Willa Davis-Brown

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@AyannaPressley I agree, Madam Speaker, and I've already signed! Please run for speaker!

[Chris Hedges @ChrisLynnHedges]

Power does not rest in the Congress. It does not rest in the courts. It does not even rest in the imperial presidency. It rests in the hands of Wall Street financiers, Silicon Valley, private equity firms, the fossil fuel industry, the predatory health care and pharmaceutical giants, agribusinesses and, most of all, the war industry.

No mainstream politician, including Bernie Sanders, dares utter a word against our entrenched militarism. If you do, you end up like Ralph Nader, who was turned into a pariah by a compliant media and our corporate-indentured political parties. Nader spoke the truth. He paid for his honesty.

We are about to witness the largest increase in war spending in American history with a proposed $1.5 trillion budget. The average taxpayer already shells out over $4,000 a year to the war industry as consumer and environmental agencies are dismantled, health care and education are defunded and programs such as Medicaid and food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) are slashed.

The new Pentagon budget will hand $58.5 billion to artificial intelligence and military command-and-control centers and see the effective merging of the United States and Israeli military industrial complexes. Seventy-four percent of the increase in the proposed $1.5 trillion budget will go to private contractors, including those who are building massive data centers on military bases.

None of this is good for us or good for the planet. The Pentagon, powered by the fossil fuel industry, is the world’s largest institutional polluter, emitting an estimated 66 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2024.

Americans, meanwhile, struggle with rising prices — nearly 30 percent of people go into debt to buy groceries. An estimated 114,174. Americans die each year due to lack of health insurance or inadequate health care while a single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and reduce annual health expenditures by $1.04 trillion, or nearly 20 percent. Twenty-five percent of Americans are functionally unemployed. The minimum wage remains frozen, despite Democratic Party promises to raise it, at $ 7.25 an hour.

The elites use war not only for personal enrichment, but to stifle class conflict.

War, as W.E.B. Du Bois said, diverts the poor from their real interests. It funnels national frustrations into the “heroic” battle against a common enemy. The nationalist cant, with its endemic racism, seduces those who are alienated or on the margins of society into feeling they suddenly belong. It entices them to sacrifice themselves for a “noble” cause. They become the architects of their own enslavement. They march like sheep into war’s purgatory.

By the time they wake up, it is too late. They are cast aside, as so many of our veterans have painfully discovered, like human refuse.

But as a tactic to consolidate power and enrich the billionaire class, it is unbeatable.

Wars will only be curtailed, if not halted, when we nationalize the weapons industry and dramatically reduce the military budget. Until then, nothing, absolutely nothing, will change.

Indeed, things will only get worse.

No one in Congress — or any other branch of government — will do this for us.

The masters of war sitting in the boardrooms of Boeing, General Dynamics or Northrop Grumman are not praying for peace in the Middle East or coexistence with China and Russia. The generals — who build their careers by orchestrating wars and post military careers enriching themselves working for defense contractors — are not seeking a cessation of global conflicts. They are seeking hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars and government debt to fuel the self-defeating cycle of endless war.

The corporate vultures — especially the war makers — are, as I write, descending on Congress. They are meeting with Democratic Party leaders and holding out promises of millions in cash. They will corrupt, neutralize and compromise most. They will destroy the careers of the very few who refuse to do their bidding.

They hold the real power. They have no intention of surrendering it.

The manufacturing of weapons systems and the waging of war are the chief activities of the U.S. government. It is no longer one among other means of advancing the national interest. War and violence are how we speak to the rest of the world.

The “shadow world,” — as the author Andrew Feinstein calls it in his book on the global arms trade — is defined by staggering levels of corruption, deception and senseless death. It is lawless and unregulated. Its criminal activities, cannibalization of national budgets and secrecy are sanctified in the name of “national security.”

Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Airbus, Rheinmetall and ThyssenKrupp, along with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and Exxon, are the state.

We, including our political class, are the vassals.

