Should Child Support Laws Be Eventually Phased Out?

First, I should note that I do NOT approve of actual deadbeat dads under the current system.  They are literally welchers of the worst kind, and I cannot stand welchers of any kind.  To any fellas reading this, I strongly advise you NOT to have any unprotected PIV intercourse at all unless you either 1) had a vasectomy, and/or 2) can afford to set aside the quarter-million dollars or so per child to raise such children with at least a halfway decent standard of living from birth to age 18 (or an even higher age in some states for child support obligations).  And that doesn't even include college or the possibility (nay, probability) of massive medical bills in the USA.  Sorry fellas, but the truth hurts.  Under the current imperfect system, if you want to play, you may very well have to PAY.  And if you don't pay, well, then you get to face the modern-day version of debt peonage or debtor's prison.  You can thank the patriarchy for backfiring on you per the law of karma.  Also don't forget to thank neoliberalism (including the hypocritical President Slick Willie in the 1990s, one of the biggest rakes and cads in modern history) as well for essentially gutting what passed for a social safety net, and thus for "hunting you down and making you pay" in return.

In other words, fellas, discipline yourself to say, "no glove, no love" as a matter of course, lest you play a risky game of Russian Roulette both physically and financially. 

That said, as we make the rocky and often nonlinear transition towards a Matriarchal society, a very vexing question will inevitably come up.  What to do about child support laws?  Should the very concept be phased out?  Many men will reflexively say, "Hell Yeah!", while many Women would say, "Hell NO!", or at the very least, have an abundance of caution about the overall idea.  On social media, for example, I have even encountered some Women here and there who say they want to create a world where no one knows or cares who the father is, yet somehow still want to force men to pay for it all.  I guess they want a rule of "joint and several liability" or "deep pocket rule", of all of the potential fathers for all children, not unlike what Lenin briefly had in the USSR during their ill-fated first attempt at a "sexual revolution" in the late 1910s and early 1920s, that is, before Stalin did an about-face and abruptly reversed it after the orphanages became (paradoxically) packed to the brim with unwanted children.  Yes, that was before modern birth control and paternity testing, of course, but it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how that sort of policy probably would NOT end very well at all under late-stage capitalism today either.  That circle simply does NOT square at all.

Meanwhile, many right-wing reactionaries (including so-called "reactionary feminists"), believe that the more obligations people have in general, the better, because reasons.  Even if some tacitly believe that Women should have all the rights but men should have all of the obligations, or vice-versa.  That circle doesn't really square either.

Yet in actual Matriarchal societies, past and present, such as the Mosuo, we know that men generally have no real liability for their own (putative) children at all.  Why?  Not only due to the traditional lack of paternity certainty (at least before the advent of modern birth control and paternity testing), but also because the Women do NOT want themselves or their children be tethered to or dependent on the men, for obvious reasons, as that is a major conflict of interest.  Whoever pays the piper calls the tune, and with men's shekels come the shackles.  And men, as a rule, in every society patriarchal or Matriarchal or anything in between, have always been the lazier gender overall, and often seem to be congenitally allergic to responsibility.  Sure there are exceptions, but those exceptions really only prove the rule.  If Women are going to inevitably carry the bulk of the "mental load" regardless, to say nothing of the physical load too, they might as well be fully in charge as well. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, and heavy is the head that wears the crown.

In other words, it is understood that with power comes responsibility, and thus men would have both less power and less responsibility relative to Women under Matriarchy, particularly in regards to children.  That makes sense, as it's a trade-off.  Women would also be the richer gender as well, and children would ultimately be raised (more or less) collectively by the "village".  And to paraphrase the philosopher Iris Murdoch (in a different context), one cannot simply go on indefinitely living off of the interest of a capital that one has long since rejected, at least not for very long.

(Perhaps that is one somewhat esoteric reason why, contrary to popular opinion, even Feminists have long been divided on the issue of child support laws and reform.  Any Feminist Women who do support reform (despite it being a very hot-button, "third rail" issue), however, generally use equality-based arguments to openly make their case, though.)

And yet, abruptly ending all child support obligations right now (especially in the USA) would be nothing short of catastrophic, leaving millions of Women and children high and dry, while rakish men get to laugh all the way to the bank.  So that is clearly a no-go, hands down.  Especially in a world where Women's hard-won reproductive rights are currently on the chopping block as we speak.  

