America’s Greatest Hits, So To Speak

So, the wife and I moved to Tucson. Yeah, I know, but the desert is in my blood. I plead genetic memory and, besides all of that, there’s better food that goes beyond the Four Flavors of Northern Arizona: Bland, Salty, Sweet, and Greasy. The first day here, I heard this ear-piercing sound split the sky! We’re under attack! Iran must have purloined an aircraft carrier! I threw open the door and bolted outside. Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! No, it’s a plane! It’s trillions in wasted tax dollars!

Behold, it’s fighter aircraft! It’s also the controversial A-10 ground attack aircraft! I had forgotten that Tucson is home to the (in)famous Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Yes, this is also the famous “Boneyard” where the United States Air Force mothballs and stashes all its obsolete aircraft for these decades since the Tax-Wasting Flyboys came into existence. I like that phrase—Tax-Wasting Flyboys. Sounds like a Texas Swing band. If only.

So it is that the U.S. military garners more funding the more people they add to the list of “terrorists” that they have. The more they pick up in sweep-and-clears and snatch-and-grabs, the more names they are going to get. On and on it will go as the Congress cuts them more and more checks. It’s about money. If you’re General Spooky in charge of “Shhh! We Don’t Exist!”, and you can keep showing lists of names, you can keep pulling in checks. And cash, because General Spooky will say their “people” on the ground need cash for informants and thus and so. You don’t really think that $12 billion dollars that went missing in Iraq just went into Bremer’s pocket, do you? Checks for the up-front and known budget. Cash for the “off the books” budget, the “Black ops” Black Hole where billions per year literally disappear. General Spooky and his friends can retire very wealthy men.

Here we are, falling for the scam again. Iran, ISIS, al-Qaida Reloaded, and Yemen, and al-Shabab, and al-Everyone Else on Ye Olde List of Ye Witches, er, terrorists. America’s Greatest Hits. Cities lick the boots of the local military base to stay, then drive across town to give a speech at a peace rally. People will say, “But we need defense!” From whom?! The enemies this government creates themselves? The enemies they add to this list without end through sweep-and-clears and “enhanced interrogation”? The assumption is made that it’s the “other guy” that doesn’t want peace. Excuse me, but those people can’t afford military budgets like ours. They have to go to international yard sales and pawn shops to acquire the hand-me-down weapons of decades ago. We just stash them at the Boneyard and buy more. We crave those “good jobs” and the list of “terrorists” on the Death Charts Top Hundred Hits just keeps growing.