In order to sell war, you have to feed the public's appetite for entertainment.
Not satisfied with peddling its war propaganda through Hollywood, reality TV shows and embedded journalists whose reports came across as glorified promotional ads for the military, the Pentagon has also turned to sports to further advance its agenda, "tying the symbols of sports with the symbols of war."
The military has been firmly entrenched in the nation's sports spectacles ever since having co-opted football, basketball, even NASCAR.
This is how you sustain the nation's appetite for war.
No wonder entertainment violence is the hottest selling ticket at the box office. As professor Henry Giroux points out, "Popular culture not only trades in violence as entertainment, but also it delivers violence to a society addicted to a pleasure principle steeped in graphic and extreme images of human suffering, mayhem, and torture."
No wonder the government continues to whet the nation's appetite for violence and war through paid propaganda programs (seeded throughout sports entertainment, Hollywood blockbusters, and video games) what Stahl refers to as "militainment" that glorify the military and serve as recruiting tools for America's expanding military empire.
No wonder Americans from a very young age are being groomed to enlist as foot soldiers even virtual ones in America's Army (coincidentally, that's also the name of a first person shooter video game produced by the military). Explorer Scouts, for example, are one of the most popular recruiting tools for the military and its civilian counterparts (law enforcement, Border Patrol, and the FBI).
No wonder the United States is the number one consumer, exporter and perpetrator of violence and violent weapons in the world. Seriously, America spends more money on war than the combined military budgets of China, Russia, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy and Brazil.
America polices the globe, with 800 military bases and troops stationed in 160 countries. Moreover, the war hawks have turned the American homeland into a quasi-battlefield with military gear, weapons, and tactics. In turn, domestic police forces have become roving extensions of the military - a standing army.
We are dealing with a sophisticated, far-reaching war machine that has woven itself into the very fabric of this nation.
Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhaul.
Eventually, all military empires fall and fail by spreading themselves too thin and spending themselves to death.
It happened in Rome - at the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise.
It's happening again.The American Empire with its endless wars waged by U.S. military service people who have been reduced to little more than guns for hire - outsourced, stretched too thin, and deployed to far-flung places, to police the globe is approaching a breaking point.
The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes, and mounting death tolls.
This is exactly the scenario President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against when he cautioned the citizenry not to let the profit-driven war machine endanger our liberties or democratic processes. Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.
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