The fellas can't have it both ways, of course. If Women are to be treated as brood mares, then it logically follows that men would be....WORK HORSES.  And we must all say "NEIGH" to both of those "traditional" and dehumanizing gender roles.

Long story short, in the long run, I do support gradually phasing out the child support laws, for children born at some point in the future, but we must be very careful NOT put the cart before the horse.  Before we even begin to do so, we must do ALL of the following first, at a minimum:

• Fully codify and guarantee Women's reproductive rights in federal law.
• Birth control and abortion access must be readily available to all on demand.
• Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all, aka Social Security For All, with NO strings attached.  Goodbye poverty!
• At the very least, we must have some flavor of UBI for children, similar to what we very briefly had in the USA with the expanded child tax credit.  We could even call it "collective child support".
• Universal, single-payer Medicare For All.  Goodbye massive medical bills!
• Generous paid family leave for both genders.
• Free or subsidized high-quality childcare for all who want it.
• "Baby bonds" to make every baby a trust-fund baby and build generational wealth.
• Free college and/or trade school for all who want it.
• As long as other social welfare and safety net programs like TANF still exist, remove the perverse requirement for single Mothers to name the father in order to receive benefits (you can thank Slick Willie for that one). 
• And so on.  In other words, the genuine progressive wish list, funded collectively via progressive taxation, Georgist-style taxation, financial transaction taxes, Pigouvian taxes, vice taxes, and/or money creation.

After that, the first phase of the phaseout would be to allow men to get a so-called "paper abortion" early on before birth of the child, wherein they irrevocably sign away all parental rights and responsibilities.  Even before that, one can nibble around the edges a bit and start with ending all existing child support requirements at age 18 (albeit with a grandfather clause, of course) and not a day later, and also categorically exempt all vasectomized men from child support going forward as well.  Then, gradually phase it all out organically from there.  Eventually, it will simply become the norm to put "father unknown" on birth certificates by default.

(And repeal the Bradley Amendment too.)

"But men will behave even more like cads then!", some Women may object.  Well, I've got news for you:  men have been doing that since before Jehovah had Witnesses, lol.  That is, they have their own personal Jehovah between their legs, and their balls are the Witnesses, lol.  And it is only a fairly recently innovation that men ever had any real "skin in the game", legally speaking. One can, in fact, draw a straight line between men's newfound "skin in the game" on the one hand, and their more recent aversion to procreation, commitment-phobia, work-shyness, and overall penchant for Peter Pan-style perpetual adolescence on the other.  Men have always been stuck in perpetual adolescence, of course, and it simply went from subtle to overt, in other words.

Thus, the answer to the question is ultimately yes, but a VERY, VERY qualified yes.  In the long run, phasing out these rigid and increasingly outmoded 20th century policies is a truly necessary step (though by no means sufficient by itself!) on the way to finally extricating Women and children from the age-old quagmire of patriarchy for good, God willing. 

P.S.  Men are NOT the only ones who are forced to pay child support, by the way.  Women often have those very same laws weaponized against them as well, particularly when crooked Family Court judges perversely grant abusive men full custody of their kids.  And the forced payments directly from the alienated Mother to the abuser (!) thus add further insult to injury as it gives the abuser even more power over her and the kids.  Yes, that really still happens frequently even to this day, though the mainstream is deafeningly silent about it:  just Google "Motherless America" to learn more.

UPDATE:  The legendary Guru Rasa Von Werder later remined me that there is also yet another thing that can backfire just as hard on Women if not harder, and that is called PALIMONY.  It's basically like alimony but for those who had lived together without being officially married, typically if lived together for eight of more years per common law (but that varies by jurisdiction).  It is nuanced, to be sure, but that needs to phased out even sooner IMHO, with the aforementioned safeguards in place, of course.

Neoliberalism: The Religion Of The World, Flesh, And Devil (Updated For 2024)

Neoliberalism.  It is a rather obscure-sounding term with a somewhat nebulous meaning.  It's anonymity and vagueness shroud it in mystery.  And yet, it is the very ideology at the root of most, if not all, of the modern world's problems.

So what is it, exactly?  It is best defined as a dogmatic belief in the inherent superiority and supremacy of unfettered free markets and privatization (and commodification) of nearly every single thing in the Universe.  Inequality, however extreme, and even greed itself is recast as virtuous (think Gordon Gekko of Wall Street).  The rich and the poor deserve their lot in life, because reasons.  Or something.  Poverty is in fact a feature, not a bug, as the resulting desperation makes people that much easier to exploit via economic coercion.  People are just objects to be used, as are animals and Mother Nature herself.  Citizens are reduced to mere consumers and wage-serfs, if not full-blown slaves.  And like the robber barons of old, today's high priests of neoliberalism are totally fine with robbing from the poor, giving to the rich, and torpedoing what's left of the middle class.  The only difference is that nowadays they typically do it with a smile and a veneer of pseudo-progressivism, while laughing all the way to the bank (often quite literally).

