The Defense Department wasn't Woke, It was an Agent for Empire and Repression (G&R 418)

Summary

Green & Red Podcast Episode 418

"The Defense Department Wasn't Woke; It Was an Agent for Empire and Repression"

Release Date: September 10, 2025
Hosts: Bob Buzzanco & Scott Parkin

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Bob Buzzanco and Scott Parkin dismantle the right-wing narrative that the U.S. Department of Defense was “woke,” tracing its origins, real purpose, and evolution as a tool of American imperial power. Using Trump’s recent comments about renaming the Department of Defense the “Department of War” as a springboard, they unpack the deeper, often misunderstood history and consequence of the U.S. national security state, both internationally and domestically. The discussion connects these historical insights to current events, including U.S. military action off Venezuela and the domestic deployment of federal forces in cities like Chicago.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Debunking the 'Woke' Defense Department Myth

• Trump’s Renaming Stunt: Trump and his allies like Pete Hegseth have tried to rebrand the Department of Defense as the “Department of War,” claiming the former was a result of 'woke' bureaucratic ideology.

  • Bob Buzzanco [04:04]: “Ironically, the deployment of US troops into an American city is exactly why in 1947, people were upset at the Department of Defense. [...] The reality of as usual, is very different. It was called the Department of War, the Secretary of War for most of American history. And World War II changed everything.”

• Historical Origins: The National Security Act of 1947 established the Department of Defense, not as a pacifist or ‘woke’ token, but to centralize and expand the United States' ability to wage war and maintain empire—a huge step toward a fully militarized society.

  • Bob Buzzanco [06:12]: “Department of Defense wasn't woke. Department of Defense was actually far more militarist. It creates constant military spending, expands the military industrial complex.”

• Impact on U.S. Society: The shift from the Department of War to Department of Defense increased domestic surveillance, repression of civil liberties, and fueled McCarthyism and the Red Scare.

  • Bob Buzzanco [07:25]: “It’s going to include domestic containment at home, McCarthyism, Red Scares. It’s going to really expand and grow America's power, both militarily, economically, and politically, diplomatically as well.”

2. The National Security State: From 1947 to Trump

• Creation Motive: The U.S. emerged from WWII as the world’s leading superpower and sought to codify its global dominance—citing George Kennan’s famous call for strategies to maintain “this position of disparity.”

  • Quote [05:21]: “Our task in the coming years is to devise strategies to maintain this position of disparity.” – Attributed to George Kennan by Bob Buzzanco

• Unbroken Expansion: The Department of Defense led to unprecedented global engagement, foreign bases, interventions, and entanglements.

  • Scott Parkin [12:24]: “These ICE agents, like soldiers in Vietnam, saw themselves as going into hostile territory or Indian country. And that’s an important narrative that runs through American military occupation, whether abroad or, now, domestically.”

3. Myth, Militarism, and American Identity

• The Frontier Myth & Domestic Militarization: Trump’s team circulated a meme depicting him as a Vietnam-era warrior, linking his “battle” in Chicago to classic American military mythology—the myth of “the frontier,” where marginalized communities become the new “enemy.”

  • Scott Parkin [12:24]: “The caption in the Trump meme says, ‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning.’ [...] Indicating that he plans to wage war on an American city.”

• Societal Repercussions & Fears Realized: Critics in 1947 warned that centralization and militarization would result in a ‘garrison state’—a society perpetually on a war footing and hostile to civil liberties.

  • Bob Buzzanco [14:49]: “This was developed in the 1940s by critics of the national security state — they feared something like this, that the United States would become a garrison state.”

• Liberal Militarism: The idea that only conservatives drive militarism is flawed—Democrats were key architects.

  • Bob Buzzanco [15:57]: “Liberals are highly militarist. Liberals created the national security state. Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, Bernard Baruch, Clark Clifford…”

4. History Repeats: From Wallace & Taft to Today

• Historic Critique from Left & Right: Progressive leaders like Henry Wallace and socialists like Norman Thomas, as well as right-wingers like Robert Taft, fiercely criticized the National Security Act as undemocratic and threatening to civil liberties.

  • Bob Buzzanco [18:26]: “People like that said that this new Department of Defense, this new national security State, National Security act was going to undermine constitutional principles. Check. Lead to a militarization of society. Shaq. Deprive Americans of their civil rights.”

• Taft’s Prescience:

  • Bob Buzzanco [25:55]: “Taft said the United States would not have to be armed for conflict everywhere at all times. [...] Production in America would be directed toward the military. [...] Political and economic freedom for the American people [would end].”

• Imperium Abroad, Surveillance at Home: The creation of the Department of Defense marked the beginning of the U.S. as a worldwide garrison state and an all-seeing national security entity (FBI, CIA, NSA, ICE, Homeland Security).

