When Will We Stop Being Sacrificed on the Altar of "National Security"?
"National security," whatever that's meant or come to mean, is not indicative of actual security or freedom . . . especially for the working classes
An estimated 1 million + federal employees (including myself) stand to lose union representation under a March executive order from Trump that the courts have allowed to remain in effect while its merits are litigated. The reason? “National security.” Dangerous industries like coal and chemical manufacturer plants are getting two-year “regulatory relief” from Biden era EPA rules in part because they “serve national security interests.”
Congress is looking to shovel over $1 trillion into “defense” spending for the first time in history starting in FY26, despite the fact that the Pentagon can’t provide an accounting for over 60% of its assets having failed (to date) at least seven (7) straight audits. Where’s all this taxpayer money going? We don’t know, we’re just supposed to trust that it is serving the purposes of “national security.”
Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that approximately 8.2 million people will lose health insurance coverage due to changes in Affordable Care Act programs and another 12 million will lose coverage via Medicaid changes under the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” Trump signed on July 4th. Millions will also face greater food insecurity thanks to the bill’s cuts and changes to Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) funding and administration.
The U.S. is the only industrialized or post-industrial democracy on the planet not to offer some kind of universal healthcare coverage to its citizenry. We have the technology and the means to maximize this entire country’s energy efficiencies, deploy renewable energies at enormous scales and to shift to sustainable agriculture, development and waste management, creating a circular economy. We could invest in post-secondary education as a public good and eliminate $1.7 trillion in household student loan debt tomorrow.
But no, we’d rather pour public treasure into global hegemony, war, mass death, planned obsolescence and hastened extinction for our species and countless others. That’s the American way. That’s what we call “greatness.” As long as the C-Suites at defense contractor and fossil fuels and private health insurance and private, non-secular “education” corporations and their wealthy investors are happy, the rest of us be damned.
Both major parties stand guilty of feeding the insatiable “national security” behemoth, but Republicans love to do it in a particularly blatant and heinous way. They don’t even feign to question or ponder alternatives to the gorging of this malicious beast. At least Democrats tend to support shoring up programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and strengthening unionization throughout the economy (though too many in their ranks utterly fail in these respects, often intentionally).
Giving $45 billion to Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) for immigrant detention center expansion over the next four years, while simultaneously looking to cut funding to the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) by 93%, from $200 million to 14 million, is a prime example of the heinousness of this regime toward all working-class and poor people. Black and Brown migrants are being unconstitutionally detained and deported (aka kidnapped) by ICE (aka the modern American gestapo) at the same time as Appalachia (still predominately white though far more diverse racially and ethnically than typically acknowledged) stands to lose a crucial source of funding despite devastating levels of poverty even in 2025.
This “immigration crackdown” is not about assimilation, but eradication. It’s not about following the law when migrating to the United States; it’s about certain migrants of certain racial and ethnic backgrounds, cultures and nations or regions of origins being denied due process, denied the guaranteed equal protections of our constitution regardless of their immigration status and facing lethal xenophobia and nativism as they yearn to breathe free.
The poor (working or not) of Appalachia, especially in Central Appalachian states like West Virginia, mean nothing to this regime. We’re a sacrifice zone. We’re an extraction colony. We’re a place where endless sums of resource wealth and endless hours of labor can be stolen, leaving behind polluted and contaminated environments, destroyed bodies and economic stagnation and decline. We’ve never been and will never be anything more to these people.
They’re able to convince majorities of the small numbers of people who turn out in elections in gerrymandered districts with few or no viable alternative candidates in places like WV to vote for them by making them believe that government, especially state and federal government, can only ever be the problem and not the solution—all while convincing them of their patriotic duty to serve and be mentally and physically maimed or killed for a flag that has never represented what they claim it has.
You’re not free or safe if you can’t afford food, healthcare, education, housing, leisure, rest, recreation or full and meaningful political and civic engagement. You’re not free or safe if you can’t enjoy open access to carefully protected public lands and waters and wildlife. You’re not free or safe if you lack job security or workplace safety and accommodations or cost-of-living adjustments that routinely keep up with or exceed inflation—things that collective bargaining rights and a union contract help guarantee. You’re not truly free or safe if you don’t have freedom both of and from religion with a secular government and a religiously pluralistic, culturally vibrant society where ideas are openly exchanged without fear of retaliation or reprisal.
The freedoms we are supposed to be guaranteed under the bill of rights (both expressly and as a matter of common law)—especially our rights of speech, peaceable assembly, orderly redress of grievances, voluntary association and due process—are now under threat by this MAGA regime and the Republican Party in ways we have not seen in at least 100 years. Their goal is to undo any and all gains made in that time by women, the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, immigrants (documented or not, especially along the southern border), labor, public health and environmental advocates, consumers, people with disabilities, non-authoritarian Christians/non-Christians, secular and nontheist communities and more.
“National security” is a red herring. It has been and will continue to be used as a phrase of fear and intimidation and subjugation. We’ve got to strip it of its power and see it for what it really is. We’ve got to stop falling for some nonsensical notion of American moral and ethical superiority or greatness and come to collectively realize that by acquiescing to arguments about national defense or security and letting our elected officials get away with making them, we’re complicit in our own demise.