Neoliberalism's warped and twisted code of pseudo-ethics harbors a massive, gaping void that is essentially a moral black hole, since this ideology lacks a truly moral and spiritual component underneath it all.  Its entire foundation is shaky, empty and morally bankrupt, totally rotten to the core.  And yet, it has such mass appeal on both the (pseudo-)left and right of the political spectrum that it transcends that very spectrum.  And while neoliberalism is clearly the darling brainchild of patriarchy, it is such a wily and devious shapeshifter that it even transcends patriarchy itself as well.

From Reagan to the Clintons, Thatcher to Blair, Milton Friedman (who first coined the word neoliberalism) to Thomas Friedman, Greenspan to Powell, Facebook to ExxonMobil, Purdue University to Perdue Chicken to Purdue Pharma, Trump to Trudeau, Obama all the way to Biden, and Boris all the way to Natasha, it seems like no mainstream or pseudo-alternative politician, ideologue, technocrat, maven, or tycoon has been able to avoid being infected by neoliberalism to one degree or another, and sucked into its lifeless, soulless abyss.

(Trump, with the notable exception of opposing some of the "free trade" component of neoliberalism, otherwise supports essentially all of the rest of their evil and demonic agenda in practice, his disingenuous rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.  And ALL neoliberals, Trump included, are largely anti-union in practice, if not also in theory as well.)

Though secular in nature, neoliberalism has all of the zeal of a religion, even a fundamentalist one.  And its dogmas have basically become the new orthodoxy from about 1980 onwards.  And we can thus conclude that neoliberalism is essentially the religion of the world, the flesh, and the devil, filling the voids left by the implosion of the mainstream patriarchal religions.  One can even call it a cult as well.

In Christian theology, the "world, flesh, and devil" have traditionally been considered the three primary enemies of the soul, as a sort of "unholy trinity".  Now, I personally believe that there is some nuance to this in that the world is only evil because of who rules it (i.e. the devil who works through men, particularly the oligarchs and their sycophantic lackeys), and the flesh is only evil when we choose to make it that way, since matter is essentially just a slowed-down form of spirit.  Neither of these first two are inherently evil or irredeemable in themselves.  But under the current regime of patriarchy, living exclusively for these two things is believed to ultimately lead to the third member, the devil.  Or wetiko, if you prefer.  Whatever it is, it is pure evil energy that cannot ever be redeemed.  And neoliberalism, in its sheer vileness, vainglory, often gratuitous cruelty, and wanton idolatry of money and worldly power above all else, effectively worships all three members of this unholy trinity.  There is really no denying that at all.

The rise of selected flavors of Christian (and other religious) fundamentalism since the 1980s has NOT stemmed the tide of neoliberalism, and the two increasingly seem to be joined at the hip nowadays.  And while patriarchy is currently in its death throes as we speak, the implosion of patriarchy and patriarchal religion is clearly non-linear, erratic, and chaotic.

And most notably, the recent rumors of neoliberalism's supposed death from the COVID-19 pandemic have been greatly exaggerated.  And by that, we mean that, if anything, neoliberalism has actually GAINED strength overall from the lockdowns and related restrictions which effectively robbed from the poor, gave to the rich, and torpedoed what was left of the already shrinking middle class.  It was basically the heist of the century, if not the millennium.  And not only did these draconian measures not appreciably save lives in the long run, they actually cost lives, particularly among poorer people and people of color who got the brunt of both the virus itself AND the collateral damage disproportionately shunted onto them while the affluent got to "work from home".  There was certainly nothing genuinely leftist or progressive about doing that!  And the novel experimental gene therapies that self-identify as "vaccines" have been not only a major cash cow for the oligarchs, but also have been (via mandates, "passports", and segregation) an effective weapon of power and control over the masses, especially via divide-and-conquer.  Not to mention, dare I say, a bioweapon as well, given all of the excess deaths, injuries, and disabilities (sorry, "coincidences") that have resulted from these concoctions.

The pandemic is long over, and all restrictions have ended as of last year, but the legacy and precedent still remain.

