The noted political philosopher Andy Warhol---seriously, the pop-culture artist who made money when he painted a picture of a Campbell's Soup can on canvas and proved, as Marshall McLuhan once wrote, "Art is anything you can get away with"---once observed something to the effect that everyone should have 15 minutes of fame. Americans apparently have taken this notion to heart, as political issues are fed, one at a time, into a media pressure-cooker and occupy the public's limited attention. 

   Only a few weeks back Syria was front-and-center. Now we have a shutdown of the Federal government as a major topic. Some polls indicate the public blames the Republican Party for this fiasco. The rest of the World sits back and watches and wonders why our collective head is up our figurative anal orifice.

   The "crisis" of the moment makes for a hot story. People are burned out in a short time. "Network," Paddy Chayefsky's brilliant 1976 satire of the media---"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!" in which news anchor Howard Beale became the first person killed over bad ratings---was a good assessment of the path down which journalism would lurch in the decades to come. In that movie, a corporation buys out the corporation that owns a network and places the head of the entertainment division in charge of the news division.

   The shutdown of the Federal government has been silly. The possible default of the Federal government on debt is absurd. Where, though, in the national discussion of these budgetary matters has been mention of a really big ticket item of the national budget: defense spending? We see our people killed and maimed, plus rack up billions, to maintain troops in Afghanistan. Why are we still in Afghanistan? We are such poor students of history, we did not learn the lessons of previous powers that occupied that nation of mountains, goats, few natural resources, and resourceful war lords. If we withdrew all of our troops tomorrow, and withdrew support from the (extremely) corrupt regime that pretends to govern the country, would there be a difference? If a tree falls in a forest located in a vacuum (I know---trees could not exist without carbon dioxide, just as Americans cannot exist in an environment absent machines that create carbon monoxide) and no one is around, does it make a sound? Have our billions upon billions of expenditures on defense brought us more security? Yet if we chopped the budget there by a significant amount, we save money.

   That discussion would bore many. Others would wave the flag and say we cannot cut the military. Many of these people also tout the intent of the Framers of the Constitution as the basis for their beliefs. However, the Framers were scared of standing armies. More than a few of the men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 would be aghast at the notion of a military so many times the size of the next few largest military forces in the World, and probably as aghast at our deployment of military force in over a hundred other countries.

   When the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, the media---news, entertainment, even weather divisions---covered the latest developments. The American public soon tired. Now we only seem to hear of goings-on during half-times or breaks between innings when a member the armed forces surprises family by a return home, or on big sports holidays when satellite images of military personnel flash on screens to show our personnel as they watch the game many time zones away.

   The 15 minutes given to military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan was over years ago. Veterans of those actions live with the aftermath. Let's bring home the troops from those countries. We also should bring home troops in Germany, Japan, and any place else war is not imminent. Let's cut up and melt a few aircraft carriers. We still would have the largest force of such vessels of any nation. The steel could be used for bridges or re-rod for highways. The money saved on defense could go, in part, to pay the deficit---lowered significantly, as usually is the case, by a President from the Democratic Party---and the rest devoted to the nation's infrastructure: education, roads, bridges, rails. There would be no meaningful debate. "Talking points" would be fed to us as "news" and the usual party people would complain. After a figurative 15 minutes, the controversy would blow over and the media moved on to the latest crisis, perhaps a controversy centered around Lady Gaga or Kanye West. You know, these peple who are at the heart of what matters in the United States of America and the World.

   All I can say is, I'm mad as hell, and I'd like not to take it anymore. But corporations have exercised their newly-recognized constitutional rights and flexed their monetary muscles. We all should realize that each of us is a single person who holds a shopping bag in each hand and stands before the tank of the Nation and its corporate sponsors.