop the world, call out the aircraft carriers and SWAT teams and take a timeout. The rules of history and revolution don't allow that.