And, of course, Women have clearly gotten the brief end of the stick from the pandemic response as well.  Lockdowns had increased male-on-female domestic violence and Women had lost more jobs than men have as well.  Meanwhile, the majority of designated "essential" (read: expendable) workers have also been Women as well, especially in healthcare.  And school closures have also forced Mothers to either 1) stay home with the kids and lose income as a result, or else 2) take on a triple burden by trying to juggle it all at once.  It has led to nothing short of a collapse of Women's health and work.  Thus there is clearly nothing even remotely feminist about these toxic and illiberal policies, but rather these are things that neoliberalism salivates over the most.  The Rockefellers and their cronies must be grinning from ear to ear right now as we speak.  And while these pandemic and lockdown-related phenomena are over, there is no denying that it set the Women's movement back decades, and no sooner has the movement only begun to recover, than the right-wing reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries are trying so hard to drag Women back to Margaret Atwood's worst nightmare as we speak.  And that counterrevolution, of course, is also in league with...you guessed it...neoliberalism. 

TO HELL WITH NEOLIBERALISM!

The Great Trade (Re-posted and Updated)

Part 1:

WOMAN:  Men only want one thing.  I mean, they are completely governed by their "Finger Eleven", if you catch my drift.

MAN:  "If I traded it all, if I gave it all away, for one thing...." (to quote lyrics by the band, literally named Finger Eleven).

WOMAN:  Keys to the kingdom, so we can finally reclaim our rightful place as the new leaders of the free world?

MAN:  Your terms are acceptable.

Part 2:

MODERN-DAY PHARISEE:  Not so fast, little lady.  For what shall it profit a woman, to gain the world and lose her soul?

WOMAN:  Excuse you, random man, but us Women can multitask just fine, thank you very much.  You must be projecting.

MODERN-DAY PHARISEE:  A man cannot serve two masters.

WOMAN:  True, a MAN cannot serve two masters.  But a master can have many servants.  Now go make me a sandwich!

MODERN-DAY PHARISEE:  (Speechless)

Part 3:

OVERT MISOGYNISTIC TROLL:  Something about locks and keys comes to mind, if you catch my drift.

MALE CONCERN TROLL:  Something about cows and milk comes to mind, if you catch my drift.

WOMAN:  Something about pencils and sharpeners comes to mind, if you catch my drift.  And something about fish and bicycles comes to mind as well, you redundant male trolls.  Like the song says, "get me out of your starry eyes, and be on your way".

BOTH TROLLS:  (Speechless)

WOMAN:  (Mic drop)

OK Ladies, Do You REALLY Want To Know How To Control Men? Here Are The Cheat Codes

One of the most vexing questions facing Women in both the Feminist and Matriarchy movements is, how to keep men from taking over once again when they are no longer in power?  The prevailing view that men are inherently dangerous and always will be, and thus will need to be controlled somehow or else they will inevitably run amuck, is not one that can simply be handwaved or wished away.  The problem has a name, and its name is MUTINY.  So how do you do it?  Psychology has an answer.

Here are the three, albeit very counterintuitive, "cheat codes":

1.  Men need to THINK that they are free, regardless of whether they actually are.

2.  No taxation without representation. 

3.  Bread and circuses galore.

All three should become very obvious to any serious student of history, and all three need to be maintained in perpetuity in order for it to work.

The first one can be seen throughout recorded history.  It's self-evident and self-explanatory.  Google "they thought they were free" to see the darker side of it, of course.  But that darker side has really only been seen with men in charge, that is, with men using it to control other men along with the Women.  Either way, it works, for good or ill, for better or worse.

In other words, men would need to have JUST enough freedom to think they are free.  And both Women and men would need to be treated as sovereign individuals over their own bodies and minds.  Anything less would be uncivilized. 

The second one has also been seen repeatedly to one degree or another, and not just because it's catchy and it rhymes.  Rather, the LACK of it is what often leads to mutiny, especially when combined with desperation.  From the American Revolution to the French Revolution and so on, it has happened before and will happen again if and when the circumstances are right.  But as long as men think they are being represented, and that they are getting something in return for their tax dollars, they will be willing to pay fairly high taxes, as we see in the Nordic countries (where taxes are very high, are collected simply and relatively painlessly, and they get very robust social welfare states in return, with very little to no poverty).  And even in some indigenous Matriarchal societies past and present, they have men as (puppet figurehead) "chiefs" to give at least the illusory perception of male representation, and they are all hired and fired by the Women elders.  (Hey, as long as men are not in any positions of real power, why not?)