5. Case Studies: Venezuela & Domestic Militarization

Venezuela

• Recent Attack: Trump administration’s naval strike off Venezuela is the first U.S. military action against a Latin American country since Panama 1989.

  • Scott Parkin [35:43]: “This is the first time where we've seen a sort of direct U.S. military attack on a Latin American nation since 1989.”

• Pretext and Impunity: The “war on drugs” and anti-terror rhetoric parallel past pretexts for intervention, with little accountability—similar to Israel’s actions in Gaza and past U.S. interventions.

  • Bob Buzzanco [38:42]: “Drugs has become the analog to WMDs in Iraq. [...] Even if there's drugs on that ship, you’re not allowed to just summarily attack, which is what Israel's doing right now.”

• Lack of Accountability: There’s bipartisan silence or even support for these actions, with only a handful—such as Rand Paul—voicing criticism.

  • Bob Buzzanco [41:54]: “The idea that the Democrats are somehow weak or peaceniks or doves is utterly preposterous. If you look at Clinton in Kosovo or Clinton in the Middle east and Iraq, you know, Obama, the drone wars…”

Domestic Deployment

• Chicago & Los Angeles: Trump uses the label of “invasion” and militarizes these cities, backed by ICE raids and National Guard deployments—mirroring “frontier” wars and reinforcing a state of internal occupation.

  • Scott Parkin [44:17]: “The crime rates amongst migrant communities are much lower than they are amongst non migrant communities.”

• Political Targeting: The administration singles out so-called “blue cities” while ignoring similar or worse crime statistics in red states.

  • Scott Parkin [44:49]: “They only talk about the crime wave in sanctuary cities and blue states where he has political rivals…”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Bob Buzzanco [06:12]: “Department of Defense wasn’t woke. Department of Defense was actually far more militarist. It creates constant military spending, expands the military industrial complex.”
• Bob Buzzanco [14:49]: “They totally misconstrued the entire idea, and they have no concept of what the Department of Defense actually meant.”
• Scott Parkin [12:24]: “The caption in the Trump meme says, ‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning.’”
• Bob Buzzanco [18:26]: “This new national security State, National Security act was going to undermine constitutional principles, lead to a militarization of society, and deprive Americans of their civil rights. This is in 1947.”
• Bob Buzzanco [25:55]: “Taft said this would not provide security. It would actually endanger the United States by drawing Americans into conflicts all over the globe.”
• Bob Buzzanco [41:54]: “The idea that the Democrats are somehow weak or peaceniks or doves is utterly preposterous. [...] Obama, the drone wars… what was it, 26,000 drone attacks or something like that?”
• Scott Parkin [44:49]: “They only talk about the crime wave in sanctuary cities and blue states where he has political rivals, [...] but the murder rates in some of the red states are actually much higher.”
• Bob Buzzanco [45:30]: “People were warning about that in 1947. And the Democratic Party was the handmaiden. They were the midwife of that. The Democrats were Harry Truman and the rest of them.”

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Important Timestamps

• 04:04 – Bob debunks the “woke” myth, provides historical context for Defense Department.
• 06:12-07:25 – Department of Defense as expansionist, militarist, tied to economic growth.
• 12:24 – Trump meme, American war mythologies, and domestic militarization (Chicago).
• 14:49 – Discussion of the 1940s ‘garrison state’ critique.
• 25:55 – Bob details Robert Taft’s critique of the National Security Act.
• 35:43 – Scott on Venezuela action as first direct US military attack in Latin America since 1989.
• 38:42 – US ‘drug war’ as cover for intervention, lack of accountability.
• 41:54 – Bipartisan support for empire; liberals not less militaristic than conservatives.
• 44:49 – Crime rates invoked as excuse for urban militarization.

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Overall Tone & Takeaway

The conversation is wry, historically sharp, and brimming with both humor and a sense of grave irony about American myths. Buzzanco and Parkin blend deep historical knowledge with a no-nonsense, radical critique: Today’s militarization and repression were not unforeseen deviations but fully anticipated features of the post-1947 “national security” order. The episode calls for greater historical literacy on the left, vigilance toward bipartisan militarism, and a rejection of the “woke Pentagon” canard.

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To be continued: Both hosts agree this history is vital to revisit frequently, given ongoing regime-change efforts abroad and repression at home.

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Transcript

[Bob Bozanko]

Welcome to Green and Red Scrappy Politics.

For Scrappy People, a regular podcast on radical environmental and anti capitalist politics. Brought to you by Bob Bozanko and Scott Parkins.

[Scott Parkin]

Welcome to the silky smooth sounds of Green and Red Podcast. I'm your co host Scott Parkin in Berkeley, California today. And as always, I am joined by.

