People mowed down shopping for back-to-school supplies for their kids. Thirteen hours later and fifteen hundred miles away revelers enjoying a night of fun and frolic run for their lives as an assault rifle shatters the peaceful night. Thirty-one will pay the ultimate price. The rest will remember the terror and the horror forever. Grieving relatives will mourn and through their tears ask why. Life in 21st century America is risky business. The specter of fearful American parents buying bullet-proof back packs for their elementary school children should shock all Americans. A reflection of our foreign policy, perhaps, as the global image of America spirals downward from freedom and democracy to violence and militarism. The corporate media doesn’t like to talk about it, but endless war is eating us alive. U.S. diplomats have been outsourced by generals and admirals, strategic policy-making replaced by deadly threats and sanctions, and the passage of sky-high military budgets pays for seven wars and 800 military bases We live in a country falling apart where millions face economic ruin and social programs are dying on the vine while the U.S. war machine rolls merrily along. What’s wrong with this picture? We make a stab at the answer in “Perpetual War Abroad, Mass Shootings at Home: It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s America the Beautiful”
