The US Gov't Is Only Winning One of The Wars It's Fighting

New column by Lee Camp

Column and voice-over by Lee Camp

Losing a war can be depressing, and the US is definitely losing the war against Iran.

• We’re no closer to defending our beloved petrodollar.

• China is as powerful as ever.

• We’ve caused prices of necessities like gas and groceries to shoot up at home.

• American farmers are being relocated to museums with exhibits about how life used to be.

• And Iran somehow seems more powerful than ever.

Sheesh. It’s those kinds of results that might make us give up on the whole enterprise of attacking countries and blowing up schoolhouses full of children in order to strengthen our empire.

But I’m here with some news to cheer you up. We are winning at least one of our wars. We’re winning our war against the American people. …Although I guess the word “we” is a bit confusing there. I should’ve said: The ruling elite are winning their war against the American people.

Thanks to the brain parasite that is toxic nationalism, most Americans believe adorable, antiquated aphorisms like, “We’re all in this together” or “A rising tide lifts all boats.” These cutesy sayings are definitely not true and possibly even offensive.

We are not all in this together.

In fact, the ruling elite are at war with the rest of us. (So I hope you’ve been stretching every morning and kept your battle uniform wrinkle-free.) Here’s just a little taster flight of ways in which the oligarchy have shown they’re actually at war with the American people over the past couple of years.

• The Trump Admin. has cut roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid expenditures, meaning many Americans who were struggling to afford healthcare will have little to no help making that possible. (But don’t worry, those cuts came with a $1 trillion tax break for the rich so that an investment banker can get his grundle waxed by a true professional.)

• The oligarchy has cut $187 billion from the nation’s food assistance program so that poor people will go hungry. This wasn’t an accident. In fact, Trump Administration officials have been bragging about knocking 4.3 million people off food assistance. (This is an important step to take because undernourished poor people are slower and therefore easier to run from.)

• The government ended Obamacare subsidies that made healthcare almost affordable for millions of people living in the only country that destroys lives with healthcare. Cutting the subsidies caused one in 10 people using Obamacare to drop out entirely and instead risk having zero health insurance in a nation where one injury or illness can bankrupt you.

• The costs of Trump’s tariff war have largely been passed on to the American consumer. In fact, the high tariffs are responsible for pushing between 650,000 and 875,000 Americans into poverty. This was a particularly brilliant move by Trump — he raised tariffs on China, for example, and almost no one noticed it was a direct attack on the American poor.

• Trump publicly stated that it was not possible for the US government to pay for things like daycare, Medicare, and Medicaid. He said the government is focused on spending money on wars (i.e., killing loads of people). I somewhat sympathize with Trump on this point. If you’re trying to murder someone, it can be rather distracting to have a second person asking you for help getting a sandwich.

Of course these are just a scarce few examples of the war being waged against Americans. The battlefronts of this war also include things like massive giveaways to corporations, environmental destruction, the gutting of the few regulations that tried to protect our air, water, or land, the gutting of restrictions on employer behavior, the intentional ignoring of wage theft or other forms of exploitation, etc. The war is massive and fought throughout the country, in every household, school, and office.

As a patriotic American, I obviously support our government no matter what. So I’m proud to say we’re winning this war. …against the American people. We’re totally fuckin’ them up.

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