(That said, too many male puppet figurehead "chiefs" or representatives can potentially be a problem simply by sheer strength in numbers, so unless one lives in an indigenous culture that has been doing it for literally centuries or more, having all or most representatives being male has the risk of backfiring.  For everyone else, aim for a majority of representatives being Women.)

Again, for men, perception is everything.  While I once thought it would be a good idea to openly tax men at higher rates than Women, I realize now that would be a much too vulgar display of power that would shatter such a perception.  Best to tax both genders equally, at least for the non-rich, but to distribute the benefits more heavily towards Women, especially Mothers.  Either way, the NET result is effectively the same over the lifecycle.

The third one is so obvious that one may overlook it, but it is true nonetheless.  From most famously in the Roman Empire in reality to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in science fiction, one of the most effective and time-tested ways to prevent revolts or mutinies is cheap and readily available entertainment plus some form of dole.  And that only becomes more urgent in an increasingly high-tech and automated society where men become increasingly redundant.  In the 21st century and beyond, that can take the form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and related ideas, as well as the emerging trend for the many dead and dying shopping malls to be converted primarily to entertainment centers for everyone.  In fact, in the wake of the ongoing "retail apocalypse", any currently successful mall has become at least partially if not largely entertainment-based these days (see The Mall of America in Minnesota, West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, and even smaller ones like the Palisades Center in West Nyack, New York).

(About that last bit, I recall that the legendary Guru Rasa Von Werder had mentioned something like that in The Future of Male-Female Relationships, Part I.)

On a related note, in a world where in the not too distant future, Women become the richer gender, and inheritances eventually become largely (if not entirely) Matrilineal, it will eventually get to the point where the only rich men left will be lottery winners.  So keeping some form of lottery in existence (hopefully with somewhat better odds than currently!) would be a form of noblesse oblige for Women to allow for the increasingly redundant gender, that will keep the fellas somewhat motivated, I guess.

(Who needs a "man tax" when you have the "idiot tax"?  Also known as the lottery.)

Proactively create a society where rebellion is unthinkable, unprofitable, uncool, and impolitic in the first place, and there will be little or no need to reactively put down any kind of revolts or mutinies, in other words.  It will not work on 100% of men, of course, but it will work on at least 80-90% of them, on both a small and a large scale, and those few "mavericks" and rogues who remain impervious to such control would be greatly outnumbered and outgunned, and thus rendered nugatory, God willing. 

This is NOT to say that it should be all carrot and no stick, of course.  Granted, a combination of both to some degree is probably necessary.  But comfort truly is the ultimate cage when you really think about it, hence why the ancient Stoic philosophers had such a strong dislike for staying in their comfort zones. 

In contrast, other half-baked ideas such as Femdom (at least of the popular androcentric variety), bonoboism (or rather, faux-noboism), various forms of lifestylism, etc. simply don't SCALE very well.  In fact, anything that falls into the trap of androcentrism (that is, centering males) as opposed to gynocentrism, is essentially guaranteed to fail in practice. 

Let the planetary healing begin!

UPDATE:  While males clearly do NOT belong at the center of society, one should note that all successful Matriarchal societies past and present (both human and otherwise) are also just as careful not to marginalize males TOO much either, lest they ultimately form their own insular and dangerous subculture (think the equivalent of the "alt-right", neonazis, MAGA, MRA/PUA/MGTOW, tradcons, GamerGate, 4chan, 8chan, and worse), to the utter net detriment of all concerned.  It is a very fine line and a very delicate balancing act.

Poem: She Was Asking For It (Never Again)

Poem:  She Was Asking For It (Never Again)

By Ajax the Great (Pete Jackson)

(FIVE-ALARM TRIGGER WARNING:  rape and other violence against women, current and historical atrocities, misogyny, racism, antisemitism, genocide, gynocide)

A young woman was raped the other day

Like so many others every day

She was apparently "no angel"

She was a "wild party girl" who "broke all the rules"

What is your first thought, my friends

When you hear this horrible news?

I would hazard a guess you would give a stock answer:

"You know she was asking for it, right?"

I bet you would say the same 

About the Rape of the Sabine Women

Upon which Rome's (vain)glory was founded

They were asking for it too, right?

Would you say the same about the millions of women

Who were murdered, tortured, and raped 

During the Inquisition and the Burning Times?

