The term, military-industrial complex, was made famous by Dwight Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell speech.^.[i]  Since then Eisenhower’s fears have become a reality in more ways than one.  First, the sheer amount of money spent on military undermines government’s stated purpose of taking care of its citizens.^[ii]  Furthermore, the military is now a tool used to indoctrinate and capture America’s delusionally religious and its poor.  Since the fifties, the religious and nationalistic rhetoric used by the conservative movement has been used to create and stoke a tribalistic corporate war machine.

While flags wave in the front yards of the working class, opportunities that would have otherwise actually helped economically are pulled out from under them while the industries that support and supply the military continue to get richer.  Visit any impoverished area and what becomes apparent is the presence of military enlistment programs and churches, the two often working together.  The poor have become nothing more than indoctrinated, cheap labor for the endless wars created and waged by the corporate complex itself.[iii]. This is not a governmental problem, as Trump and the Republicans claim, it is a corporate/autocratic problem led primarily by Trump and the Republicans.  

The only difference between Eisenhower and the Republicans now led by the Trump administration is that Trump simply accepts as a good Eisenhower’s fears.  Eisenhower’s worries concerning a growing military-industrial complex has now mutated into an industrial-military complex.  The marine motto: the few, the proud… still rings true, but the few and the proud are now the richest in 1%.

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[i] https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/military-industrial-complex

[ii] https://borgenproject.org/the-relationship-between-the-military-and-global-poverty/

[iii] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/ProfitsOfWar

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