The USS Gerald R Ford undergoes shock trials. Photo by Seaman Jackson Adkins, United States Navy.
If you’re like me, you’re getting sick of the so called progressive Democrats tweeting out things like this.
The best response I’ve seen comes from one of my favorite authors, Margaret Kimberley.
Margaret Kimberley is great - I highly recommend her book, Prejudential.
Anyway, it’s not so much the framing of the tweets, it’s the fact that this seems to be all these members of Congress are actually doing - tweeting. We all like to take out our political frustrations on social media, but not all of us are members of Congress who could potentially do something about these issues besides tweet.
On to the 40,000 lbs. bomb!
I hope Congressman Bowman is planning on telling this to the president. I also hope he gets the chance to read Stephanie’s Kelton’s The Deficit Myth or that he was listening to Congressman Yarmuth’s speech explaining that as a currency issuer the United States can most definitely afford it. #LearnMMT
Pramila got in on the fun as well. It would be great if she used her power to force a vote on universal healthcare…but I digress, this post was supposed to be about what this 40,000 lbs explosion could actually mean.
Ok, so this is a huge explosion. It caused a 3.9 magnitude earthquake 100 miles away in Daytona Beach, FL. There can be no doubt that something this size did substantial damage to marine life, though the Navy claims to have taken marine mammal migration into account.
This explosion was part of a ‘shock trial’ for the new aircraft carrier the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier and first of its class. It is worth noting that the Navy 2021 budget requests $216 million for Research and Development that includes carrying out these trials. The carrier itself has been estimated to cost $12.8 billion + $4.7 billion R&D. According to the US Department of The last time a ‘full shock trial’ was carried out on an aircraft carrier was in 1987 on the USS Theodore Roosevelt. These expenditures are a giveaway to the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about in his farewell speech:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Eisenhower in the Oval Office - Elton Lord
But the real question is why is the US Navy doing this now? Shock trials are pretty standard procedure, though it’s unusual to carry out full shock trials are the first in a class of warships. For example, the first Nimitz class carrier was deployed in 1975 and the first shock trials were carried out on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, fourth in the class, in 1987. The decision that the USS Gerald R Ford would under go the shock trials was made in 2015, so it is noteworthy that this is not a new decision.
The USS Gerald R Ford and the USS Harry S Truman
The deployment and testing of the world’s largest and most expensive warships indicates that the US does not intend to back off from its imperial ambitions. This is not a shift in policy but rather a continuation of upholding the empire. Carriers are an extravagant show of force considering their ever growing price tag. Currently the US has 20 active carriers (with three more in reserve) as opposed to 25 (one in reserve) for the rest of the world. The two countries that are most often portrayed as threats to the US empire are China and Russia. Russia has one carrier with two under construction. China has three with two undergoing trials and three under construction. No country has any reason to get into a war with the United States except for self-defense. A shooting war with the US by any major power would be a death wish, it is quite clear that the US is the aggressor in any context. The last war where the US could make a claim of self-defense was in World War II and even that claim is tenuous.
Coming just after the Group of Seven (G7) conference, the shock trial can be seen as saber rattling. A flexing of military might after the G7, which includes the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada, upped their level of rhetoric against China. According to Reuters, the G7 “said it was concerned about forced labour in global supply chains including in the agricultural, solar, and garment sectors.” In addition to expressing “concern over situation in East and South China Seas” and calling for peace in the Taiwan straight. This concern over forced labor does not extend to the US supreme court ruling 8-1 in favor of Nestle and Cargill in a child slavery case. In the US, the responsibility lies with the plaintiffs to prove that the companies activities in the US were sufficiently tied to the child slavery outside of the US. Selling products made with child slave labor does not constitute enough linkage according eight out of nine supreme court justices. Yet it is China that the G7 attacked for forced labor. The hypocrisy is real.
When Joe Biden met with Vladimir Putin, he also brought up concern over Russia’s human rights abuses. “How could I be the president of the United States of America and not speak about the violation of human rights, I told him,” Biden said. Unsurprisingly, Putin gave Joe Biden a history lesson in the abuses that the US has carried out. Both capitalist states are guilty of human rights abuses - this is a pot calling the kettle black situation - though the US history is far worse than anything Putin has done.
When the US explodes a 40,000 lbs. bomb next to a $17.5 billion ship, it is about a lot more than just testing and getting media attention. It is about upholding a collapsing capitalist empire. It is about defending the human rights abuses of an imperialist system that continues to exploit slave labor throughout the world. It is about racism, xenophobia, and genocide.