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the First Nations women

Who were murdered, tortured, and raped

In the name of Manifest Destiny 

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the transatlantic slave trade?

You know the women didn't knock themselves up 

Forced to breed more "black ivory" for Master

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the women victims of the Spanish Civil War

Two terrors, Red and White 

Two sides of the same evil coin

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the very literal Rape of Nanjing

Mass murder, mass rape, and mass torture 

In the name of the Empire of the Rising Sun

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the Jews and countless others

During the Holocaust and otherwise 

Half of six million is three million women

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the devil with whom the Allies made a deal

A devil named Joseph Stalin

Whose army raped countless civilian women 

They were asking for it too, right?

Revenge for genocide tastes sweet at first

Then leaves a very bitter aftertaste 

Pay it forward, its name is Nakba, 1948

They were asking for it too, right?

Rape is the gift that keeps on giving

Cycle of violence, see October 7, 2023

A new day that will live in infamy

#MeToo unless you're a Jew, right?

A taste of the enemy's own medicine 

Becomes an overdose in the ruins of Gaza

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

If everyone is asking for it, then who isn't?

Male desecration of the Sacred Feminine 

Sure as hell knows no bounds

The banality of evil writ very, very large

All masked by, "they were asking for it"

The Keystone Lie is thus laid waste

And with it, the whole stack of lies

Has now collapsed faster than you can say,

You guessed it:  "They were asking for it"

So let me ask you one more time again

About the young woman who was raped

Who was supposedly "no angel"

What is your answer now?

Because if your answer to her now

Is anything other than "NEVER AGAIN!"

With NO asterisks or qualifications

Then you, too, must be "asking for it".

(Mic drop)

ALTERNATE ABRIDGED VERSION:

Replace stanzas 11, 12, and 13 with the following two generic stanzas if one feels it is still too soon to include any references to current/recent events in the Middle East:

Revenge for genocide tastes sweet at first

Then leaves a very bitter aftertaste 

Rape is the gift that keeps on giving

They were asking for it too, right?

A taste of the enemy's own medicine 

Becomes an overdose in the ruins of war

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

If everyone is asking for it, then who isn't?

Friendly Reminder: War Is STILL A Racket

 

(Updated for 2024, in light of current events.  See also this article as well.)

WAR.  It seems to be as old as time itself.  And so many people seem to think it is inevitable.  However, it turns out that is not really true. War is neither timeless nor inevitable.  It has a beginning, and it has an end.  The beginning was about 7000 years ago (with the advent of patriarchy), while the end will be coming very soon (with the inevitable fall of patriarchy and rise of Matriarchy in the not-too-distant future).  And the end can't come soon enough!

(Especially now with the world being at 90 seconds to midnight (!) on the Doomsday Clock. That is, the risk of nuclear war is the highest it has been in quite a while now.  If, God forbid, a "hot" war between the USA and Russia and/or China were to occur, the odds of it going nuclear are practically certain.)

Patriarchy inherently rewards aggression and violence, no doubt about that.  And it messes with our heads so as to condition us to accept such violence as normal.  And of course there is men's tendency to think that war and scarcity are inevitable, which become self-fulfilling prophecies.  Women, on the other hand, would tend to reject such backwards thinking if they were in charge.  The late, great Buckminster Fuller himself said as much.

But there is also another reason why war is likely to occur under patriarchy, and that reason is discussed in depth by Major General Smedley Butler in his 1935 book, War Is A Racket.  Put simply, war is indeed a racket that is designed to further enrich the already ultra-rich oligarchs.  In other words, its genesis is none other than evil and powerful men who are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and kill for filthy lucre, and those sycophantic lackeys and ignorant masses who are brainwashed and duped to go along with it.   And of course, we know that patriarchy itself inevitably leads to oligarchy in the first place due to its "might makes right" and "winner take all" paradigm (that is nowadays most often cleverly disguised by the persistent and utterly hollow myth of "meritocracy").

Indeed, patriarchy itself can be thought of as a gender war writ large, and the only way to end it once and for all--and all other wars that come from it--is for men to surrender to Women.  It's a war men have lost before the war even began, despite winning nearly every battle--men just don't realize it yet.

That said, General Butler's book is more about how the perennial racket of war actually works in practice, and how to smash it for good (as opposed to the why the oligarchy exists in the first place).  But it goes a very long way towards explaining it, and he would be spinning in his grave if he were to see today's massive, imperialistic war machine.