[Bob Bozanko]

The great Bob Bosenko in Niles, Ohio. And I don't know if people know it, but I think it's time to let the cat out of the bag. But we are actually secret FBI informants who are trying to corral Epstein and.

[Scott Parkin]

His people as well as left wing podcasters.

[Bob Bozanko]

You're right.

[Scott Parkin]

I just gotta say, I just gotta.

[Bob Bozanko]

Say that's the real truth there. And it only took us 15 years to come up with that alibi.

[Scott Parkin]

So Ally, that's a good word for it.

[Bob Bozanko]

Yeah. Before we get going though, let's do a little promo which we haven't done in a long time, but we actually have some swag here.

[Scott Parkin]

Yeah. If you want, we have, we have some wonderful trucker caps that we've been pushing for a while with the green and red logo on it. And then new we have.

[Bob Bozanko]

This is exciting.

[Scott Parkin]

This is exciting T shirts, Green red T shirts. And so if you want either of those things, you can email [e-mail] or contact us through any of the social media channels in which you follow us on Scrappy Politics for Scrappy People. I believe if you want a hat, it's a donation of 25 bucks, which includes shipping and handling. And then for the T shirts, we're going to say $40. That includes shipping and handling. You should get your green and red swag. Bob and I have already been showcasing them around Niles Berkeley. And if you want to be a solid supporter of the Green and red pod podcast, please get a T shirt or a hat. And there are already many hats out there in the world. Many of our donors and friends have them. Yeah. And just we'll also put this up on our website too. So go to greenredpodcast.org also if you want to just make a donation, go to greenandredpodcast.org and hit that support button or become a [e-mail] Green Red Podcast.

[Bob Bozanko]

Yeah, we haven't gotten our Soros check recently. So.

[Scott Parkin]

Still in the mail. Still in the mail.

[Bob Bozanko]

And that's why Trump's killing the post office, right?

[Scott Parkin]

Exactly. He's trying to, he's trying to put an end to those, all those Soros checks going out to all those paid protesters in the world. So on with the show. Today, we are going to be talking about Trump and his recent renaming of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. And there's a whole history here related to why the Department of Defense actually had its name changed to the Department of Defense that we're going to go into. It's actually a pretty important history which Trump and Hegseth and all of the cronies around them clearly have no understanding of. But also it talks ties in with the national it ties in with the national security state and the militarization, just increasing militarization of the US and just like two recent incidents that have happened that we are going to talk about a little bit, one is where Trump had the Navy attack and destroy and kill a boatload of people off the coast of Venezuelan international waters, which is also tied in with Trump and Hegseth actually having a naval flotilla right on the edge of Venezuelan waters. And then also how Trump has been sending military troops into Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. and now they're doing a buildup in Chicago. And it's a one, two step process because it starts with a surge of federal authorities like ICE to harass undocumented people and arrest and detain and deport undocumented people, but has also led to the deployment of National Guard units and the Marines in Los Angeles. So we're going to get into some of that today.

[Bob Bozanko]

It's ironically, the deployment of US troops into an American city is exactly why in 1947, people were upset at the Department of Defense. And Trump and his fetid mind, along with Keg's breath, have decided that it was woke. And that's why they had to change the name in order to show that they're warriors and they're militaries. And the reality of as usual, is very different. It was called the Department of War, the Secretary of War for most of American history. And World War II changed everything. And we've talked about this in other contexts before, but the United States emerged out of World War II as the only real superpower in the world. It had economically really expanded immensely. It had provided so much of the industrial base for the war effort, not really the military efforts so much. That was more the Red army especially, but the United States produced armaments at record rates. And so the economy grew. And at the end of the war, you have essentially two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. But the US Was overwhelmingly more powerful. There was this massive imbalance of power. And the US wanted to maintain that. How many times in my life I've quoted George Cannon the who said that our task in the coming years, the United States now control, has 6% of the world's population and controls 50% of the wealth. And our task in the coming years is to devise strategies to maintain this position of disparity. So the United States has global hegemony, and the goal going forward is to maintain it and expand it. And the Department of Defense emerges within that context, both foreign and domestic. The United States is now in an era of what they call total war, especially with the emergency atomic bombs. So the United States had to constantly sustain American interest at home and abroad. And so a huge step in that process was the development of the national security Act in 1947. The passing of the National Security act created the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, as well as the National Security Council and the CIA. It was created in order to expand both economically and militarily, American power, American hegemony. Nothing woke about it, although I'm sure Trump and Kegsbreath would despise Truman's desegregation of the arms forces. But the act was. It was basically a bureaucratic act, and it was done in order to maintain this kind of merge together, these economic, domestic, foreign, military, all kinds of things together in the same context. Right. It dealt not just with making war, because that's limited. Department of War is actually a very limiting thing. It's not a big thing. Department of Defense wasn't woke. Department of Defense was actually far more militarist. It creates constant military spending, expands the military industrial complex. It establishes military Keynesianism as America's dominant economic idea. And that's going to grow with things like the Marshall Plan and NSC 68 and all kinds of other global aid programs. It's going to include domestic containment at home, McCarthyism, Red Scares. It's going to really expand and grow America's power, both militarily, economically, and politically, diplomatically as well. Part of. In the same context, not as part of the National Security Act. The United States had created the United nations and other international organizations, international courts at the end of World War II, not because they were woke, because they wanted control over them. The United States controlled the United nations, and now it just ignores it when it doesn't say what it wants to. So in its instance, in its creation.

