Answering a Question from a Reader
JUL 10, 2026
Hello Readers: I thought I’d highlight an excellent question from a reader and my attempt to answer it succinctly. Please use the comments section to chime in.
Dear William, starting from the assumption that you are substantially right in your arguments, what I ask myself is why, from 1945 to the present day, there has never been a lasting reversal of course in the history of the United States, but only brief anti-war flare-ups against the foolish and bloody choices of military interventions abroad? I mean, what is it that we don’t know about the American people that justifies the MICC [military-industrial-congressional complex] always managing to assert its kleptocratic, racist, colonialist, supremacist, and megalomaniacal designs? I believe that the American people are mostly made up of good people, willing, respectful of family and clan values, and lovers of cooperative living together. There are totally different groups, but to my knowledge, they are strongly in the minority and substantially ghettoized. It is the presidents or politicians of the moment who open the doors to these groups of rowdies. So I ask myself: what are the main factors that determine the success of the MICC? I await your reflections to delve deeper into the topic. WR Rocco Santoro
Answer by Bill Astore
Hello Rocco: that is a very big question. Threat inflation by the MICC is part of the answer. So too is the fact that both political parties, Democratic and Republican, are right-wing, pro-war parties. See this recent article by Caitlin Johnstone:
Caitlin’s NewsletterIt’s Been Ten Years. It’s Time To Admit Bernie Sanders Was Wrong.
a day ago · 318 likes · 249 comments · Caitlin Johnstone
The power of propaganda is strong. Americans are told “our” troops are freedom-bringers. We’re taught we’re the exceptional nation, inherently good. We’re taught we’re not imperial.
As Ike said, only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel and control the MICC, and we are neither. The MICC is shrouded in secrecy, and Americans in general are not knowledgeable about our own history, let alone what the MICC has been up to for the last eighty years (since the end of World War II).
Those who seriously question it, and especially those who seriously resist it, are denounced as misguided, or unpatriotic, and in some cases they are arrested and put in prison.
Perhaps the biggest reason is that Americans no longer think of themselves as citizens with a right to knowledge. We’ve been reduced to passive consumers. Meanwhile, we’ve been sold the idea “our” troops are warriors and warfighters. We’ve come to believe and accept that being constantly at war is normal, the health of the state, when it’s actually the death of democracy and liberty.
The other part of this is that Americans are kept divided, distracted, and downtrodden, making it very difficult to act en masse against an entity as powerful and wide-reaching as the MICC.
*****
That was my initial answer. I must add the enormous amount of “legal” corruption in the U.S. government. Effectively, money equals speech in America, meaning that most Americans have no say in their government.
Obviously, powerful corporations have deep pockets and thus plenty of say. Weapons makers like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman also help to determine policy, exercising influence over Congress and also through propaganda. Corporations control what is shown on our mass media. The mainstream media in America is almost entirely pro-military and pro-war.
The Pentagon has so much money that even academe in America is highly cooperative with the national security state, even as Americans are told to fear a Marxist, “radical left” academic establishment! Consent has been manufactured in America to support a state that’s constantly in a state of war or in preparations for the same.
Perhaps the best source for understanding how and why this has happened is George Orwell’s “1984,” and especially his book within a book that details how a permanent state of war can be maintained in what is ostensibly a republic but which is actually a militaristic empire.
Within the U.S., militarism is a form of cancer, and we are at Stage 4. That cancer is represented by the MICIMATT(SHV) and the penetration of most sectors of society by military imperatives and war. So, to define the awkward acronym: military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think-tank, plus sport, Hollywood, and video gaming. All these are throughly invested in, infested by, militarism.
The Trump administration’s answer to Stage 4 militarism is to give the Pentagon and the national security state another $500 billion, accelerating the cancer further.
The “cure” is deep cuts to the Pentagon’s budget, a dramatic downsizing of empire, and a return to being “a normal country in normal times.” It’s Stage 4 cancer, so radical surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation will take their toll. The cure will hurt. But the alternative is death. Death of the republic, and perhaps of the world in the case of widespread nuclear war.