From the Wikipedia article:

In War Is a Racket, Butler points to a variety of examples, mostly from World War I, where industrialists, whose operations were subsidized by public funding, were able to generate substantial profits, making money from mass human suffering.

The work is divided into five chapters:

1. War is a racket
2. Who makes the profits?
3. Who pays the bills?
4. How to smash this racket!
5. To hell with war!

It contains this summary:

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Then he goes on to discuss who exactly profits from it and how.  It turns out it is not just weapons manufacturers, but also the big banks and other businesses that directly or indirectly deal with it as well.  In fact, the banksters are probably the biggest beneficiaries of war, since they lend money to finance it and then claw back so much in interest.  And manufacturers of non-weapons goods also have a market to sell their wares to in the military.  And of course, let's not forget all the resources plundered from the other countries as "spoils of war".

(And now we can add "defense contractors", aka mercenary corporations, such as DynCorp, Blackwater, Halliburton, KBR, Raytheon, et al. to the list of war profiteers as well.)

War is, of course, a negative-sum game overall.  It does not really create wealth on balance, it actually destroys far more than it creates.  But it certainly brings in a ludicrous amount of ill-gotten wealth in the form of profit, plunder, and usury for the oligarchy.  As for the idea that it "stimulates the economy" in the short run, that is technically true, but as neo-Keynesian economist Dr. Paul Krugman has famously noted years ago, a faked alien invasion would be every bit as stimulating, but without all of the serious side effects such as countless deaths, injuries, PTSD, family breakdown, resource depletion, pollution, ecological damage, and property damage.

In other words, it steals, kills, and destroys.  Kinda like....SATAN. 

And guess who foots the bill for it all?  You guessed it--the taxpayers.  The oligarchs pull the wool over our eyes, while laughing all the way to the bank.  But truly the biggest part of the bill is paid for in blood by the soldiers themselves.  And even for those who survive the horrors of war, it still takes its toll on them regardless, both physically and psychologically.  And these soldiers generally hail not from the ranks of the wealthy, but rather from the poor and broader working class.  Not much has changed in that regard today, it seems.

(Note that since the gold standard was abolished in 1971, our Monetarily Sovereign federal government does not actually need taxes to fund anything, since they can just "print" (create) the money now if they wanted.  But since wars inherently chew through ludicrous amounts of non-monetary resources, all wars are thus inflationary regardless, so We the People still pay for it in the form of higher prices.)

And that's to say nothing of the human toll of civilians in the other countries as well, who bear the brunt of it.

Then, General Butler discusses how to smash this evil racket once and for all.  To summarize, the three steps are as follows:  1) Take the profit out of war, 2) Put it up to a vote (limited to those who would be eligible for the draft) as to whether or not a war should be declared, and 3) Limit our military forces to home defense purposes.  Otherwise, nothing will stop the racket.

Again, as noted on Wikipedia:

In the booklet's penultimate chapter, Butler recommended three steps to disrupt the war racket:

1. Making war unprofitable. Butler suggests that the means for war should be "conscripted" before those who would fight the war:

It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war. The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labour before the nation's manhood can be conscripted. […] Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our steel companies and our munitions makers and our ship-builders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted — to get $30 a month [NOTE: that's $667/month in 2024 dollars], the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

2. Acts of war to be decided by those who fight it. He also suggests a limited referendum to determine if the war is to be fought. Eligible to vote would be those who risk death on the front lines.
3. Limitation of militaries to self-defense. For the United States, Butler recommends that the Navy be limited, by law, to operating within 200 miles of the coastline, and the Army restricted to the territorial limits of the country, ensuring that war, if fought, can never be one of aggression. 

Indeed, the time to end all of this insanity and evil is yesterday.  So what do we do in the meantime while patriarchy still exists?  Thus, inspired by Butler, I propose that a new law be passed that we call the War Pigs Act, named after both the ineffectual and toothless War Powers Resolution of 1973 and the 1970 Black Sabbath song "War Pigs".  The first part of the new law would put some teeth in the War Powers Act by closing the loopholes and holding the President liable for any consequences of a war that is not authorized by Congress and is not during a state of emergency caused by an attack on the USA.  And absent a formal declaration of war by Congress, absolutely NO war may last beyond 90 days (60 days followed by a 30 day withdrawal), save for a temporary authorization of force that expires 90 days after the authorization passes or 180 days after the war began (if it began before the new law went into effect), whichever occurs first.  After that, there must be a formal declaration of war, or the war must end.  Period.