[Scott Parkin]

He may occupy it before too long. Just to put it.

[Bob Bozanko]

Yeah, right now. So I think today, at first, I'm sure it was a spoon, but at first I thought it was Serious, they're going to move to UN to Geneva or something like that, which really makes more sense than the United being in the United States. The fact that it's in New York obviously is an indication of American power. So all of this is going on. So the dod, the Pentagon came at a time of American imperium. And it was created not as this woke idea that we don't want to fight wars. The United States has never been in any way a non interventionist country. And wasn't Trump as a candidate, the one who said the United States fights stupid wars and we're not going to do that anymore? So yeah, absolutely. As usual, the guy is, he's cognitively impaired and everything else, but the politics of it, right? He's appealing to this kind of red blooded, hardy American interventions. We're going to fight wars and we're going to be tough and we're not going to be woke and all that kind of stuff. But that was never what it was intended to do. Right. It was a controversial act because critics on the left and even many on the right said that it was going to expand American power, get Americans involved all over the globe. It would create a larger military establishment than the United States ever had before. It would turn the United States into a militarized society, which is what Trump allegedly apparently wants to do. But that's what that act did in 1947. That's what the Pentagon did. The Pentagon was massively bigger than anything that had occurred before that, than anything that had been established bureaucracy that established before that. It was based on an idea, especially in an era of atomic bombs and jet aircrafts, that the world could, you could have a global war erupt within hours, literally. And so the United States had to always be on the alert for war and prepared to mobilize within an instant. And so in that regard, it links both civilian and military institutions to produce, finance and fight wars. This is when what we call the national security state or the military industrial complex really comes to fruition. Terms like that had been bandied about before, but this is really when it happens. At the time, Admiral Ernest King, who I believe was the naval chief during the war in the Pacific, during war too might be wrong about that. He was also an aide to fdr. But King said wars are no longer fought solely by the armed forces. Directly or indirectly, the whole citizenry and the entire resources of the nation go to war. And the creation of the Pentagon, the Department of Defense, gives rise to what critics like you and I and others like Ron Paul and occasionally Rand Paul and occasionally other conservatives would call the national security state. You can't separate the two. Right. It's. They're like two halves of the same walnut. It's like love and marriage according to Sinatra. It's a floor waxing at a dessert topping according to Saturday night live in 1975. You can't separate them. Right. And this creates intense disagreement. And the people who disagreed with the Department of Defense, I guess, were the wokesters. I can't quite figure out the whole woke thing anymore.

[Scott Parkin]

I've always thought Harry Truman was a big, secretly woke.

[Bob Bozanko]

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Like I said, a Trump. And. And this goes in too, with the kind of stuff like they're restoring the names of Confederate. Confederate names to bases. They're restoring Confederate portraits.

[Scott Parkin]

They're taking down portraits of black generals and taking down portraits.

[Bob Bozanko]

Jackie Robinson. They're ostracizing Tom Hanks, I gotta say, controversial hot take here. I'm okay with that one. I've never been Tom Hans. But the irony there, of course, is Tom Hanch is like a master propagandist. He and Spielberg have done more to promote this kind of idea of the greatest generation in the whole myth of World War II than anybody has. Hanks is hardly a woke liberal. He and Spielberg have been like, carrying the banner for this, even though it was actually the Soviet Union, which took on the brunt of World War II and incurred massive losses and defeated the Germans more than anybody else did. But that's neither here and there, right? In their war on woke, that is the point. Right? In their war on what they call woke, they're going after institutions and people who are actually the embodiment of American power and the American myth of American power. You mentioned before we went on the meme that's going around and how it fits into the kinds of things that one of our guests last year, Richard Slot, had talked about.

