#NoMoreWar

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Today’s music by Evil Bear Boris and Blue Dot Sessions via the Free Music Archive and show art from Flickr by Satragon, all under Creative Commons Licensing.

Majority Villain is produced by Gregory Haddock with production assistance from Barbara Percival and Mathieu Fournier. Kris Shapar heads our social media.

#NoMoreWar
It’s no secret I don’t like or trust Donald Trump. But you should know I never trusted Hillary. You should also know that I have a thousand problems with Obama. You should know that I don’t trust anybody in authority blindly and I don’t think you should either.

That being said, it’s irrelevant who began these wars in the Middle East. It doesn’t matter who is in charge now, because here is the truth: Most of our elected officials in DC get reelected year after year as a result of the defense industry spending millions of dollars to buy these corrupt politicians in a country where blatant legal bribery exists every day. This is not an issue isolated to Republicans. It does not exclude Democrats. The people who are meant to represent us make money every time a bomb is dropped by one of the big arms manufacturers. These firms are spread out all over the United States so as to keep pressure on all senators and representatives and keep the illusion that this is simply a “jobs program” and “just the way things are”. However, when Gallup did an international poll asking what the gravest danger world-wide was, our brothers and sisters around the globe stated plainly that it was the United States.

We know Martin Luther King, Jr. for being the “dreamer”. We know he was named for the brave and deeply hated in his time, Martin Luther, the great reformer of the church (500 years this year!). A year to the day before he died he stated he was afraid that his own government was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. Was he wrong then? 50 years ago this month - what have we learned? Have we grown from this place? He also said with great earnest, "Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love.” In other words, we do not challenge our country from any other place than sincere pride and the deepest affection. Political commentator, Tavis Smiley, said this was the speech that put a target on his back. I wonder why.

Our elected officials are profiting through the destruction of human lives. We should be furious.

War is being waged all over the world in your name. Children are being murdered with your tax dollars, and truly awful groups like ISIS are benefiting from every single attack as each bomb radicalizes the next human who has had everything that mattered taken from them. The best thing we can do to fight terrorism is stop our outlandish bombing campaigns in the name of democracy, freedom, and peace.

Obama dropped over 26,000 bombs in 2016 alone - that’s three per hour. Meanwhile, Trump just dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb available to him in Afghanistan. Most of the news is focused on Syria and Iraq, but we are also creating terror in Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. These are majority-Muslim countries where we are actively creating refugees and then giving them the middle finger when they try to leave. We are totally unaware of the consequence of these actions in our comfortable lives: 17 million people are starving in Yemen due to US-backed war efforts, and over half of the refugees from Syria are still in Syria.

We can do better, because we must do better. Our country deserves that much. The world deserves that much. I know and I agree, it feels so much more satisfying to hate and avenge those that hurt us, but as Jesus said, real or symbolic - however you feel about religion, who died on this day so many years ago so that we may know love, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Love your enemies, dine with sinners, and cause no harm where it needn’t be.