From my email outbox, an occasional series ...
"Blaming the markets for why the USA has so many financial crises is like
blaming the arms manufacturers for why the USA has so many wars -
they're certainly involved, and they're certainly guilty of some very
bad practices, but if that's where your analysis starts and stops then I'd say you're
missing the big picture."
This does leave one wondering what Ike was so worked up about.
ReplyDeleteWhich is to say that it's been suggested that the arms trade is in fact the big picture, and the wars the little daubs of paint in it, and that it might take a bit more than a sneer to convince everyone that this perspective ought to be disregarded.
it's been suggested that the arms trade is in fact the big picture, and the wars the little daubs of paint in it
ReplyDeletetbh, if someone is prepared to state something so wildly obviously counterfactual I would not bother trying to convince them otherwise. Euclid would have a hard time with some people if they formed an opinion about hypotenuses.
Fair enough, but then what was Ike on about?
ReplyDeleteEisenhower's original speech was more about the dangers of a) domestic authoritarianism from a military oriented society and b) tendency toward regulatory capture by the arms procurement industry and consequent over-buying. I don't think he was really warning that the USA would be forced into wars and indeed the big illustration of the power of arms companies is that US arms spending doesn't actually fall all that much when there isn't a war on. I tend to take the Noam Chomsky line on that question, which is that the word "military" is superfluous; it's just the industrial complex.
ReplyDeleteIf we take all that and cram it back through the analogy-hole, I think we might find quite a bit of the sting has been drained from your original rebuke.
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