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As much as one might work to reduce military and defense-related spending, there are powerful cultural influences embedded in our society which make if difficult to shift spending to underfunded domestic needs.
High among these influences is the symbiotic interconnection between sports and the armed forces. Many major sports events start with such military displays as a precision flyover of jet fighters, the unfurling of a huge U.S. flag by members of the military services, the flag presentation by a military service color guard, or the singing of the National Anthem by individual or collective service members.
Besides these heavy overlays of military pageantry, sports annopuncers lavish praise on "Our brave men and women fighting for our freedom overseas." Never do we hear in what ways our freedoms as citizens are being enhanced by our involvement in military conflicts, the rationales for which have become increasingly strained.
It is not true that wars never enhance freedom, as, for example, millions were released from the oppressive control of their conquerers and/or occupiers when the Nazis and the Japanese nation were defeated. Yet, due to intimidation preventing criticism of a nation's war policies and the erosion of civil liberties premised on wartime exigencies, war negatively impacts the freedoms of the warring nation's citizens.
A second powerful cultural influence is the rally around the commander-in-chief motif, a correlative to "Don't change horses in the middle of the stream." This mode of thinking makes it difficult to divest ourselves of leaders who have embroiled the nation in military quagmires through devious, deeply flawed reasoning or even criminal means.
Another variety of groupthink which has become increasingly prevalent in recent history is to label as a hero anyone who serves in a combat zone. I know that when I was in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, such uncritical hero worship was far from the norm. Enlistees were treated with withering scorn by the far more numerous draftees and even the career military questioned the intelligence of those who voluntarily put their very lives in imminent risk.
Labeling everyone a hero who serves in a combat zone makes it more difficult to criticize the actions of U.S. troops, even when the actions verge on, or become fully criminal. T
he "Support our troops" mantra is yet another of those cultural artifacts that intimidate into impotent silence many of those who want to bring the troops home.
It has also seemingly become mandatory for anyone interviewing a service member to thank him or her for service to the nation. This cowed deference stems from charges that returning Vietnam War veterans were badly treated by the media. Now members of the media are supersensitive to any indication that they might be disrespectful of a service member. It is a misfortune that military service has become designated as the only way that someone can serve the nation.
Surprisingly enough, even our National Ahthem fosters the martial spirit among U.S. citizens. In the months after 9/11, whenever the National Anthem was played at a sporting event, the line which drew the most boisterous response was the one about bombs bursting in air.
The militaristic conditioning of our young is being fostered through penetration of military recruitment -- often insidiously hidden -- into our schools; the interactive video game fairs featuring images of military offensive power; and the displays of military hardware, employing spit-polished military personnel helping youngsters climb into tanks and warplane cockpits.
Shifting the focus from the cultural underpinnings of a militaristic society, the structure of the U.S. workforce is skewed toward the protectors versus the producers when the U.S. is measured against the other industrialized nations. In a study published in 1992*, three economists coined the term "garrison economy" -- also described as the cost of keeping people down. The garrison economy encompasses "guard labor" and "threat labor." Guard labor includes the full range of enforcement activities necessary to maintain the peace: workplace supervisors, police, judicial and corrections employees, private security personnel, the armed forces, civilian defense employees, and producers of military and domestic security equipment. Threat labor consists of those who make credible the peril of job dismissal: the unemployed, "discouraged workers" and prisoners.
There were two key findings in the study: 1) the U.S. ratio of one guard or threat laborer for every 2.3 civilian employees not engaged in maintaining order was the highest among the industrialized nations -- it also correlated with the slower rate of economic growth in the U.S.; and 2) there was an inverse relationship between management size and productivity. Thus, the U.S., with 12.1 percent managers, had a productivity growth rate of 0.7 percent, while Japan, with 3.7 percent managers, had a productivity rate of 3.0 percent. Finland, with only 3.0 percent in the managerial ranks, had a productivity growth rate of 3.6 percent.
The overall conclusion in the study is that increases in armed forces personnel, the police or increasing the ratio of managers to non-managerial workers in the workforce, all contribute to a more dysfunctional economy.
A key question is: Is a study done about two decades ago still valid today? Given the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the subsequent explosive growth of security companies, the ongoing increase in military personnel, the increase in the U.S. prison population to the highest level ever, and the extremely high levels of discouraged and unemployed workers in today's workforce, all suggest that the ratio of guard and threat workers to civilian workers not engaged in maintaining order may be even higher than it was in the early 1990s.
*Samuel Bowles, David M. Gordon and Thomas Weisskopf, "The Boom a Bust," The Nation, February 10, 1992.
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