Confronting The Military Industrial Complex

The majority of Americans oppose the U.S. government’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and believe that defense spending is the area that must be cut to reduce the federal deficit. However, many of us feel powerless to stop the ever-increasing bombings, invasions, and occupations of nations which pose no threat to us.

Most of us have acquiesced to the “military-industrial complex” (a term coined by Dwight Eisenhower, who devoted his farewell address in 1961 to its “grave implications”). Having worked with abused people for more than 25 years,Many Americans have developed what Bob Marley—the poet laureate of oppressed people around the world— called “mental slavery.”

Social scientists have also recognized this phenomenon of subjugation resulting in demoralization and defeatism. Paulo Freire, the Brazilian educator and author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and Ignacio Martin-Baró, the El Salvadoran social psychologist and popularizer of “liberation psychology,” understood this psychological phenomenon of fatalism, and they helped their people overcome it. We must first acknowledge the reality that for millions of Americans, subjugation has in fact resulted in demoralization and fatalism. Then, we can begin to heal from a “battered people’s syndrome” of sorts and together begin to fight for democracy. it does not surprise me to see that when we as individuals or as a society eat crap for too long, we become psychologically too weak to take action.

Democracy means that if the majority of us want to stop senseless wars and wasteful military spending, then this should be stopped. Are we in the majority? How can we take action?