AMERICA'S RECIPE FOR DISASTER
As the sun sets on the Biden presidency and the world prepares to bid farewell to Jimmy Carter, a man who embodied the quiet dignity of a bygone era, I find myself reflecting on an old economic metaphor: 'guns and butter'. For those unfamiliar with this handy phrase, it’s a way of describing the balance between a nation’s investment in defense (guns) and its investment in the well-being of its people (butter). Once upon a time, America prided itself on having both—a strong military to protect us from threats and a robust social safety net to ensure our citizens thrived. But somewhere along the way, we decided to trade in our butter churns for hedge funds and our rifles for stock options.
From FDR’s New Deal to Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, there was a time when America seemed to understand that a nation’s strength wasn’t just measured by the size of its arsenal but also by the health, education, and prosperity of its people. But fast forward to today, and it feels like we’ve swapped out that ethos for something far more dystopian. The butter has gone rancid, and the guns are now metaphorical—aimed squarely at the heart of what used to be the American Dream.
Let’s not mince words: we’re living in an ownership society. And no, that doesn’t mean you get to own anything cool like a house or a car without taking on crippling debt. It means that fewer and fewer people own pretty much everything—our schools, our hospitals, our infrastructure, and even our democracy. The common good? It’s been privatized, packaged, and sold to the highest bidder. And if you can’t afford it? Well, tough luck.
Remember when America was the “greatest country in the world”? A shining beacon of hope, innovation, and progress? Yeah, me neither. That’s because over the past few decades, we’ve been slowly dismantling everything that made this country great and replacing it with a system designed to benefit the ultra-wealthy at everyone else’s expense. Public services are underfunded, infrastructure is crumbling, and social safety nets are being shredded faster than a tax audit at Mar-a-Lago.
And speaking of Mar-a-Lago, let’s talk about Donald Trump—the man who turned populism into performance art. With his golden toilet seats and penchant for fast food, Trump convinced millions of Americans that he was one of them, all while quietly laying the groundwork for a new era of oligarchic dominance. Enter Elon Musk, his billionaire benefactor and part-time meme lord. Together, they’ve ushered in a brave new world where the uber-rich don’t even bother hiding behind the curtain anymore. Why should they? They own the curtain—and the stage—and probably your seat in the audience too.
Under Trump’s administration (and let’s be honest, even under some of his predecessors), we saw a systematic effort to strip public institutions of their funding and legitimacy. Schools? Crappy. Hospitals? Overwhelmed. Infrastructure? Held together with duct tape and prayers. The goal is simple: make public systems so dysfunctional that people start begging for privatization. And who’s there to swoop in and save the day? Billionaires like Musk, who promise innovation but deliver exploitation.
Take Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public education—pillars of American society that are now being starved of resources faster than a dieter on day one of a juice cleanse. These programs are on the chopping block because billionaires have decided they’d rather hoard wealth than pay taxes. And let’s not forget Trump’s pseudo-office (or whatever that was) that seemed tailor-made to let Musk and his ilk pick over the bones of our government like vultures circling a dying animal.
What we’re witnessing isn’t just class warfare—it’s class annihilation. The billionaires are safe in their castles (or Mars-bound rockets), while the rest of us are left to fight over scraps. The gap between the haves and have-nots is widening faster than Jeff Bezos’ net worth during a pandemic, and it’s all by design. Fear keeps people divided, distracted, and docile—a perfect recipe for maintaining the status quo.
But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be this way. History has shown us time and again that when ordinary people stand up and demand change, extraordinary things can happen. The New Deal wasn’t handed to us on a silver platter—it was fought for by unions, activists, and everyday Americans who refused to accept that poverty and inequality were inevitable.
So what do we do now? For starters, we organize. We protest. We vote like our lives depend on it—because they do. We reject the neoliberalism and libertarianism that have brought us to this point and demand a return to policies that prioritize people over profits. We invest in public goods like education, healthcare, and infrastructure—not because it’s easy but because it’s necessary.
And maybe—just maybe—we can rediscover that delicate balance between guns and butter. A strong defense doesn’t have to come at the expense of a strong society. In fact, they go hand in hand. Because at the end of the day, what good is a fortress if everything inside it is falling apart?
The choice is ours: Do we continue down this path of billionaire feudalism, where we’re nothing more than cannon fodder for their profit-driven armies? Or do we stand up and fight for a world where everyone—not just the few—can thrive?
The clock is ticking, America. Let’s hope we choose wisely before the butter runs out entirely.