The second part of the law would implement some of General Butler's recommendations from his book, taking into account that we currently have an all-volunteer military.  Take the profit out of war, first of all.  Use the tax code to do so.  And for any war lasting beyond six months (which by definition would now require a formal declaration of war), require an annual limited plebiscite of all citizens that would be eligible for military service.  Make it a non-secret ballot such that those who vote "yes" would be drafted if we run out of volunteers, followed by those who abstain from the vote if necessary.  Those who vote "no" would be exempt from any such draft.  A kind of "consensual conscription", if you will.  We would all have skin in the game.  Women would be included as well, but before they draft the very first Woman, we should draft men in their 40s and 50s first.  That's the demographic group who starts the wars but rarely fights them.  It's only fair, right fellas?  Watch as war becomes a thing of the past, at least for the stupid ones and decade(s) long quagmires like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

(It would also be a good idea to do like the Iroquois once did:  give Women elders the power to VETO any decision to go to war.  That alone would prevent essentially all wars that are not waged in strict and absolute defense of the homeland.)

For the record, I am personally 100% against the draft on principle.  Unless absolutely necessary, I view it as a form of slavery and involuntary servitude, and if there were ever such a thing as a truly just war (as per St. Augustine's Just War Theory criteria), which is about as rare as a unicorn, conscription would be unnecessary, since volunteers would be plentiful.  And today's technology further makes it largely obsolete to raise such large numbers of boots on the ground.  But since nuance, gray areas, and exceptions that prove every rule do in fact exist in the real world (see WWII and the American Civil War, for example), I will note that if we ever must have a draft, only those who voted yes (or chose not to vote) for such a war should be drafted.

General Butler was a true American hero and patriot.  After his distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps including during WWI (during and after which he eventually found out just how much of a racket it really was), he later quashed an attempted Wall Street fascist coup against FDR's government in 1933-1934.  Yes, there really was a plot by the Rockefellers, Mellon Bank, Standard Oil, General Motors, Goodyear, US Steel, and many others (including pro-Nazi forces!) to overthrow the federal government and install their own fascist dictatorship do their bidding, complete with concentration camps for, in their own words, "Jews and other undesirables".  And the money for the plot bankrolled by the big banks/corporations was funneled through Prescott Bush's companies (yes, THAT Bush, who also did business with the Nazis as well).  They all thought they could use Butler for the plot and he pretended to play along at first, only to foil their plot by telling Congress about it just before it went ahead.  He literally saved America from falling to full-blown fascism, in other words.  He was indeed history's original whistleblower, and then in 1935, he wrote his magnum opus, which unfortunately fell on deaf ears the world over.  

War was a racket then, and still is today.  And it always will be as long as it exists.

As General Butler famously said, 

"TO HELL WITH WAR!"

"Either war is obsolete, or man is."

-- Buckminster Fuller

"War, what is it good for?  Absolutely NOTHING!"

-- Edwin Starr

"Come the war, come the avarice, come the war, come hell...Come attrition, come the reek of bones, come attrition, come hell...This is why, why we fight, why we lie awake...And this is why, this is why we fight..."

-- The Decemberists

"Now the labor leader's screaming when they close the missile plant, United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore. Call it peace or call it treason, call it love or call it reason, but I ain't marching anymore."

-- Phil Ochs

"I declare the war is over, it's over, it's over..."

-- Phil Ochs

"But the hardest thing I'll ask you, if you would only try, is take your children by their hands and look into their eyes.  And there you'll see the answer you should have seen before.  If we win the wars at home, there'll be no fighting anymore"

-- Phil Ochs 

"We share the same biology, regardless of ideology. But what might save us, me and you, Is if the Russians love their children too"

-- Sting and Sergei Prokofiev 

New Name For Blog: "Vive La Difference!"

Recently, I thought that the original blog name "The Chalice and the Flame" was getting a bit too stale and obscure to keep it any longer.  Then I thought of the famous French phrase, "Vive la difference!", as a better alternative.  Literally meaning "long live the difference" (that is, between Women and men), I feel it is a bit more to the point for this blog.  

To avoid causing any technical difficulties, the legacy URL, http://thechaliceandtheflame.blogspot.com, will continue to be used for the time being.

Vive la femme!  Vive la difference!

NOTE:  This blog is NOT affiliated with either Riane Eisler (author of "The Chalice and the Blade") or the Unitarian Universalist Church (whose symbol is a flaming chalice).