In 1921, the Chicago Tribune published the following cartoon by John T. McCutcheon, one of the foremost artists and political cartoonists of our nation. The numbers refer to the amount spent on World War 1, which for the United States is estimated at $22,625,253,000.00.^[1]

The title was “What the money spent on one war would do if applied to peaceful purposes.”

The list is as follows:

• It would criss-cross the continent with boulevards.
• It would irrigate and reclaim all our arid spaces.
• It would supply free education of the highest and most modern type.
• It would re-forest all the denuded timber lands
• It would build ship canals from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence
• It would electrify all railroads and give them the speed of the modern interurban systems.
• It would supply every farmer with a tractor which will low 50 acres a day.
• It would build hydro-electric plants capable of supplying the nation with power.’
• It would buy all the coal mines of the country and have them owned by the government.
• It would give us a self-supporting merchant marine, without which we cannot be independent.
• It would eliminate the slums and afford wholesome housing for everybody,.
• It would supply the poor of the nation with the best of hospitals and promote anti-disease research.
• It would provide every seaport with a deep and well-protected harbor.
• It would build landing fields and mooring piers for a system of trans-continental air routes.
• It would provide old age insurance, which would rob the creeping years of their terrors.

Based on Dave Manuel’s inflation calculator, the amount spent by the USA on World War I would be the equivalent to $342,806,863,636.36 in 2012 dollars.

Given that the cost of the war in Iraq was roughly $2.2 trillion dollars, (more if you count the interest on the debt incurred to finance that war), we’re looking at a figure roughly an order of magnitude greater.

The economy is now so large and things have become so expensive that the same 2.2 trillion today would not do as much as it might have in 1921… but it would do a hell of a lot. According to David Roberts, it would have gotten our nation halfway to a renewable energy system.

I’m rapidly approaching retirement age. While everything on McCutcheon’s list is noteworth, it was that last bullet point up there that made me sit up and take notice, especially with the GOP slavering to cut social security benefits to balance their warmongering.

Given the employment situation in our nation, which on the ground and in the trenches is far worse than any civil servant or policy wonk would ever admit to, I have to ask the question:

“As a nation, and as human beings, have we taken total leave of our senses?”

Let it be remembered that only Congress can wage war, and despite the efforts of repetitive previous administrations to promote and promulgate wars for personal gain – I’m looking at you, Dick Cheney – only Congress can authorized the funding. And yet we continue to elect, and re-elect, people – largely privileged and wealthy individuals who are unaffected by the economic terror that is snapping at the heels of so many, both elderly and young – who happily raise their hands to vote for obscene outlays of our national cash, present and future, taken from the pockets of you and me and our children and grandchildren – for the purpose of death and destruction.

When it first percolated up, the Tea Party sounded like a wonderful idea. I even attended a rally in my home town years ago, thinking I would find like-minded citizens who wanted to return to the concept of a republic run for the benefit of its people. What I saw that day was the wildest fringes of every tinfoil-hat group on the planet, and immediately saw that there was no salvation to be hoped for under that head.

I’m beyond outraged and beyond terrified. The increasing gap between the rich and the rest of us worries me not only for myself (as long as social security holds for a while, I should be OK on a daily basis, but that won’t help me pay off any housing debt any faster) but for my posterity. We have the wherewithal as a human species to make life better for everyone on the planet, but apparently not the moral (and certainly not the money-fueled political) will to do it.

Something’s gotta give. As the inimitable Benjamin Franklin said at the signing of our Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] Spartacus Educational