[Scott Parkin]

The meme people don't know. The meme is the one that the White House put out over the weekend, which is an AI version of Trump as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore in the film Apocalypse now, which is actually. Was Robert Duvall's character. And he's wearing the cavalry hat, which is what soldiers in Vietnam, some soldiers in Vietnam War, officers in Vietnam War. And he's. He's overlooking like bombs going off with Chicago in the background. The classic line in Apocalypse now is that I love the smell of napalm in the morning, and it smells like victory. The caption in the Trump meme says, I love the smell of deportations in the morning. And then the other caption, which they put as the post, is that Chicago's about to learn why we changed the name to the Department of War, indicating that he plans to wage war on an American city. And as we know, and reports are that we're seeing a buildup of ICE agents, federal agents, to surge into Chicago. Like I said at the beginning of the episode, it's a one, two process. They'll put ICE in. There'll be protests. Their expectation is there'll be protests and resistance from communities, and then they'll send in National Guard or federal troops or what have you. And this also plays into what we talked with Professor Slotkin about last fall, I believe, where his. He has a whole. There he has a whole theme around, like narratives and myth. And so one of the myths is the myth of the America, the myth of the frontier. And so these ICE agents, like soldiers in Vietnam, saw themselves as going into hostile territory or Indian country. And that's. It's an important narrative that through American military particular and particularly when it's occupied or waging war on other countries. And so that's why the First Cavity Air Division and other cavalry divisions, which were all helicopters in Vietnam, all actually even dressed like they were part of Custer, the seventh caliber or what have you. It's an important.

[Bob Bozanko]

How'd that work out for him in Vietnam?

[Scott Parkin]

How'd it work out for Custer? Yeah, but. And it was actually part of a sort of eradicating of the. The hostile natives was what we saw with the frontier, which is what they're trying to do now is. Except now it's like undocumented people, black people, leftist protesters.

[Bob Bozanko]

They're the kind of Indians of the 21st century.

[Scott Parkin]

It's a very important myth and how police and the military really operate out of.

[Bob Bozanko]

In the US and it's really the greatest fear that was expressed at the time. This was developed in the 1940s by critics of the national security saying they feared something like this, that the United States would become. The phrase they often used was a garrison state, like a state that was besieged, that was based just on militarism. Those. The critics of the Department of Defense. So the transition from the Department of War, the Secretary of War, to the Secretary of Defense actually represented something far more onerous and dark and ominous than it had before, which was totally lost, not just on them, but I'm seeing all over social media by lefties, too. And they're taking. There's so many elements of this right you have, once again, you have the Trump cult, who freaks out all the time about masculinity and they're very homophobic, but they put out these kind of homoerotic images of Trump. Right? So that's part of it. You have the threats against an American city, which is just, like, mind blowing. Right. But I think the bigger part of this is that they totally misconstrued the entire idea, and they have no concept of what the Department of Defense actually meant, what it did. And I think that's really important to get out there because it inculcates this idea, and we've talked about this many times, that somehow the liberals or the Democrats are weak and they're woke and all that kind of stuff. Nothing could be further from the truth. We did a show. When was it? Not that long ago, on liberal militarism. You know, I keep going back. I have this vignette I've told him a million Times. In the 1976 vice presidential debate. Oh, yeah, it was in the vice presidential debate. Bob Dole attacked Walter Mondale, saying that all the wars of the 20th century have been Democrats, Democratic wars. Right? Yeah. And Mondale jumped on him. He was right. These are liberal wars. Woodrow Wilson, fdr, JFK in Vietnam and so forth. Liberals are highly militarist. Liberals created the national security state. Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, Bernard Baru, Clark Clifford. The other part of this that I think is really funny is that Trump is talking about the military being woke up. The military at that time included George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Matthew Ridgeway, the Last set of 5 stars in American history. And I study military history. I'm not a history buff, a military buff per se, but if you're into that kind of thing, these guys were. They were at the top, right. They were warriors. And it was after the military kind of became more bureaucratic and management focused. So Trump is attacking the last generation of real warriors in American history who fought a massive war in World War II and then created this new order in order to expand and maintain American power militarily and economically even more. This includes the development of bases all over. It includes the development of things like NATO, the Organization of American States, the United Nations. It includes interventions in Greece and Turkey and Iran and Guatemala and Venezuela and a million other places. Just before we move on to the application today in places like Venezuela or Chicago or Gaza or wherever. I think the critique of it in the 1940s is really important to point out because it comes from both the far left, whatever, and the far right, which Is real. Right. Far left in America. That's the. You know, that's a whole thing unto itself. Right. The media construction of how the left. But in the 1940s, the left would be people like Norman Thomas, who actually was a socialist, but also Henry Wallace, who was the vice president then ran for president in 1948 as a progressive calling for essentially a Daytone.

[Scott Parkin]

He started his own party, right?

