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FTR#1217 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Proof that big things can, indeed, come in small packages is Nick Turse’s impactful volume The Complex: How The Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.
Clearly written, brief and to the point, yet altogether revelatory, the book details the many ways in which what President Eisenhower termed “the military-complex” has come to dominate everyday life in the U.S. to an extent unrealized by even relatively aware citizens.
In the introduction to the book, the author presents a fictional, three-member suburban family of liberal political persuasion. Opposed to the Iraq War (the book was published in 2008), Rick, his wife Donna and their teen-age son Steven are immersed in an environment every element of which is produced by a contractor with the Department of Defense.
From their toilet articles to their workout apparel, from their electronic media devices to their sunglasses, from their footwear to the automobiles they drive, from the videogames Steven plays to the gasoline that powers their cars, from their impending selections of mass transit for commuting purposes to the books they read, the inventory of their lives is produced by companies that contract with the Pentagon.
Writer Dorothy Thompson observed in 1940 (writing about the German industrialists and financiers behind the Third Reich) that, in the eyes of the Third Reich oligarchs, “economic control leads automatically to political control.”
We are of the opinion that Ms. Thompson–and the German economic titans she quotes–are correct.
It is very difficult to imagine how an entity as large and pervasive as the Pentagon and its allied interests could fail to manifest political control, following automatically on their massive economic prevalence.
Discussion
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