Back in 1963, Senator George McGovern put together a sound plan to return America to a saner path, a less militarized one, citing Ike’s military-industrial complex speech in 1961. McGovern’s plan included the conversion of military production back to civilian purposes. But his ideas, supported by many prominent democrats back then, were dismissed as a major war with Vietnam was ginned up in the stated cause of curbing communist aggression.
The MICC will always have a war, a reason, to continue to expand. War on terror. War on Iran. Chinese expansion. Russia. Even communism again. Even a war within against “radical leftists.” Against “illegal” immigrants.
More than anything, the American people need to reject this fear-mongering. We must remember that “fear is the only darkness.” That “fear is the mind-killer.” We must reject the mindset of war and embrace the possibilities of peace. But that is very difficult when the drums of war sound so loudly, and when America’s leaders are so eager to buy even more war drums and to amplify them yet further.
Readers, what do you think?
Bracing Views 
“Readers, what do you think?”
I can’t add much more than a footnote, a nuance, an inflection, WJA, not much to mention beyond your perception, insight, awareness of history, sweep… and your prognosis. I’d just proffer a couple of things, related. “War” as metaphor in American discourse – I’ve mentioned this before – as in “War on Terrorism,” “War on Crime,” “War on Drugs,” “War on Poverty,” “War on Cancer,” you name it. Some I kinda agree with, such as on poverty and cancer, others leave me suspicious and unsettled, as they connote a full mobilization and preoccupation of society in order to defeat an amorphous enemy – how do you do that? – and in many cases an enemy which is actually bred from within, as Pogo once famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
World War II is still a centerpiece of American identity and example of how to relate to the world. Eighty-one years after the event we still see major reference to it, Tom Hanks’ (rather good) series being the latest example. Generally the message is that it was “the last good war” fought and won by “the greatest generation (ours)” and we defeated the fascists, Germany, Japan, and Italy. Well, yes and no. As Stalin said, “The war was won with American equipment, American money, and Soviet soldiers’ lives,” it was far from us. Do a simple “World War II deaths by country” to get an accurate idea as to who suffered, how much.
The point in all this is to say that the world lay in ruin in 1945, we were unscathed, producing more than 50% of the world’s output yet having only 6% of the world’s population. George Kennan initially believed we should maintain that state of affairs for as long as possible, and devised his “Containment Policy,” but it was fundamentally political and psychological in nature, not military.
This did not keep with the Wall St. figures in the State Dept. at the time, such as Acheson and especially Nitze who, as perhaps a counterpart to Orwell’s book-within-a-book, came up with NSC-68, a rather loopy, conceited assessment of the supposed threat the United States faced in the world, with this line early in the article, “the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, anti-thetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.” As if we weren’t attempting to do the same?
The point here is that Acheson displaced Kennan, Nitze took his place, and the great arms race began, with its concomitant military-industrial complex up to today’s obscene $1+ trillion per year being thrown at the Pentagon and the MICIMATT-SH becoming ever more malignant, consuming the rest of the body politic, materially, psychically.
Yes, we will proudly go down fighting, needlessly, senselessly, erroneously, wastefully, delusively.
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“Readers, what do you think?”
I can’t add much more than a footnote, a nuance, an inflection, WJA, not much to mention beyond your perception, insight, awareness of history, sweep… and your prognosis. I’d just proffer a couple of things, related. “War” as metaphor in American discourse – I’ve mentioned this before – as in “War on Terrorism,” “War on Crime,” “War on Drugs,” “War on Poverty,” “War on Cancer,” you name it. Some I kinda agree with, such as on poverty and cancer, others leave me suspicious and unsettled, as they connote a full mobilization and preoccupation of society in order to defeat an amorphous enemy – how do you do that? – and in many cases an enemy which is actually bred from within, as Pogo once famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
World War II is still a centerpiece of American identity and example of how to relate to the world. Eighty-one years after the event we still see major reference to it, Tom Hanks’ (rather good) series being the latest example. Generally the message is that it was “the last good war” fought and won by “the greatest generation (ours)” and we defeated the fascists, Germany, Japan, and Italy. Well, yes and no. As Stalin said, “The war was won with American equipment, American money, and Soviet soldiers’ lives,” it was far from us. Do a simple “World War II deaths by country” to get an accurate idea as to who suffered, how much.
