The Noble Lie

Here is Gen. Smedley Butler’s famous retirement letter from the United Fruit corporation — excuse me, I meant the United States military. He was a 30s era general who saw the machinations of industry controlling the machinations of military, for their own selfish ends. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

• http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

This was the same guy who was approached by industrialists to help them with a fascist coup against the U.S. Government. Not only did he refuse, but he ratted the bastards out. Of course, since “the bastards” were the wealthy industrialists who control the US economy (names such as Prescott Bush), nothing happened to them.

I wish I could find a good documentary on the history of warfare and standing armies. Maybe I should make one. I think it could be very illuminating. In the old days, they were called soldiers of fortune, because only money-worshipping mercenaries would go from country to country slaughtering at the order of others in those days. Now in the days of scientific conditioning, we can turn your gentle son or daughter into a ruthless killer, scientifically.

The people who declare wars aren’t stupid. These fine, upstanding, philanthropic gentlemen watch their profits soar during war. More importantly, society is more malleable and more willing to be obedient and accept drastic transformation (Hitler and Mussolini, the New Deal, the Patriot Act, notice how often these things happen during wartime?) much more readily. Finally, war is well-known as a population control valve, and it was after the UN declared war on war that they said they would have to take new steps to keep the population down, to replace what they saw as the “beneficial” population control effect of warfare.

War is a slaughterhouse for human cattle. It’s one of the places we’re sent to die for profit after we’ve been fattened up.