Who Defines Our Necessities?

November 21, 1989
Musings 1990

One never tires of reading again and again KING LEAR because Shakespeare recreates, dramatically and poignantly, both the shame and glory of the human condition.

Shakespeare, the great Elizabethan, whose life was confined geographically to the small area of Stratford to London (with perhaps, road shows now and then in other English towns), was a profound prophet of the universals of human good and evil uncircumscribed by boundaries of place or time.

In Act 3, Scene 2, King Lear, accepting straw for a bed, says:

“The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious.”

One “necessity” we lackadaisical citizens have tolerated is the bloated “defense” budget of 300 billion dollars annually. Surely nuclear weapons are vile along with chemical and biological warfare and the whole dismal panoply of ways to kill not only armed enemies, but also whole populations. What has made “vile things precious?” The presence of a dangerous and powerful FOE!

One current ploy in the forty-year-old Cold War is the brutality again surfacing in El Salvador. Six Jesuit priests and two other persons have been massacred in cold blood by the infamous Death Squads. The Cristiani government will investigate, but the only sure outcome is that the assassins will not be brought to justice. Our U.S. government has been supporting right-wing military dictatorship in El Salvador at the rate of one million dollars a day for years. Reliable sources report that these Death Squads have murdered at least seventy thousand men, women and children.

Because the rebels are labeled “left-wing guerillas” or “communists”, vile actions are precious. Thus, killing them off is the “art of our necessity.” An ENEMY is needed to keep Congress voting the stupendous sums for "defense". An ENEMY is needed to keep the signed contracts accumulating for the gigantic arms corporations. Although corruption, bribery, and incompetence are abundant in the military-industrial complex, few in the House or Senate seem shocked or aroused. PAC funds soothe any pangs of Congressional conscience.

But, what if we run out of enemies? The current tide of events in Europe seems to be a sign that the USSR is less and less THE FOE. The Russian Bear no longer crushes all within its grasp. Can we then begin a transfer of weapons of war to tools for peace? Food for the hungry of the world, medical care, housing, education, environmental concerns and the multitude of human needs crying for attention? What a noble transformation that would be!

The obstacles to (hah) “kinder and gentler” ways will be formidable, particularly when 300 billion dollars a year are at stake. In a TV interview Sunday, Secretary of Defense Cheney defended continuing billions for Star Wars (SDI) by asserting that in a few years, 15 nations will have intercontinental ballistic missiles. So, instead of ONE BIG FOE we will have FIFTEEN!

How's that for trumping the aces of a world that needs and wants to disarm! Will there be enough of us to say, “NO”? It would be instructive to live long enough to find out.