The improvisational, creative rock star Frank Zappa said something like ‘Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex’. That was a perceptive remark at a deeper level of social analysis. Zappa’s remark might be upgraded to include the 5% of the 1% with the military industrial complex regarding who politics in the United States primarily benefits. One wonders about President Trump though; when he has seemed to dissent with simply expanding wars upon second rate nations he appears to be an exception to that paradigm. Yet when he follows it such as to support a war against Russia he seems to be right in tune with Zappa’s prognostication.
The late Charlie Kirk sought to bring more Christians into political engagement in politics with his 'Turning Point U.S.A.'. He had saved 12 million dollars while growing that organization from age 18, so he was probably sincere about faith and bring the nation to return more to the faith of the founders. It is not particularly surprising that a radical left-leaning youth in a state with a dominant non-Christian religion was the tool to take down an existential irritant. One might wonder if anything of that tragedy was at all meaningful in light of the Zappa paradigm of politics largely going where it is directed by the M.I.C. and plutonomy.
The late Charlie Kirk is a good example of the problems Christians have in engaging politcs. Can one even affect contemporary politics significantly without being rich? Jesus said that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. That presents a Hobson's choice of a sort to those with Christian spirit who would like to make the nation a better place.
The Ukraine conflict generated by massive paranoia, European perfidy in politics, the worth of wars to military and industrial corporations, Russian resistance to N.A.T.O. eastward expansion and loss of Ukraine to the west via President Clinton is a difficult inertial monstrosity to resist. President Trump has gone as far as he feels reasonable- even sending some American military officers to Belarus to observe the Belarussian-Russia joint military exercises that were made to offset N.A.T.O. military exercises near Belarus.
Obviously the war is counterproductive to global well being, peace, security and economics. Some of the military-industrial establishment may even have realized that expending conflict to increase profits may be harmful to themselves too if the conflict transitions into World War Three. Maybe they won’t resist a draw-down even though traditional profit tactics goad them forward into hellfire.
The Democrat Party is very dangerous though. They seem to lack competence at politics generally and serve to render actual functioning marketplace of ideas style Democracy improbable because of the mass confusion and incompetence they bring to the electorate. Disseminating lies, illusions and so forth are commonplace for Democrats. Apparently they really are against U.S. border security and a democracy of, by and for the people of the United States rather than anyone in the world in general. Massive civil disobedience that is perpetual has the effect of making political self-determination by the electorate ineffective. The party simply is a third column for those that attack every sort of American establishment within the United States without concern for the harm dumped upon fellow citizens as a result of their party’s political malfeasance.
Democrats throw so much smoke and bull into the political system that accomplishing meaningful environmental economic progress, or ending the Ukraine conflict; slowing massive species extinction and keeping the U.S. Government finances solvent are set not on the back burner- they thrown into deep freeze, Democrats are the smoke and mirrors mass confusion tool for concentrating wealth. They may provide election cycle rhetoric and raising taxes on the rich yet act on that only when they haven’t political power to actually do so. Fundamentally Frank Zappa was correct. There must be some coordination and some level to make the American electorate so badly informed and unconcerned about the state of the nation, the public debt and impoverished lives of millions that exist even when the unemployment rate is quite low. Upgrading and innovating where things Frank Zappa accomplished in music yet in U. S. politics that capacity seems notably absent.
