Every year for many years now, the bitterly divided, grid-locked, virtually civil-war-waging United States Congress (as it’s commonly depicted) has harmoniously voted for vastly more money in war spending than it had done the year before. Our lords and misrepresentatives are threatening the same again right now.
It’s a heartwarming story or cooperation and understanding, no doubt, but how can you, as an elected official, explain to constituents living third-world lives in a wealthy nation that, not only can you not tax the rich or the corporations, but you also cannot afford to fund education, energy, environment, transportation, retirement, healthcare, or housing because the weapons dealers just want more and more?
The trick, of course, in most cases is to keep your head down and your mouth shut until a bigger military spending bill than last year’s is guaranteed to pass no matter how you vote, and then vote No. You’ll be untouchable. It’s golden. You won’t have publicly organized your colleagues or used various available procedures to actually try to reduce the war spending, but you’ll have an “I voted No” shield, and that’s all you’ll need. Constituents will fall for it without fooling any weapons dealers.
But what if it’s your turn? What if you’ve drawn the short string this year? What if you can either vote Yes or anger your party’s “leader”?
Never fear! That’s what this handy guide is for! Here are 10 popular categories of excuses that have proven effective through the past quarter-century.
- You can easily depict an increase to military spending as a decrease if it’s a smaller increase than someone — ideally the president — had initially proposed. This one is in the works right now and may prove very successful. A variation on this is to claim that the bad political party (the one you’re not in) would have gotten a larger increase if you hadn’t hurried or stalled, depending on which party is gaining or losing a majority.
- Almost foolproof is the oft-used explanation that you focused your efforts on doing exactly what the peace activists wanted by removing some nasty section from the bill. “You didn’t want the U.S. and Israeli militaries to merge. You said to only vote for the bill if that was removed. We got it removed on condition that we vote for the bill. This is how things work in the real world.” This excuse gets a 5 out of 5 on Yelp. Anyone who objects is a silly dreamer, so you need not address their concerns.
- Almost matching the batting record of #2 (removing something) is adding something. It hardly matters how absurd the thing or how out of place in an institution of mass-murder and destruction, as long as it’s humanitarian. Create an agency of environmentally sustainable carpet bombing, or eliminate discrimination against transgendered pilots, or establish a proactive contracting program to minority-owned surveillance companies. Whatever. Anyone who objects will be objecting to that thing you voted for. You should be clear that it is only that thing for which you voted; nothing else exists.
- If you cannot use the top three steaming turds of the coming apocalypse, or don’t have time to come up with anything concrete, just fall back on troopism. You voted to fund the troops. Anyone objecting hates the troops, wants the troops left in the wars but their armor and weaponry carefully collected and brought home without them. If you can, grab an actual troop or three to stand in front of and ask one of them to slap you in the face really quickly until there are tears visible in your eyes before the cameras are ready.
- Numerous other excuses can work beautifully, depending on the circumstances. There’s always a most-unpopular war among the current wars. Right now, for example, some people are more upset about the crumbs going to the war on Iran than about the mountain of loafs going to the Pentagon in its entirety. So, here’s what you do. You make getting a war powers resolution on Iran vetoed part of a grand bargain in which you vote for the money to create 10 more similar wars. Or you join in a lawsuit against the war on Iran. Or you actually include in the spending bill or elsewhere a ban on spending money on that particular crime — but make clear to everyone that it’s part of a grand bargain on a 4-D chessboard. You voted for increased war money FOR PEACE and so that you could end THE war!
- While changing the topic is a losing argument when done too blatantly, it can be very, very effective when done through omission and media saturation. If you can make something else the big story and do something peace-ish on that big thing, you can get huge mileage out of it. For example, you vote for more war money but you also VOTE TO IMPEACH HEGSETH. That doesn’t remove Hegseth, much less the guy whose every whim he obeys, but it’s AWESOME!
- Pretty darn powerful, as well, is the futile legislation ploy (FLP). You may vote to increase military spending by 20 percent, but if you are a cosponsor and champion of separate legislation that would reduce military spending by 10 percent, your peace-loving constituents will understand that you are with them.
- You don’t actually need me to tell you this. You know it’s there when the time is right. Anyone who objects to your war votes is anti-Semitic. QED.
- Sure, you may have voted for increased spending on wars, but you’re in a super-purple district. If you were to give the forces of darkness the chance to label you “weak on defense” then your constituents would end up with a racist, sexist pig voting for increased mass-murder funding in place of you doing it. Which would they rather have?
- Putin.