America’s Merchants of Death Are Making a Killing

W.J. Astore

The U.S. Version of “War & Peace” Is Simply “War”

Yesterday, the Merchants of Death Tribunal concluded with a verdict of “guilty” for all those U.S. dealers and exporters of weapons globally. Yes, the merchants of death are guilty as sin, even as they account for 40% of the global trade in deadly weaponry. Who says nothing is made in America today? We make plenty of things that go “bang.”

In our culture today, it’s considered “patriotic” to make loads of money, especially by selling guns. Just look at the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its enablers in Congress and all the gun companies domestically.

Assault weapons are highly profitable, much more so than pistols, and isn’t it all about making money? Thoughts and prayers to those innocents caught in the crossfire, of course. No worries–more “good guys with guns” will save us from the bad guys with guns.

If we Americans embrace (or, refuse to stop) the sale of firearms, especially dangerous assault weapons, domestically, indeed, if we fetishize it with ideas of potency and manliness, is it any surprise we brag of weapons sales overseas and our dominance of that trade? If we don’t care (or care enough) about the safety of our own children, why should we care about dead kids in Gaza?

Our culture is violent and sick, and until we reform it, there’s little hope of meaningful change.

That said, it’s encouraging to hear of a ceasefire in Gaza. Perhaps the Trump administration can achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine as well. The problem is there always seems to be another war or wars looming on the horizon for the U.S., more conflicts that America’s merchants of death can make a killing on.

America has the war but not the peace

If there’s an American Leo Tolstoy out there, he couldn’t write a book on this epoch with the title of War and Peace. Today’s version for America has a single-word title: War. 

Peace is rarely if ever mentioned in mainstream political discourse and culture. That’s not surprising. Roughly 60% of U.S. federal discretionary spending goes to the Pentagon, Homeland Security, nuclear weapons, and weapons shipments to places like Israel and Ukraine. President Biden once said: Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value. Looks like America values war very highly indeed.

Until we stop valuing and valorizing war and start embracing peace, the merchants of death will continue to thrive. Sure, they’re guilty, but so are we all if we keep feeding them our money and keep looking to them for “safety” and “security.”

One thought on “America’s Merchants of Death Are Making a Killing”

  1. And then there’s the news-media’s manufacturing of public consent for (profitable) wars and inevitable devaluation of civilian suffering/losses. … With each news report of the daily death toll from unrelenting bombardment, I feel a slightly greater desensitization and resignation. I’ve noticed this disturbing effect with basically all major protracted conflicts internationally ever since I began regularly consuming news products in 1987.

    Human lives in this world are consciously or subconsciously perceived as not being of equal value/worth, when morally they all definitely should be. They can actually be seen and treated as though they are disposable and, by extension, their suffering and death are somehow less worthy of external [i.e. our] concern, sometimes even by otherwise democratic and relatively civilized nations.

    The value of such life will be measured by its overabundance and/or the prolonged conditions under which it suffers; and those people can eventually receive meagre column inches on the back page of the First World’s daily news. I see it as external observers’ inhuman(e) devaluation, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level. It’s like an immoral consideration of ‘quality of life’.

    With news-stories’ human subjects’ race and culture dictating / quantity of media coverage of even the poorest of souls / a renowned newsman formulated a startling equation / justly implicating collective humanity’s news-consuming callousness / —“A hundred Pakistanis going off a mountain in a bus / make less of a story than three Englishmen drowning in the Thames.” //
    .
    According to this unjust news-media mentality reasonably deduced / five hundred prolongedly-war-weary Middle Eastern Arabs getting blown to bits / in the same day perhaps should take up even less space and airtime. //
    .
    So readily learned is the tiny token short story buried in the / bottom right-hand corner of the newspaper’s last page, the so brief account / involving a long-lasting war about which there’s virtually nothing civil; / therefore caught in the warring web are civilians most unfortunate / most weak, the very most in need of peace and civility. //
    .
    And it’s naught but business as usual in the damned nations / where such severe suffering almost entirely dominates / the fractured structured daily routine of civilian slaughter (plus that of the odd well-armed henchman) / mostly by means of bomb blasts from incendiary explosive devices / shell shock and shrapnel wounds resulting from smart bombs dropped for the stupidest of reasons. // ….

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