Until It Does
JUN 13, 2026
Sad to say it doesn’t seem to matter what we the people think about war and military spending.. President Trump doesn’t care that at least 70% of Americans are against the Iran War. Dick Cheney infamously replied, “So?” when he was told by a reporter that Americans opposed further escalation in the Iraq War.
It might matter what we thought if we lived in a democracy, but we don’t. We live in a kleptocracy, a kakistocracy.
First, we must recognize we’ve lost our say–that we don’t have a government that represents us–then we need to reform, re-create, or otherwise change that government.
Again, in the main, Americans don’t want militarism and wars–but there are other forces at work that do want these things, for their reasons, and they are in control.
Americans, I believe, don’t want more nuclear weapons. We’re getting them anyway. Read this article by Bill Hartung on the profiteers of Armageddon.
Americans, I believe, don’t want to spend between $1.5 trillion to $2.3 trillion each year on the Pentagon and war (read this POGO report on the true total U.S. military budget), but the warmongers and the military-industrial complex spend that money anyway.
As George Carlin said, the owners don’t care about you—at all! At all! At all! Your preferences, your needs, simply don’t matter. You have no say. To “our” leaders, the owners, inflation is good—just ask President Trump. Rising gas prices are great—for fossil fuel companies. Rising credit card balances and debt are healthy—for bankers.
We need to act. We need to change American-made destruction into American-made construction. We must become builders again, not destroyers.
The weapons they fund and build, the wars they prosecute, all the shredded human bodies, and for what? What morally abject fools the weapons makers and warmongers are. Why do we allow them to get away with it?
Until we regain our morality and our nerve, until we cast aside the kakistocrats and kleptocrats ruling us, we will remain stuck in the malaise of mindless militarism and endless war.
Withhold your consent. Run for office yourself. Organize and protest. Talk to your neighbors. Even write a blog. Whatever you can do to derail the war train rushing toward Armageddon is a good thing.
And don’t ever give up.
Bracing Views 
Bless you Bill. Your courage is contagious and I hope more US citizens are inoculated! Thinking, wanting and hoping for change will not bring it about. Putting our bodies and voices out front publicly is vital. (“Courage” has it’s roots in the Latin “cor”, or HEART. To have courage is to take heart. From this, I extrapolate “love”. .. courage is love in action. Take heart. Take action.) And like you said… don’t give up!
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Throughout history, one can probably observe intervals at which revolution became necessary and inevitable. Some countries change governments like changing clothes, at least the cosmetic surface. Real, substantive change occurs far less frequently.
I wonder if calls for change and revolution have much utility anymore. Concentration of power and restraints on the public are now so egregious that, even in a locked-and-loaded culture such as the U.S., it seems like a big step up from fighting city hall to fighting the Federal govt.
My expectation is that industrial civilization, a true globe-spanning behemoth with a variety of political styles all converging on authoritarian kleptocracy, will eventually collapse under its own corrupt weight and inability to deliver lives worth living to the masses. Already demographics indicate people nearly everywhere are voting with their bodies, lowering reproduction well below replacement rate.
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If I understand you correctly, I agree with the notion that simply “changing governments” is an old, tired answer. The changes that will put us on a brilliant course are changes of heart and mind. A fundamental paradigm shift. When we recognize, when we see, that we are all fundamentally brothers and sisters, we will conduct ourselves very differently. When governance springs from that understanding, it will be just and kind. This is not a pie-in-the-sky abstraction. It is the only way to peace on this little ball of earth.
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