Ike Warned Us: Democracy Will Crash Under Wealth’s Weight

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist….

Yeah, yeah, you know that part and it is genius, absolutely. But, if you’re like me, it took a specific project – for me, my novel, my “opus” and the research needed – to read the actual Military-Industrial speech itself, all of it. We all knew Ike had a glimpse of the future, part of the speech is taught in high schools now. Most of us never knew that the warning about the MI Complex, is perhaps only the third or fourth most ominous clause in the speech.

Let me blow your mind a little bit, and note that just three days before Ike would enter private life, with nothing more than a message from his heart, he sent this tremor from sea to shining sea, one I suspect you didn’t learn about in that same high school:

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological-elite.

The captive of a “scientific technological elite”? Captive? It is like he could see the onrushing freight train of cars, IBM, GE, Lockheed-Martin, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, XFinity, Facebook and … and do not forget that “technology” part. The ability to manipulate computing power with high speed trading algorithms from Goldman Sachs, Chase, RBC, and all the other Masters of the Universe become pillars diving deep into our bedrock, below our view and our attention. Like quantum mechanics, where quarks and neutrinos appear and disappear out of a vacuum of nothing, money is made and hedged instant to instant, with equal mystery and little purpose, other than to make others rich. Money used in that scenario, second to second, has nothing to do with investment, it is far more akin to “mining,” with computers replacing bulldozers. And do you know what they mine the money out of? Big blocks of stock, parts of mutual funds, stuff that doesn’t trade from second to second, but holds there for years. You never missed it, nor knew of it, it was there and stolen beneath your gaze.

Yes, we’re certainly captives of a “scientific-technological-elite,” and there’s fuck-all to be done about it, at least as the nation and its laws stand right now.

But Ike was not done. He had a finale, and if you read it closely, it should cause your phone to fall to the floor, or your head to your laptop, because this most certainly wasn’t taught in your high school but damn well should be, except for, well – here:

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Nowadays, he would drop the mic and walk off. Except no, he would not, because “nowadays” the warning seems obvious in a warming world, where Trump is elected and then starts “hereby ordering” around private people, while ignoring judicial orders. It all seems “obvious” except the warning that democracy itself cannot survive in an environment where the big and powerful plunder the earth, literally and figuratively, all for their own “ease and convenience.” Were that not enough, he noted that doing so was essentially robbing from our grandchildren.

Perhaps Ike took advantage of “seeing it” prior to its real destruction. In peering to the future, he had a moment of clarity. Or maybe it just took a wise person with no political axe to grind to state the obvious. I don’t know. But, Ike saw the matter/anti matter paradox that lay under a democratic republic, embedded in a capitalist nation. The hunger for the freedom to acquire as much “stuff” as one could was our raison de etre, needed for growth, until it became our prison, needlessly over-consuming to the point that we have few “good” choices left.

Is it too late?

Hell if I know. History is replete with scholars, commentators, in the moment, always predicting that the times were unsustainable, it was always the beginning of the end.

But they weren’t reading about fires in the Amazon rainforest, Greenland becoming an attractive new piece of land to settle, the new Northwest Passage that now melted itself into existence, with a president who praises autocrats and dictators, while sneering at the earnest and responsible Justin Trudeaus of the world, or the Prime Minister of equally free Denmark. This president might be bringing on a great recession or depression, one who could very easily start a major war (China?) if he thought it provided a means to save himself. No, all those previous lamentations about the end of the world had little in the way of evidence we now have before us.

Interesting that Ike didn’t need “the evidence before us.” He only needed the evidence before “him.” He saw a new conglomeration, one in which technology wed money, which begat the military-industrial-banking-congressional-elite. It is their world, which they’ve anointed themselves the right to plunder for their own ease and convenience. We just live in it, for now.

Ike could not see the future, he could see the past, the immediate past, and he did not like it. We have our immediate past, we know it well, and do not like it. As we predict the future, it seems obvious that democracy cannot survive unbridled, galloping over the billions burrowing below. The signs are all around us. Who knew that it’s been obvious to some since 1961?

Not me.

But now you do. Spread it around. I mean it literally, not for me or this site, but for you, and your friends. The warning is still rippling through time. The only penalty is ignoring it once one knows.

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Peace, y’all.

Jason

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