The article <a href="https://indi.ca/military-industrial-simple/" author="Indrajit Samarajiva" source="Indi.ca">Military Industrial Simple</a> describes the U.S. empire in terms of a "bust out", which is what an organization like the mafia does to businesses that they've otherwise bled dry. The bust-out is then setting the business premises on fire to collect the insurance money. He writes, <bq><img attachment="lighting_the_joint_on_fire.webp" align="right" caption="LIghting the joint on fire">A bust-out works where the mafia takes control of your restaurant (say), runs up bills on the joints credit, steals or sells goods out the back, and never pays the debt back. When it all goes to shit, they burn the place down for the insurance money, or just leave. This is broadly what private-equity (La Cosa Nostra for less spicy whites) has done to the US as a whole, ever since Ike warned about the military industrial complex. <b>They took control of the American Republic after World War II, ran up forever war bills on the joint's credit, overcharge or just steal money out the unauditable Pentagon, and never pay the mounting debt back.</b> Now it's all going shit and they're <b>burning the place down, dumping and pumping the entire US economy in a last orgy of insider trading.</b></bq> <bq>A white-collar bust-out describes the military industrial complex from the imperial perspective. It's the art of the steal, looting the imperial treasury by losing imperial wars. They don't want the Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Ukrainian governments to succeed, they just want them to bleed (money) then move onto the next hypocrisy. <b>It's ultimately the good faith and credit of the US Republic that's being busted out, used to fund a war machine that doesn't work except for laundering money back into the Beltway Mafia.</b></bq> The Beltway Mafia are parasites, killing the host. But they've never learned to care because there has always been another host. But where do you go when you kill the biggest host around? Do they even think that far? Or do they only think: if I don't do it, someone else will. And where will that leave me? Might as well get while the getting's good. In an unprincipled landscape where there are literally no cultural or moral barriers holding back behavior destructive to the very fabric of society, there isn't any other possible conclusion. He makes another excellent point, writing that the U.S. causes all of the problems that its military is there to purportedly solve. <bq>America acts so troubled by the problems in the world, but that's like a soap company acting troubled by dirt. It's just advertising, and CNN and BBC get their cut of the blood money accordingly. <b>America is the world's biggest arms dealer and they create the world's biggest problems and embiggen them through privatized propaganda.</b> They create both supply and demand, forming a vicious circle that drives their business cycle.</bq> This is an excellent way of thinking about this, one that I hadn't thought about before and which I will definitely be using in the future. It is undisputed that the U.S. has the biggest military in the world, by at least an order of magnitude. It is similarly undisputed that the U.S. is the world biggest arms dealer, almost by the same margin. It is also the source of much of the world's propaganda, marketing, and cultural influence. How in God's name do people think that these are not all working hand-in-hand? Of course the U.S.'s immense propaganda organization is being used to convince the world that it needs the weapons that the U.S. creates. What else could it possibly be for? This is a country that has been run like a business for at least a century, if not longer. It is doing what seemingly every large capitalist organization does: rather than considering in any way whether what it has to offer is of any value, it leverages the lucre it has accumulated from its prior antisocial behavior grants it to influence and strong-arm unwilling customers to continue buying its product, in an endless cycle of violence and futility. As noted by Samarajiva , this description matches perfectly the creeds espoused in <i>Goodfellas</i> and <i>The Sopranos</i>. The 2022 book <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=4681" author="Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad" source="">The Withdrawal</a> describes the exact same mechanism. Samarajiva goes on to explain that not only is the U.S. the biggest purveyor of violence, not only does it sell the most weapons in a world it considers hostile, as a way of justifying their own level of violence, but they're not even interesting in "winning" the wars or battles they purport to be fighting---because that would end the lucrative market that they've created. <bq>It's also much better if your solutions don't actually work. The bombs just need to look like they work, so the suckers keep buying more. Thus America creates more terrorism everywhere they go to ‘eliminate terrorism’ (like in AFRICOM). <b>Why the fuck would they want to eliminate terrorism? This would be like Dove eliminating dirt. They're homicidal, not suicidal.</b></bq> And the U.S.---and most western---media is in on the game, getting their cut of the deal in exchange for <i>selling</i> the idea that the U.S. empire is dead-set on doing the thing that there is no way they would ever want to do: put an end to war and make peace. <bq>America loses repeatedly to nouns (terrorism, drugs, poverty) because they're ultimately about numbers, everything else is just marketing. There is no sincerity in the American news any more than during the commercials. <b>They are no more sincere about human rights and democracy than Coke is sincere about you having a good time with your friends.</b></bq> That is a devastatingly good description of the U.S. and its captured media. Samarajiva finishes up the bust-out analogy by putting Trump's role in perspective. <bq>All that's left is the dénouement of every bust-out. As Henry Hill said, <iq>and then finally, when there's nothing left, and when you can't borrow another buck from the bank [coming] or buy another case of booze, you bust the joint out. You light a match.</iq> And thus finally, <b>from this perspective, Trump is not some aberration. He is the historical arsonist, arriving right on schedule.</b></bq>