What I want for 2017

I want my country back.

No, not the fabled country of 1950's Americana or Walt Disney's Main Street, USA. Not the bigoted, misogynist country that Trump supporters supposedly want. We don't need that one back, though in too large a part it's still here. It's the parts that have gone away that I mourn the loss of.

I want the country where George Washington told us to "avoid attachments and entanglements in foreign affairs." The one where we no longer must "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex" and it is no longer true that "War is a racket." The one where the White House does not believe that "(w)e're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

The one where the corruption of a major political party is more newsworthy than unsubstantiated allegations about "foreign influence." See also here. I would like to see all the "foreign influence" done by my country at the tip of a spear cease. I want it replaced by diplomacy. You know. That other thing besides dropping bombs?

The one where education is valued and deserves it. Where there is money for healthy lunches and none for metal detectors. Where we are taught to think for ourselves instead of being manipulated by psychology. The one where journalists aren't owned by six corporations, most with connections to the mat of corrosive crust that has grown at the top of our society.

I know. I know. All countries are corrupt. Ours no different. And the Military Industrial Complex at the time of the Civil War profited richly by selling goods to the government, sometimes to both sides. But there was a time when the military was called the War Dept. The Pentagon was supposed to be a temporary structure. When wars became unavoidable, you assembled an army, paid through the nose for shoddy equipment made by shysters and con artists, battled your enemies and won. Or lost. When the war was done, somebody won, somebody lost, everybody went back home. The war profiteers waited.

But it grew, like a cancer, into the Defense Dept. This meant the ungodly bleeding could persist. The Cold War was the Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex's Nirvana! Limitless gouging with no definition of when it ends! There was no success so there could be no failure! And the public bought it! We really do make our own reality. Dive into the trough, fellow piggies!

Well, as with any cancer, it ends when the host dies. Fair enough. At the very end it'll be: All guns, no butter! All swords, no plowshares! What a way to go!

I want my butter and my plowshares back.