"While the country is subsumed by both public health and an unemployment crisis, and is separately focused on a sustained protest movement against police abuses, a massive $740.5 billion military spending package was approved last week by the Democratic-controlled House Armed Services Committee. . ."
We all probably missed detail too - some kind of show of "party-unity"
"The GOP-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee will almost certainly send the package with little to no changes to the White House for signing."
Glen Greenwald asks,
How did this happen?
Perhaps most remarkable is the amount of the military budget itself.
> It is three times more than the planet’s second-highest military spender, China
> It is ten times more than the third-highest spender, Saudi Arabia
> It is 15 times more than the military budget of the country most frequently invoked by Committee members as a threat to justify militarism: Russia
> It is more than the next 15 countries combined spend on their military.
They authorized this kind of a budget in the midst of a global pandemic as tens of millions of newly unemployed Americans struggle even to pay their rent.
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"How do Democrats succeed in presenting an image of themselves based on devotion to progressive causes and the welfare of the ordinary citizen while working with Liz Cheney to ensure that vast resources are funneled to the weapons manufacturers, defense sector and lobbyists who fund their campaigns?
Why would a country with no military threats from any sovereign nation to its borders spend almost a trillion dollars a year for buying weapons while its citizens linger without health care, access to quality schools, or jobs?
Who are the people in Congress doing this, and why?
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ONCE AGAIN IT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE IMAGE AND THE REALITY
Greenwald continues:
". . . In reporting on the approval of this military budget last week, I watched all 14 hours of the committee proceedings. It was remarkably revealing about how the U.S. government really functions, who the culprits are, what their motives are in pursuing policies that so blatantly have no benefit for the people they pretend to represent, and the vast gap between the image they create for themselves and the reality of what they really do in Washington . . ."
Having spent large amounts of time watching many hours of these committee proceedings and speaking to several people with in-depth knowledge of the committee, I decided it would be very worthwhile to devote this week’s SYSTEM UPDATE episode to showing how this committee works and what it did last week so that some much-needed light is brought to these usually hidden proceedings. We’re very proud of the show we produced this week because it fulfills the goal of providing in-depth examinations of complex but extremely consequential matters that receive far less media attention than they deserve.
The program can be viewed on the Intercept’s YouTube channel or on the player below:
