Stranger Than Fiction? Your Tax Dollars At Work: Blowing Things Up

Dave Lindorff at Information Clearinghouse says it best, so there's little need to do anything but recap the lead and send you over there to read his words:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25206.htm

Our tax dollars will fund a United States government budget that devotes 53% of its revenues to the military and all its associated ancillary operations. More than half of the money spent by our federal institutions go to blow things up, kill people, or buy the weapons and materials necessary to prepare for those eventualities.

That is the value system we citizens perpetuate. Our budget reflects our values - or somebody's values.

Is creating a global police/military force really where Americans want to spend the majority of their money? If you had a choice, would you really choose guns and bombs over improving health care, providing money to upgrade the educational system, building new energy infrastructures, or hundreds of other worthy projects that truly benefit all citizens?

Really? We want to spend most of our money on weapons and death? What are we afraid of?

This situation can be fixed. The example is right there in the very fine film "Stranger Than Fiction." IRS auditor Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) enters the bakery owned by Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllennhaal) to discuss her non-payment of taxes:

Ana Pascal: Listen, I'm a big supporter of fixing potholes and erecting swing sets and building shelters. I am *more* than happy to pay those taxes. I'm just not such a big fan of the percentage that the government uses for national defense, corporate bailouts, and campaign discretionary funds. So, I didn't pay those taxes. I think I sent a letter to that effect with my return.

Harold Crick: Would it be the letter that begins "Dear Imperialist Swine"? It says, in the file, that you only paid part of your taxes for last year.

Ana: That's right.

Harold: Looks like only 78 percent.

Ana: Yep.

Harold: So you did it on purpose?

Ana: Yep.

Harold: So you must've been expecting an audit.

Ana: Um, I was expecting a fine, or a sharp reprimand.

Harold: A reprimand? This isn't boarding school, Miss Pascal. You stole from the government.

Ana: No I didn't steal from the government. I just didn't pay you *entirely*.

We need more people to decide to not pay "entirely." What if everyone only sent in 47% of their tax bill and let the military-industrialist-congressional powerbrokers figure out how to pay for their profits?

The New Illiteracy Takes Over

"The US government is more than willing to invest billions in wars, lead the world in arms sales and give trillions in tax cuts to the ultra rich, but barely acknowledges the need to invest in those educational and civic institutions - from schools to the arts - that enable individuals to be border crossers, capable of connecting the private and the public as part of a more vibrant understanding of politics, identity, agency and governance." - Henry A. Giroux

Truthout has published a highly recommended article by Henry Giroux - "The Spectacle Of Illiteracy and the Crisis of Democracy" - which examines American anti-intellectualism, ever-growing civic illiteracy, and how both are undermining the democratic foundations of the USA.

The American education system devalues important skills such as the ability to question and critically think through issues. The result is a "chronic...and deadly civic illiteracy" that renders individuals unable to connect personal troubles to larger societal issues; the country has "moved from a culture of questioning to a culture of shouting, and in doing so (has) restaged politics and power in both unproductive and anti-democratic ways." The current health care reform "debate" is but the latest example.

Giroux places the timeline of this disintegration - the inability to connect the personal with the public - against the rise of the corporation and militarism as major influences in American life. As he writes, "How else to explain the rage against big government, but barely a peep against the rule of big corporations, which increasingly control not only the government, but almost every vital aspect of our lives from health care to the quality of our environment?" Military/weapons industries dominate our economy and authoritarian violence and blood defines our American culture, from movies/television to video games to sports.

The lesson: teach your children...to question. Before it's too late.

http://www.truthout.org/091509A