US Foreign and Domestic Security Force Parallels: A Rant

Until recently, US citizens were relatively undisturbed by the horrors inflicted upon the world by their government’s foreign policy. As bombs dropped from the sky onto countries abroad, dollars rained from the sky for America’s centrist elite. These operatives wielded their oil and tech dollars to steer the public narrative astray from the reality of what the war in Iraq truly was: a crusadorial slaughter. This approach was replicated by the media in relation to the greatest atrocities committed by Obama in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. While the topic of audience cultivation by media is certainly interesting and will get attention at some point in the future, the focus of today’s discussion is on analyzing how the arguments for defunding the police mirror arguments for defunding the military, why this slogan has entered the mainstream so recently, and why all centrist leadership is currently seeking to eject it from the media narrative.

There are numerous arguments for defunding the US military. “Defund” is a word that is not equivalent to “eliminate” so the baffling argument that “defund the police”(DTP) is a slogan calling for the elimination of state security forces is based in an inability to understand the English language. There are perhaps radical forces who believe that state security forces are not necessary; to argue this is to argue for complete and total disarmament of the state (when taken to its logical conclusion) which simply gives rise to another state-like force - therefore a state security force will always exist in order to preserve the integrity of the state. This is the prime function of the military and citizen militias (police departments). In exchange for a state security force the citizenry retains the right to decide how that security force is to be held accountable for its actions. This is the seed of democracy that has been corrupted in modern centrist government: The government isn’t accountable to those it represents.

As a result, rather than a security force that reflects the needs and wants of constituents it exemplifies and evangelizes the psyche of elected officials. Austere conservatives live out their power fantasies through faith-based wars abroad and racially motivated law enforcement at home. Silver-tongued liberals laugh as they hypnotize the world into submission while quietly siphon money into their bank accounts and tune the war machine for maximum efficiency. These are the two sides of the centrist coin whose flip decides the fate of our collective wealth: heads they win, tails we lose.

The impact of $700,000,000,000 cannot be overstated. I firmly believe that describing numbers in words does them a massive disservice and makes it nearly impossible to conceptualize the difference between them. Three zeros are a much easier thing to imagine than the difference between M and B. A bill to reduce the military budget by 10% was recently struck down in congress, the justification being the (now debunked) allegations of Russian bounties issued on American military to the Taliban put forth by Liz Cheney, daughter of Iraq warlord Dick Cheney. This action was opposed (fruitlessly) by a small coalition led by Tulsi Gabbard but ultimately the $770,000,000,000 budget was approved. That $70,000,000,000 could have funded free college (not loan forgiveness) for a vast majority of America. That $70,000,000,000 could have doubled the SNAP budget, enabling better nutrition for those dependent on the system. The child care budget could have been quintupled. There are infinite examples of better ways to spend those $70,000,000,000 and this is precisely the argument that I will be using here as an argument for defunding the police domestically. I only talked here about a budget increase approved (in political terms) moments ago, to say nothing of the analysis that can be done on the current budget and its adherence to “protecting national security”.

In the unprecedented year that was 2020 a coronavirus pandemic agitated the cracks in the veneer of US domestic politics and the result was a fissuring of cultural tectonics the likes of which were thought to be relegated to literature following the End of History. The overleveraged teetering social order in the US was bent by the pandemic and broken by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. While these indiscriminate killings and subsequent vilifications of dark-skinned or alien people have always been a pernicious and horrifying aspect of US history and culture, this is the first of such occurrences that took place in the age of a mature global social communication network. We did not learn about the brutality used against George Floyd through corporate media, we learned about it through a brave soul who recorded and shared the atrocity with the world. The story of Breonna Taylor propagated through the internet on the back of meme-like posts shared in the hopes of bringing justice to those responsible, not through a responsible media reporting on facts in order to speak to power. Many woke up from their trance when they saw what horrors the government they thought was fighting for democracy could inflict. And the subtext is even clearer when zooming out: “if this is what they do to their own, imagine what they do to their opposition”.

The Genesis of the US is rooted in imperialism. Purportedly resisting imperialism while subsequently implementing imperialist rule is what Manifest Destiny is all about. Today it is best described by the term American Exceptionalism. DTP is a movement that directly opposes American Exceptionalism because it requires the US government to grapple with its faults; faults that warrant advancing the people’s right to hold state power to account.

American Exceptionalism is a term usually applied to an international context, but the state ideology runs deep and unlike wealth, definitely trickles down. US police regularly purchase military surplus equipment, are trained heavily for combat and tense situations, and regularly collaborate with federal state security forces for trainings and investigations. Their prime directive is not to reduce crime, it’s to confront it. There is little to no interest in addressing the root cause of crime while simultaneously there exists stratospheric interest in eliminating it when encountered. As the French say, “the best cure for a headache is a guillotine”. And while I understand the plight of minorities in the US and the abuse inflicted upon them by the state I can’t help but weep for the famine stricken children in Yemen, for the mutilated children in Iraq, for the terrorized citizens of Syria, for the hell Libyan slaves are living in.

The aforementioned realities merely scratch the surface of the daily terrors these regions face. That’s not to diminish the problems of minorities in the US but to put them into perspective and more importantly, a grim portent of what’s to come given an impotent opposition. There is a need to defund the US military just like there is a need to defund domestic police. The need arises when confronting a culture that defaults to combat in the face of the unknown. The need arises when taking back the power of the citizenry in the face of state oppression. The United States must dismantle its war machine (both domestic and foreign), reimagine the true purpose of the sophisticated and brilliant technology it has developed in its pursuit of conquest, and realize that there is a true path to global prosperity if it were to change its ways.