[Bob Bozanko]

Yeah, yeah. He ran as a third party candidate. And people like that said that this new Department of Defense, this new national security State, National Security act was going to undermine constitutional principles. Check. Lead to a militarization of society. Shaq. Hey. Deprive Americans of their civil rights. This is in 1947. They're saying this shack. Right. And justify repression in the name of defense. I'm looking at something I wrote 20 years ago. That's what I wrote 20 years ago. And this is exactly what we're seeing today. What I wrote 20 years ago was based on what people were saying in 1947. Right. Which is 78 years ago. Right. So this isn't new. Civil libertarians called that this. The threat of a. These are their terms, a fascist oligarchy. That's in 1947. They said that this could lead to a fascist oligarchy with government agencies as our. In 1947, our Thought Police. So this is what they predicted could happen with the creation of the national Security State. And the Department of State is the core component of that. It's certainly bigger than the NSC or the CIA or any of this other stuff a lot of times. And I've even said this like they renamed the Department of Ford the Department of Defense. That's the quickie version.

[Scott Parkin]

Right.

[Bob Bozanko]

But there's so much more to it and it's so expansive. It really changed the United States. It was like one of the most fundamental changes up to that point. America's kind of guiding ethos, guiding spirit had been things like community engagement and freedom and Liberty on the 4th of July and apple pies and all that kind of stuff. By this time now it's changed to security insecurity in the most broadly constructed definition possible. Right. And Truman himself even said this could be problematic, but we have to do it because if not, we would have to create a centralized regimentation. Essentially fascism is what Truman is claiming. The national security state was created to avoid the fascism in kind of these internal constructions. Whereas critics are saying, no, it's going to lead to that. We going to say something or.

[Scott Parkin]

I'm just thinking about. I think that was 80. About 80 years ago. And it was a good while it lasted, but we had a. I keep.

[Bob Bozanko]

Thinking of Tony Soprano on the pilot. I got in at the tail end of a good thing.

[Scott Parkin]

Yeah.

[Bob Bozanko]

That's where we are.

[Scott Parkin]

Right?

[Bob Bozanko]

Yeah. And this is. That's why I think this is so important and why this is my evangel right now to talk about this stuff. Plus, now that I'm an emeritus, I gotta lecture and teach occasionally just to keep my wits about me. But what's really interesting in this is that I think the most strident and the most concise criticism actually came from the far right in 1947. And that's the important thing to keep in mind all this stuff. I just mentioned the term fascist. All American right, Thought police. Those were bandied about in 1947. Those aren't new. But I think the political right wing was even more concerned about the National Security act and the Department of Defense because it feared the emerging growth of the American. Not the emerging. The continued growth of the American state of American government. Right. And they believed that this would lead to even bigger government and more centralized control, creating an imperial presidency. There was a time when Republicans, remember, believed in things like freedom and liberty and small government and all that.

[Scott Parkin]

Individual rights. Yeah, individual.

[Bob Bozanko]

Right. Rhetorically. But they did. Right. Whereas now that's just out the window. And those whatever traits. I'm not going to call them virtues, but those traits were used, are used now to attack people as woke. When in fact they represented the Republican mainstream. The New Deal scared them because FDR did develop. He expanded the state. That's how eventually created programs which were starting to chip away at the Depression. And then World War II really did. But that was based on the emergence of a much bigger and more activist government. And these conservatives feared that the National Security act form of defense would be even worse. Right. They had long been suspicious of a form of foreign alliances. They often invoked George Washington's warning against entangling alliances. They often quoted John Quincy Adams, America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. If she did, she would become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer rule her own spirit, which is still today. Often quoted by. Like Ron Paul. Ron Paul often invokes. And other conservatives. Isolationists will invoke that. Right. They warned against what they called the prussianization of American life. The militarization that occurred in Germany. The prussianization of America wouldn't want to be like Germany. Right. It actually didn't like the Nazis. Believe it or not, they were antifa. Weren't they, I guess, these conservatives, they.

[Scott Parkin]

Were indeed anti Robert Taft. I've always thought it was just anti fiction.

[Bob Bozanko]

We're going to get to Taft in a minute because he's really, I think, the core person in all of this. The National Security act included military training and construction, conscription, which Americans feared. American conservatives feared. They believe that you should be educated in the home or the school or the church or wherever, not in the military. Right. They believe that also that this commitment to militarization would blow up the economy and blow budgets out of balance and all that kind of stuff. Right. So what we're seeing in 2025 is precisely what they warn against now. The person who was most associated with this was Robert Taft. Robert Taft, what was his nickname? Do you remember?

[Scott Parkin]

Mr. Republican.