The point in all this is to say that the world lay in ruin in 1945, we were unscathed, producing more than 50% of the world’s output yet having only 6% of the world’s population. George Kennan initially believed we should maintain that state of affairs for as long as possible, and devised his “Containment Policy,” but it was fundamentally political and psychological in nature, not military.
This did not keep with the Wall St. figures in the State Dept. at the time, such as Acheson and especially Nitze who, as perhaps a counterpart to Orwell’s book-within-a-book, came up with NSC-68, a rather loopy, conceited assessment of the supposed threat the United States faced in the world, with this line early in the article, “the Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, anti-thetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.” As if we weren’t attempting to do the same?
The point here is that Acheson displaced Kennan, Nitze took his place, and the great arms race began, with its concomitant military-industrial complex up to today’s obscene $1+ trillion per year being thrown at the Pentagon and the MICIMATT-SH becoming ever more malignant, consuming the rest of the body politic, materially, psychically.
Yes, we will proudly go down fighting, needlessly, senselessly, erroneously, wastefully, delusively.
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I think our removal on a different continent from the scenes of the devastation our war machine inflicts makes it possible for the American people to be indifferent. Some make a great deal of money from our war machine and our corrupt democracy of lobbies is certainly involved but the main thing is the war machine produces no consequences for our daily lives.
When there was an attack on 9/11 we reacted just as Israel did after Oct 7, the innocent party subject to outrage that then went on a frenzy of destruction. GWB suggested the best thing to do was go shopping. He also said, “The American way of life is not negotiable”. That is what the American people have always thought. If the shelves are full at the stores, and stuff is affordable then all is well.
A big change is underway. Social media bringing us the raw news uncensored by captive MSM is making a difference with the young. Now outrage is properly directed at the absurd war on Iran for Israel, the proof of Israel’s hold on us and that proof of the absolute hold of the 1% on the country.
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“fear is the only darkness.” The inverse is also true: courage is the only light. The roots of the word “courage” is from the Latin cor; heart. Take heart. Take back your life. Don’t be governed by fear; take back your government.
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Thank You for this excellent column.
We have communicated before on this “Swords into Plowshares” concept and I’m in full agreement with your, and Tom Englehardt’s, longstanding American Empire
critiques–and as a just-turned 83 y/o Vietnam combat Vet and retired Psychiatrist,
who ended his 40-year practice with 5 years in the VA Mental Health Service (2009-2014)
I can offer only a couple of admittedly gross, but likely legitimate, generalizations to the discussion–
Human history as far back as we can track it has seen dominance of males in nearly every population and civilization in organizing, developing, and directing tribal and cultural systems-
I have quipped at times that the world’s most powerful hormone is Testosterone–as it not only drives human reproductive activities, but fuels aggressive Darwinian survival/domination instincts that have led to great creations and inventions but equally great destructive and inhumane suffering–the most terrible of which is War.
I could do a whole separate paper on that fascinating, enigmatic “grey zone” of Gender Identity Humans–perhaps 15% of the mammalian population, that, over thousands of human generations, had to hide, disguise, conceal their in-born proclivities on pain of –well you know…it is literally only in the last 30-or-so years that these folks have begun to come out of the shadows–
Finally, getting to the point of the Swords into Plowshares concepts, it has been my conviction for some years, that it is way past time for the rise of leadership, of transformation of the governance of tribes and cultures and countries, towards the feminist values of nurturing, of communal cooperation, of care for the children and the environment — I’m a realist and I know my idealism is unlikely to see fruition, but old men can dream dreams can’t they ?
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Selected lyrics from the Youngbloods’ song “Get Together”.
Love is but a song we sing
Fear’s the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It’s there at your command
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Love that song.
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