Now that Obama has handed victory to a slew of pro-war Republicans, having betrayed and abandoned the grassroots anti-war left that helped bring him to power, this is what Americans get as a reward for their wishes for fiscal responsibility and small government: the presumptive new chairman of the House Armed Services committee, Representative Buck McKeon (Republican-California). And it’s not good enough that under Obama U.S. military and national security spending has reached the highest levels ever since the U.S. was founded–no, what is needed is more, and this is what the logic for that increase sounds like, courtesy of “new way in Washington” McKeon:

We’re spending less than at times in the past and we’re involved in two wars, as a percentage of our gross product. So I think, myself, I think you have to be very careful of the taxpayer dollar and I think the things the Secretary (of Defense) is pushing for with increased savings through efficiency. I support that. But I also support a higher top line because we have underlying costs that are taking such a high percentage of our budget that we’re not going to have enough to do the R&D and do the weaponry spending to provide the wherewithal to have the defense that we need. So, you know, they cut back in missile defense. They cut back in the F-22. They cut back in the next generation bomber. All these things for the future, and we can’t wait for the future to come. We need to be prepared for it. So, I think we need more money in defense and I think we need to do a better job spending that money.

Yes, indeed, it does sound drunk, incoherent, cock eyed and factually incorrect, but that is all part of the charm of the “take back America” movement. We can expect much more of this–yes, we can–as a lame-duck Obama lays the red carpet for the arrival of a new Republican administration to replace him at the end of his one and only term in office. Perhaps a President Sarah Palin would be a wonderful accelerant for an imperial state intent on burning itself out of house and home.

In the meantime, such snippets of “logic” do provide us with a glimpse into the minds of dominant Americans and the value-system of the bloated, state-dependent, privately owned military-industrial complex: that Americans can only deal with the rest of the world through the force of arms. Humanity, to them, is something that you treat with overwhelming firepower and excessive use of force. It shows us what some Americans–ones who count–think of the rest of us: we are like children, and they are like rigid, authoritarian Anglo-Saxon Protestants who believe that the best way to raise children is through fear, intimidation, and a regimen of beatings. They gabble on about democracy and peace, but the real message is the medium: well financed, ever expanding, supreme military violence.

And you’re supposed to be afraid of some underwear bomber? Because Smoky-the-Jockstrap-Killer is so much more awesome and deadly than McKeon’s pet:

Weapons carriage requirements of the F35 Joint Strike Fighter

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