This is Gilbert Stuart Richardson’s portrait of the first President of the United States Under the Constitution of The United States, George Washington. This is what we celebrate today, even though most of us are tired of the leadership that sits at the helm in Washington.
Washington’s final address is linked here. He never gave a formal oral delivery of this address, he merely printed and distributed it, at a time when Americans would and desired to read a leader’s words, un-mesmerized by crazy red backgrounds with military leaders or the pomp of a joint session of Congress.
15 times in this speech he discussed the influence of foreign relations, something he dealt with rather indelicately, which might have been another principal reason why he chose not to run again for the office of President.
America dealt with its own internal issues of expansion and social influence, including the issue of ending slavery. Unlike every other society in the world, we dealt with it through a four-year-long war that left scars on memories and scars on the constitution that created (by the chicanery of its largely two-party system) into the massive money-hungry and power-centric Federal bureaucracy that now wants to subsume all state governments into itself and destroy the civil liberties of all who disagree with it.
About 165 years after Washington, another President, one who led Western allies in a World War against Germany, Japan, and Italy, had something to say about domestic power and foreign entanglements too. Dwight Eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex:
“A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Proxy wars with the Soviet Union began in Korea and expanded into Vietnam, enriching arms dealers and allowing America to spread dollar influence it first began to see economically at the dawn of the 20th century and cemented by the collapse of the British Empire from war.
Certainly since 2008, but likely since the beginning of G. H. W. Bush’s declaration of a “New World Order”, we have seen our military engaged in battles designed to preserve the value of the U.S. Dollar via the pricing of oil in that currency. Both parties reveled in it and expanded it after 2001. It limited civil liberties via The Patriot Act, spent trillions of dollars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and did nothing but provide its enemies with an armed force the size of Australia’s in Afghanistan for its chief enemy, the People’s Republic of China, to benefit from. It also allowed them more access to precious metals used for electric cars and key electronic components. America benefitted little from this, but the taxpayers and citizens were made poorer by it.
In a last act of desperation, it seems that the current administration under Joe Biden committed an act of war against Germany by destroying the Nord Stream pipeline. Germany, not Russia, was the major funding partner for this project, as it appeared that it would have to have natural gas to keep its industries running and to prevent the collapse of the German economy. America, as in Afghanistan, not only overindulged in precarious political entanglements but abandoned allies as well, leaving them stranded, along with hundreds of Americans. We did one better with the Nord Stream, we committed an act of war against Germany. All this while claiming Russia has committed ‘crimes against humanity’ in Ukraine. If I had the time, and I will again in my news aggregator, I think, if anything, it is about even for both of these fascist regimes. As we seem ready to take on World War III, the American people are forced to pay trillions of dollars in war material with no potential benefit, only the possibility of nuclear war. The profiteers are doing well though in Kiev and Washington. Putin is doing well too, selling oil in the black market in defiance of embargos, while our Federal government will not allow us to explore our wealth of energy resources to produce cheap clean energy that would reduce price pressures and help the American economy.
You, the American worker with a family to feed, get nothing, but the bill. You wallow in endless Federal debt, money printing, and inflation. The money launderers in Washington and foreign capitals pop open the champagne.
We need to re-examine what we had at the founding of this nation and take heed to what at least two of our Presidents said. We need to take care of ourselves first. Global power-mongers and money-hungry thieves should neither pay our politicians nor should we gleefully pay for the defense of others whose only purpose is to grift for money under the aegis of endless war.
Back to the markets tomorrow. Have a great day all.