Read my my full column, 'The Enemy at Home' on Substack at the link below:

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@VanJones68 I can't imagine how much you must loathe yourself. No amount of money would be worth my soul, but I see it's just fine for you, Van.

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@TheTNHoller @RepJeffries Not good enough. How about putting forth an affirmative platform that shows the American people what Democrats envision for the future of America? Universal childcare, Medicare for all, free college and canceling college loans, no more $ to Israel, to name a few...

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

Seems like many if not most of these new online influencer types were puked up by Jubilee -- which rewards the cringiest, most primitive and most obnoxious high school oratory and debate styles. Even worse, it appears that -- despite their youth -- they have no ideology let alone any minimally radical views but instead are basically just DNC apparatchiks programmed to monomanically engage in the slimiest and most depressing mission: defend old establishment DC Democrats.

Imagine wasting your 20s on waking up every day to praise and glorify Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and the DNC and attack their critics. Here, one of them accuses many of the leading pundits from the Bernie/AOC wing of the Party -- @KrystalBall, @KyleKulinski, @mehdirhasan -- of deliberately spreading lies in order to undermine the Democratic Party, promote their own careers and faction, and -- worst of all -- impugn the high honor and integrity of Hakeem Jeffries.

They all seem like they were manufactured in a secret AI factory built by some sinister joint venture between Alex Sores and Reid Hoffman to create armies of blind partisan loyalists. Watch this for as long as you can bear it and you'll see what i mean. And it seems like there are hundreds of them: a few new one introduced every month.

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@VanJones68 It's either a humiliation kink or you're truly the most unself-aware person on the face of the planet, Van. Is there ANYTHING you once advocated for that you haven't sacrificed for money? What a disappointed you've become...

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@PattyMurray Universal childcare, Medicare for All, and an end to this illegal war in Iran!

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@RepPressley Yes, Madame Speaker, that's exactly what the American people want!

[Jason Poulos @jasonvpoulos]

The chair of this group hasn't supported a public option since being first elected to office and taking over $1.16M from pharmaceutical interests. They are only advocating for a public option to try to divert support for Medicare-for-all.

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@neeratanden No surprise. Left populism resonates with everyone!

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@shannon_last @JonathanBonann5 @SarahLongwell25 @DylanByers But it's not entirely subscriber funded, as noted in the post. It's, in part, funded by the Murdochs, and they also have corporate sponsors. Listen, I am not knocking The Bulwark's coverage, but it is a deservice to pretend they're "independent media" when clearly they're not.

[Jeff Hauser @jeffhauser]

The censorship from @MajorityDems is insane--our reporter was set to cover the event for @TheProspect. He submitted multiple requests, finally got a pass, it was in his Google Wallet, he made plans to attend, and...

revoked.

Today.

The day before the conference!

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@neeratanden How is this different from what the so-called "chaos agent's" say?

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@BriannaWu @neeratanden You are a bigot, so you'd fit in well with the right.

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@JonathanBonann5 @SarahLongwell25 @DylanByers Sarcasm noted, but it really does a disservice to truly independent outlets, such as Breaking Points among others, that do not receive funding from billionaires, nor take corporate sponsorships. What makes you "independent" if your funding structure is the same as legacy media?

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@neeratanden @trouble_man90 If Jeffries has the same sort of vision of Trump, and supports many of the same legisltion/policy, why wouldn't we hate him too? This isn't team sports, Neera.

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@KevOnStage Junior High, so 7th grade. It was all braids and puff ponies before then.

[Dr. Thaer @ThaerAhmadMD]

I’m devastated to hear the Dr. Rizk Abou Sheira has been killed in the bombing of Nasser Medical Complex.
Dr. Rizk was in the American Doctor documentary operating and serving his people. He lost his life doing that, he lost his life because he was doing that.

[Willa Davis-Brown @willadavisbrown]

@neeratanden Neera, it seems as if you hate voters. Hasan is merely the megaphone for a bunch of voters because I guarantee you people do NOT want Jeffries or Schumer in leadership roles. I don't, nor does anyone I know.