by Brielle Diskin
In 1964, United States President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty in response to a national poverty rate of 19 percent. In 1971, President Richard Nixon declared a war on drugs proclaiming drug abuse as public enemy number one. In 1994, President Bill Clinton passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, unofficially declaring a war on crime. In 2001, in the wake of the September 1st attacks, President George W. Bush declared a war on terror, also known as the global war on terrorism. This is a nation obsessed with war, but not with wars that can be won. America is addicted to unwinnable wars on inanimate objects.
A war on a an idea, an object is not a war that can be won. Lifeless things cannot concede in battle. So all you get is a zero tolerance government that loses sight of what they were fighting for. Now a new war is upon us and it will be our worst one yet. America is on the precipice of a war on climate change and this public enemy privileges no one and threatens everyone.
The problem posed by America’s countless wars on inanimate objects is what they become.The war on crime is really a war on criminals just how the war on poverty is a war on poor people. Because instead of funding welfare programs or fixing discrepancies in public education, administrations like the one we have now, offer tax breaks to corporations believing in the myth of Reaganomics (the ideology that money will trickle down from businesses to the people). Instead of increased minimum wage we got the GOP tax bill.
The best example of the trouble in these types of wars is the war on drugs. Its original intentions were to take drugs off the streets and decrease addiction and fatality rates across the country. Policies like mandatory minimums and harsh sentencing swept through the justice system (and they were there to stay). Due to the tough on crime policies of the eighties, federal and state prisons were overcrowding at exponential levels. The government couldn’t handle the influx of prisoners, thus private for-profit prisons came into existence. It’s essentially a contract system. Corporately owned and operated prisons open themselves up to housing prisoners and supplying their own food, maintenance, and security services. All the government has to do is pay the prison a stipend (with the tax payer’s dollars) based on the cost of each prisoner per day. Consequently, they have an incentive to max out their prisons because they get paid per prisoner. They can also cut down on life necessities like food services and proper health care so they can pocket the cash from the government. The dangerous fact is: corporations have a financial interest in the amount of incarcerated citizens in America.
Having a stake in the war on crime or the war on drugs especially matters to those those who are truly affected. Mass incarcerations statistically targets black and afro-latino males in impoverished communities. In 2016, Pew research center found that black men make up 33% of the prison population. This is not to say that all of these men are innocent but it is worth noting the extremity of this percentage. Mandatory minimums place higher higher sentences on drugs like marijuana and crack cocaine, stereotypically black associated narcotics. While the mandatory minimums for methamphetamine or heroin is lower, stereotypically white associated narcotics.
Those in power stand to profit from these wars. And when I say those in power I do not mean our elected officials. I am referring to those who fund the elections of said officials: big corporations and lobbyist groups (often funded by corporations).
Our biggest war yet looms on the horizon and it directly confronts America’s fatal compliance with corporate interests. We can know longer ignore the threat of climate change. People have already died due to the catastrophic state of the planet.
The Trump administration continues to openly deny the reality of climate change. If you need proof, just look at how the current head administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is Andrew Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist (because that makes sense).
Most of us know by now that in the game of thrones you win or die. Those in power must be held accountable to act on a problem that could and will eventually damn us all. We need to elect officials who will listen to science and protect the people by protecting the planet. The United States is one of the largest emitters of carbon. Texas has passed Russia and Saudi Arabia as the largest producers of oil in the world. Now oil companies and their lobbyist are actually asking for government protection in the wake of climate change.
I see a war on climate in our future. Where the government will claim to be making efforts in reducing carbon emissions and slowing down climate change but will yield to corporate interests as they have time and time again. The entire indutrial complex of the United States would be financially impacted by a change in environmental policy. We can’t battle science. We can’t concede in the fight to save our country. Instead of a war we need peace and understanding (of reality).
A world where that didn’t happen is a world we are already experiencing. Half of the world’s population lives within 120 miles of an ocean. The rise of sea levels is taking up land mass. This could lead to mass migrations. It already has in Sri Lanka where people are leaving their homes to find work elsewhere. We are already seeing endless and almost countless wildfires in California and Central America and storms that level cities like hurricanes Harvey and Florence.
We can no longer afford to be a nation at war. Unless you consider human lives as a justifiable cost.
Generations in this country are often defined by the war in which they grew up in. What youth bear witness to shapes who they become. The Lost generation got lost between World War I and II. Baby Boomers saw the Cold War and all of its proxy wars like Vietnam and Korea. Each war tapped into a different vessel in the core of American sentimentality. Generations are defined by war because wars define what’s worth fighting and dying for. Millennials and Gen Zers are disenfranchised by the wars they saw in their lifetime. They (myself included) beared witness to a lifetime of wars with no end and lost purposes. We never understood what’s truly worth fighting for in this world. The valliance in what America stands for was lost on us.
What this generation did see was a presidential win fueled by hatred, an historically polarized nation and a government that serves corporations before they serve the people they were elected to serve.
This trend in American policy and attitude in the face of important issues over the past couple of decades is troublesome. It begins with seemingly good intentions but its inherent sensationalism blurs the orignial matter at hand. And in turn, American lives hang in the balance.
The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society in tact. George Orwell in “Nineteen-Eighty-Four” (1960)
The first step to any addiction is acknowledging that there is a problem. The more we ignore America’s infatuation with unwinnable wars the more we descend into a nation fully at war with itself. America is in a chokehold and until we say “uncle” or elect those who will, we are all doomed to suffer.