[Bob Bozanko]

Mr. Republican Robert Taft from Ohio, who at the time was considered the front runner for the Republican nomination of 1948. This is what sunk him and led to Tom Dewey, because Taft was really, he had this kind of, in a lot of ways, this 19th century ideology of non intervention. The world had passed him by, right? And Woodrow Wilson, who created a new world and FDR was a protege. Wilson, and he built upon it. And Truman wasn't the brightest bulb. He was Phi Beta Kappa compared to Trump, but he wasn't the brightest bulb. So his advisors, people like Bernard Baruch and Clark Clifford and George Marshall and others, really were the kind of guiding force behind this. Taft, though, I think, really stood out. Taft said the National Security act was a bureaucratic signal to the world that the United States would now be vigorously involved in world events everywhere, globally. The idea before was that the United States had national interests. Britain, Western Europe, North America, of course, now they're everywhere. And you saw that already with things like the Truman Doctrine where he sends $400 million to Greece and Turkey, and that with the creation of NATO and this in particular, right. TAFs of the National Security act was going to lead to a focus on reorganizing the military, centralizing power using the advice of experts rather than any kind of democratic process. And then interventionist arms like the CIA, which was initially created in order to conduct foreign surveillance on. On foreign entities now. And then it would not long after that be used at home as well. And remember, the CIA was really crucial in overthrowing like deposing governments in Guatemala.

[Scott Parkin]

And Iran just a few years after Cuba.

[Bob Bozanko]

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Mossadegh and Arbans. Right. More CIA jobs. Taft said that these measures would not provide security. They would actually endanger the United States by drawing The Americans into conflicts all over the globe. And Vietnam, which I studied and know a fair amount about, really was a characteristic of that. The idea that the United States would be sending 500,000 troops and using B52s in a country the size of New Mexico was just unimaginable to a lot of these, just unfathomable. And yet that's what happened as a result of the Department of Defense. Not the Department of Lawyer, the Department of Defense. And who ran the Department of Defense? People like George Marshall was the first secretary Defense. And then after that you had like Robert Lovett. A lot of these people came from the corporate world, the industrial. None better known than Robert McNamara, who came from Ford. Right. These guys had management degrees. They were there to create like a mega corporation. This has becomes like a corporate entity. And Dwight Eisenhower often referred to the military industrial complex as a corporation and actually warned against it, as we all know. Right. Taft said that the United States would not have to be armed for conflict everywhere at all times. It would have to maintain a huge and permanent war economy, which actually becomes the basis for the United States economy. Tap warned against. Right. Production in America would be directed toward the military. You would have government imposed economic controls, which you see immediately after that in the Korean War. The Department of defense budget in 1950 was $13 billion. After Korea broke out, it continued to rise. And by the end of The Korean War, 1954, it was about five times that it was in the 60 billions range. It would lead to a political unique. And also, Taft said, this will lead to an end to political and economic freedom for the American people. Because in order to maintain this large garrison state, you would have to repress people, conduct constant surveillance and change the nature of the American, you know, kind of spirit from freedom and liberty and civic participation to security. And what does that mean? That means that you have drills in school where you get under duck and cover drills where you get under your desk so the atomic bomb doesn't kill you. All that surveillance and snitching and red scares and the Rosenbergs and all that kind of stuff. Right. So like today, antisemitism has become the communism of this generation. Right. Back in the 40s, he would say, somebody's a communist. And that was really all it took. Now he said he's anti Semitic. Right. So it's following the exact same playbook. Taft said the United States had to be careful or it would become imperialist. Who would take a provocative stand on every controversial issue or attack every country in the world? Taft said this new commitment with the Department of Defense, with the National Security act, meant that our fingers will be in every pie. Our military forces will work with our commercial forces to obtain as much of the world trade as we can lay our hands on. We will occupy all the strong strategic points in the world and try to maintain a force so preponderant that none shall dare attack us. Potential power over other nations, however benevolent its purposes. He just threw that in there because he knew it wasn't benevolent. Potential power over other nations, however benevolent its purposes, leads inevitably to imperialism. Mr. Republican Robert Jtow I say the guy nailed it. The United States in the aftermath of World War II, had this massive power. It had a massive rearmament program. It spent billions of dollars rebuilding Europe in order for Europe both to be a military ally and for Europe to purchase goods back from the United States so the US Wouldn't have a repeat of the end of World War I, where the world goes into oppression and it begins to put military security and security at home ahead of liberty. And as a result of that, you get the WHOAC and you get the Hollywood 10 and Paul Robeson and all the kind of stuff we're seeing today. Now, Trump, I think, has taken it to levels that we didn't see. And I know when we talked to Ellen Schrecker a few months ago, she said, yeah, this is the worst. It's worse than McCarthy's. I definitely think she's right. Universal military training was considered anathema to American society. That's part of the prussianization of American life. They believe that it would create a real loss to the sense of community, to home life, to family life. Right. It begins to break apart American society. This is also the period when you start to get suburbs, things like Allentown, which are outposts, right? Those are the places that are going to keep America safe. The Communists might be able to come into these dark and dirty cities. Sounds like Trump. It's exactly what Trump is doing today, by the way.

