Let’s talk Militarism
Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism. With this powerful commitment, we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when “every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.”
The Rev Dr Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Riverside Church, April 4th, 1967
Peace educators utilize a broad definition of violence. We consider anything that denies someone (human or not) their dignity as violence. Thus, all structural inequalities, all manifestations of ‘othering’, all exploitative acts and harms done to people and place and planet are violent. We ground this idea in the work of Johann Galtung and Dr Martin Luther King both of whom, in the 1960s, put forth frameworks to codify this type of Big Picture thinking. I’ll talk about Galtung another time, because today, I want to focus on one of Dr King’s Giant Triplets: Militarism.
When you read the writings or listen to the speeches of Dr King, you will hear him repeatedly talking about his Giant Triplets: Militarism, Materialism, and Racism. These triplets are the Root Causes of the suffering we see in the world and in particular, the United States.
Given that for more than 100 days, we have been watching a people and place—Gaza—get obliterated in real-time, and we know that these same atrocities are happening and have been happening in so many other parts of the world, we need to talk about the mystique and malady of Militarism.
Most folks living in the US who attended public school in the US are so deeply mired in the US culture of militarism that they don’t see it as such. They simply see it as the price of doing business, or the importance of being powerful, or they adhere to the ideology that might is right. Throughout their education, children are inculcated into this militaristic mindset; it is the hidden curriculum in schooling that demands obedience and conformity, values competition and stratification, and makes racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia acceptable.
Militarism thrives in the US simply because we are not allowed to question it. Have you tried bringing this concept up in mixed company? I have and have been called names I don’t care to re-print here. Since militarism permeates every aspect of our culture—competitive sports, police brutality, criminalizing of peaceful protestors, recruitment of poor and POC—it has become the water we swim in. Maybe it’s easy for folks to accept because the very foundation of the United States is based on genocide and a militaristic expansion/colonization of our sliver of North America, and then subsequent invasions (under the guise of democracy) of numerous already-existing-nation-states around the world. If you want to read a great history of the USA’s modus operandi, check out the graphic novel “Addicted to War” by Joel Andreas. What you’ll see unfold in those pages is a history that not only thrives on unilateral imperial invasions but relies on it to maintain power and influence and extraction and exploitation.
We’re so inured to militarism, that the average US resident is perfectly fine with not having subsidized national health care or decent public education or free higher education or safety nets for the ill, elderly, or unhoused, while our tax dollars go to an exorbitant military budget in this country (which includes funding the increased militarization of police forces and the Israeli army so they can wipe out Palestinians). We are so addicted to this form of violence, we’d rather have children die in schools via mass shooters than reckon with our misguided adherence to an arcane Second Amendment. We repeatedly hear from our leaders - regardless of their political party - that “there’s simply no money for XYZ” and that’s because fully 43% goes to militarism (in some years, this percentage has been as high as 52%).
We live in a War System that is deeply connected to (or rather dependent upon) Racism, Sexism, Exploitative Capitalism, and Environmental Destruction. After more than 30 years of teaching about this stuff and working to bring about a Peace System, my frustration (and rage and sadness) is at an all-time high. How about you? Have you thought about how to dismantle this system? Let’s talk about it.
And, the War Resistor’s League has lots of resources, including a guide on how NOT to let your taxes go to the War System.