Tag Archives: Liberals

Once upon a time prominent Democrats and liberals almost reflexively opposed the military and the intelligence agencies. No more, now they are some of their biggest supporters. From David Stockman at antiwar.com:

If you want to know why America is going to hell in a fiscal hand basket, it’s because the last vestige of opposition to the Warfare State and the fiscal muggings of the military/industry/intelligence complex has utterly evaporated.

We are referring, of course, to the delirious Russophobia that has overtaken the Dems and the liberal media since they had the daylights shocked out of them by the 2016 election – a state of mental derangement that has degenerated into downright hysteria since the Helsinki Summit.

It had already been the case that anti-Russian policy actions (e.g. sanctions) pass through the Congress with bipartisan greased lightening, and defense appropriations had exploded to the highest level in postwar history in real terms.

In fact, the $716 billion just approved for FY 2019 compared to a constant dollar level of just $550 billion (2018$) in FY 1990 – the final year before the Soviet Union with its 55,000 tanks and 9,000 nuclear warheads slithered off the pages of history.

So we are already spending 30% more than at the peak of the Cold War, but you haven’t seen nothing yet. Not now that Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper have become rabid war hawks, virtually begging for military confrontation with Russia and its pipsqueak economy and pint-sized military.

As we keep mentioning, the GDP of the NATO-29 is $36 trillion, and that is 26Xthat of Russia. Likewise, when you add the NATO-28’s military spending of $280 billion to Washington’s humungous defense budget, the total is nigh on to $1 trillion per year – or 16X Russia’s entire military expenditure of $61 billion per annum.

We emphasize this massive imbalance of economic resources and military might as between NATO and Russia because it is the very reason why the bellicosity and fiscal largesse from Capitol Hill won’t diminish any time soon. That is to say, the Imperial City politicians are in a full frontal bully mode because they believe (not unreasonably) that the can huff, puff and spend with relative impunity.

This is not at all like the days of the real cold war in the 1960s and 1970s when America actually did face a deadly dangerous enemy; and when it was also evident to most rational people that rash provocations could be fatal and that the Cold War was something to be vigilantly endured, not won.

To continue reading: The New Handmaids of the Warfare State – Dems and the Liberal Media