How we love to wage war in America. In addition to our war on terrorism, we've initiated wars on cancer, drugs, and poverty. Another war, the one that rages every 4 years, has already begun: our presidential campaign. Consider the language: Which candidate has the bigger war chest? How will the battleground states vote? Who has more field offices established? Have the campaigns enlisted their armies of volunteers?
In one sense the outcome of this war will be clear: either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney will win. But in another sense, the outcome will be fuzzy. For in modern America the winners of wars are those with the most money. Defense contractors, for example, reap victory in Afghanistan and Iraq; drug companies, hospitals, and high-tech medical manufacturers triumph in the war on cancer; drug cartels and weapons manufacturers continue to win the war on drugs; and all of us but the poor sweep the war on poverty.
The winners in 2012? The big donors, the super PACS, the people we don't know and don't elect who dictate how the rest of us live. For in this war corporate America--especially energy, finance, and health care interests--brings out its big guns and mows everybody else down.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see who's left standing when the air clears.
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