Hate Crimes

Plus Eisenhower's final warning, the cost of forever wars and what Russian dressing has to do with anything...

(Eisenhower postage stamps. Source: Getty Images)

Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Poitou, France...

"Twenty-six of 32 four-star admirals & generals who retired from June 2018 to July 2023 were later employed in roles including executive, adviser, board member or lobbyist for companies w/ significant defense business." 

~ The Quincy Institute.

The big news today is the battle in Israel. It’s a real David vs. Goliath fight, with the US rushing to give Goliath any aid and comfort it can. The New York Times:

White House officials said President Biden told Mr. Netanyahu in a call on Sunday that military assistance is on its way to Israel and more will follow in the days ahead. 

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken sent a message encouraging ceasefire efforts. The message was quickly deleted. Apparently, war is a vote getter and money-spinner. Peace is not. Not in Israel. Not in the US.  

“God Take Me”

When Dwight Eisenhower left Washington in 1961, he warned the nation of a dangerous growth in the industry he knew best – the war industry. And then, having served his country and done his duty, he retired to the family farm in Pennsylvania. No consultant checks came his way. No emoluments from the weapons producers. No sinecures or lobbying gigs.

Occasionally, when the phone rang, he picked it up to find JFK on the line…or later, Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon. He gave advice when asked, but otherwise minded his own business – which consisted of painting, raising angus cattle, and spending time with his wife, Mamie.

We saw him during this period. We had gone to Walter Reed Hospital with our father to visit one of his WWII buddies. Walking down the hall, we spotted a man in a wheelchair coming our way. Our father had been out of uniform for at least ten years, but when he spotted Ike coming his way, he stood erect, his back to the wall, and saluted.

“It’s General Eisenhower,” he whispered, overlooking Eisenhower’s two terms as President of the United States of America.

When he was ready, in 1969, Ike asked the blinds to be drawn. Holding Mamie’s hand, he offered a prayer. “I want to go; God take me.” Moments later he was dead.

More than a half century later, retired generals rarely leave Washington. Instead, they join the payroll at think tanks or General Dynamics. The cancerous growth Eisenhower warned about, has metastasized and is probably terminal. America can only avoid a gruesome finale of war and inflation by cutting its military/empire spending. But it’s unlikely; hatred and war are too attractive.  

German Hot Dogs

Hate crime is a new thing in the annals of jurisprudence. The Ten Commandments, revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, and presented to the Israelites on two tablets of stone, made no mention of hate. Of all the bad things one might do, ‘hate’ didn’t make the top 10. 

Trying to eliminate hate is like trying to abolish sin itself; it’s not likely to be successful. And while the US government punishes hate crime, it also encourages hatred on a huge scale.

In the War Between the States, northerners were persuaded that almost any white male south of the Potomac was doing the devil’s bidding. Lincoln’s army invaded Virginia with the express purpose of killing all southerners who resisted yankee authority. They kept at it until one out of every four white southerners was dead.

In 1917, the US government stirred up so much hatred against German-Americans that people set Dachshunds on fire and changed their names to erase their teutonic heritage. At least one man in the Midwest was murdered when he was mistaken for a Hun. Posters distributed by the US Army depicted Germans as rabid, blood-crazed gorillas. And the Wilson Administration sent 10,000 armed gunmen to Europe, every day beginning in 1917, with orders to kill them.  

Modern hate-crime laws began with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1968.  Groups wanted to be included in a ‘victim’ class so as to get preferential treatment of some sort. Most recently, “Asian activists” in California sought victim status for low-caste Indians. The California legislature went along; but Governor Newsom vetoed it. NBCNews:

A bill that would have made California the first state to explicitly ban caste-based discrimination was vetoed Saturday by Gov. Gavin Newsom. After a year of advocacy and a month long hunger strike, progressive South Asian groups were disappointed — but said that the caste equity movement is just beginning.

Hatred on the Menu

Once a group achieves its halo, anyone who challenges it is by definition a ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’ or something-ist. In 2017, for example, in Charlottesville, Virginia, a confrontation occurred between people who wanted to take away Confederate monuments and those who wanted to keep them. It ended in one death. Donald Trump commented that “there were good people on both sides;” but by then hating the opposing group had become almost compulsory. After all, they were ‘white supremacists.’

While groups in the US seek victimhood at home, the Deep State/military/surveillance/think tank complex seeks victims.  

Most recently, it convinced many Americans that Russians are bad people and that it is okay to hate them. The Chinese…Iranians…North Koreans – politicians and the conniving press stirred up hatred against them all.  

Hatred manifests itself in absurd and deadly ways. Recall that during the invasion of Iraq, Americans stopped eating ‘french fries;’ we were supposed to hate the French because they wisely refused to join America’s ‘Coalition of the Willing.’ The greasy potato sticks became ‘freedom fries.’ Now, the French fries are back on the table. It’s the Russian dressing that’s off the menu.

World Socialist Website reported earlier this year:

New York Philharmonic will not perform Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony     

The New York Philharmonic Orchestra has quietly announced a complete change in the program … Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev was originally scheduled to lead the famous Leningrad Symphony by Dmitri Shostakovich. The Leningrad has been canceled and Sokhiev will not be on the podium. He is being replaced by James Gaffigan, in a program including a work by the Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov…     

What did Shostakovich do? He died in 1975. And what about the French fry? What was its crime?

But you don’t have to do anything to be a hate crime victim. You just have to be something – the enemy the war industry needs.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Joel’s Note: So-called “defense spending” by the United States in fiscal 2022 accounted for almost 40% of total global military expenditures, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). At $877 billion, the SIPRI’s figure includes discretionary and mandatory outlays by the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of State, and the National Intelligence Program.

That’s more than the next ten countries – China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan and the Ukraine – spend… combined. The good folks over at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation compiled this nifty graphic to help us visualize the magnitude of the spending relative to other nations.

None of this is to suggest that there aren’t heinous acts perpetrated around the world. As we type these words, there are dozens of ongoing conflicts claiming tens of thousands of innocent lives, ranging from drug wars, terrorist insurgencies, ethnic conflicts, and of course civil wars. The Geneva Academy lists six armed conflicts here in Latin America, seven in Europe, 21 in Asia, more than 35 in Africa and more than 45 in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.

The question is not whether bad things happen around the world… but whether a nation already swamped under $33.5 trillion in outstanding debt can afford to keep spending at its present rate. Take a look through the award spending page on the Department of Defense’s agency profile. You’ll see $71 billion in award obligations for the Dept. of the Air Force… $77 billion for the Dept. of the Army… $112 billion for the Dept. of the Navy. The Dept. of Logistics alone has logged over 2.8 million transactions this year.

Hundreds of billions of dollars here… hundreds of billions of dollars there. Pretty soon, you’re talking real money. If indeed there is a case for the world needing a “strong America,” as foreign policy hawks never tire of reminding us, surely bankrupting the nation is not the way to project strength abroad.