The Real Military-Industrial Complex

from One City: A Declaration of Interdependence, by Ethan Nichtern - chapter entitled NonViolence vs NonExistence:

"The danger of activism, in terms of interdependence, lies in the problem of anchoring our righteous cause in opposition to a set enemy, a fixed group of antagonists whose fixed image we can imprint in our brain and forever burn in effigy.

"The more we fix our identity around the evil of a given enemy, "them", the less chance there will be to ever meaningfully dissolve that dichotomy. In other words, if we don't tame our own anger, we will become addicted to framing everything in these terms, "us" and "them". When that happens, the needed fix for the addiction is in finding new enemies. This is how our inner military-industrial complex builds its own artillery. Once we need a new enemy, we can easily create the mental propaganda that explains why some new person or group or regime fits the bill. Finding the reason why our enemy is our enemy just takes a good Orwellian storyteller and decent production values.

"When we fall into this rut, we will have less and less reason for actual resolution to the conflict in question. For if the people I've defined as my enemies for so long stop being the "them" on which I've been fixating, then I will have to stop being part of the "us" to which I've grown so accustomed. Once you've been protesting for a while, it can be truly scary to have to face losing your identity as the "protestor". If fighting is what we're addicted to, there will always be someone to fight (isn't it funny how enemies just seem to keep on coming and coming, and coming?) It might be exes or bosses. It might be Republicans or Democrats. It might be Iranians or Chinese, or the world's most irresponsible corporations, but we'll always be in need of and be able to find an enemy, a "them". And when our anger turns to violence, we'll be blessed by more enemies than we could ever imagine."

but if you want money for people with minds that hate
all I can tell you is brother, you'll have to wait

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