[Scott Parkin]

Right?

[Bob Bozanko]

These dark and dirty cities full of different kinds of people, right? Black people, but also Italians and Greeks and people like that, right? They're not real Americans. We can't trust them. So we create these suburbs, and that's going to be the bulwark against Communist interference in American life, along with things like religion. So the kind of stuff that they're talking about with regard to religion is. Comes out of this playbook as well, right? This Christianity is going to sanctify us and keep us protected against the Communists. When the Russians come in and they try to take over. Right. Taft believed it was also unconstitutional. He said this is an abandonment of ideas. He believed that the president would now become an emperor, that American soldiers would go into battle with international armies because of the United Nations. Another senator, I believe, from Ohio also, William Jenner, said that this could lead and his words were a military dictatorship. John McClellan from Alabama, who was still around in the 60s, one of those Southern senators who was there forever, like Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell and other. McClellan said that this would create a world garrison state dominated by American institutions that would destroy the American way of life. McClellan Jenner was not from Ohio because John Brinker was from Ohio. And Brinker said we can wipe out all traces of communism in the world, but if we lose the Constitution, we are doomed to slavery. There's so much more I could say on this, and I think I'm going to do a solo or one just directed at this, like a lecture. But that's really quite remarkable. And it really is, I think, just really crucial to understand that today, because what we're seeing is not on you, not unusual, right? Trump just utterly abandoning history, right. In the most Orwellian ways, creating these counter histories. And of course, his people are swallowing it. But we're not really seeing any pushback anywhere else either. And what Trump is doing is essentially saying we're going to do all these things that the critics of the National Security state, the critics of the Department of Defense warned against. We're going to do those. And as usual, we're going to do it by attacking it. It's like calling the Democrats socialist and radical left and all that kind of stuff, right? You say stuff that you know is preposterous, and you do it. And what it does is it puts the other side because the Democrats are just pathetic. They do nothing. And so they haven't said a word about this. Right. The critique of it I've seen so far in limited ways has come from the right, actually, more than. And this goes into. We've talked before about how people like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greener actually talking about Israel in ways that almost nobody other than like Rashida Tlie and Elhan Omar and maybe a couple others in the Democratic Party are right. And that was a good segue into, I think, what we're seeing today. But I think understanding how the Department of Defense was created, how it replaced the Department of War, it actually made America more interventionist. It created more military spending, created more intervention, it created more surveillance at Home created more money to be spent on the military. We're now looking at trillion dollar military budgets. It created McCarthyism in the red scare at that time. It's creating this insanity now. And even in between that, right, you have COINTELPRO and have Department of Homeland Security and TSA and all that kind of stuff. And ice, which was created after 911 and then expanded upon by Obama and Biden and the incredible militarization of domestic police forces, the attack on foreign ideologies, whether it be communism or anti Semitism, whatever you want to call it, right? This is what they warned against. And this is exactly what we're seeing in 2025. And we're seeing it with Trump attacking it as he's doing it. And no one's calling that. And that's really, I think, risky, really dangerous. So I think that we can segue from that into, I think the couple things you mentioned at the front and there's so much going on and we could talk about a million things, right? But I think right now, in the last days or whatever, Venezuela and Chicago really come to play. And they are perfect case studies of what the critics of the national security state we're talking about in 1947.

[Scott Parkin]

And I think it's, I think it's, I think it's important when we talk about Venezuela is that it's always somewhat been on the radar of American foreign policy establishment since Chavez sort of came, since he came into power in the early, excuse me, in the late 90s. And at a certain level, especially these hardliners. And this was like Marco Rubio is an example of this, like these hardliners want to overthrow the leftist government in Venezuela. We saw the Bush administration attempt a coup in 2002 after Chavez died. We saw Maduro come in. There was another coup attempt more recently. Now, the, it's not too dissimilar from Iran, which we're not going to talk about today, but the Trump administration is like throwing a lot of rhetoric out there. And with Venezuela, he talks about how it's run by these drug cartels, which is not true compared to other countries in South America. Ecuador, where the president is actually very close ally of Trump. Actually his family has actually been implicated in drug trafficking. Danielle Naboa, he. But Trump has called Maduro a drug kingpin and they've, like I said, beginning.

[Bob Bozanko]

Like they did to Noriega. Right?

[Scott Parkin]

Yeah. And they have mobilized a flotilla of navy ships right on the edge of international waters in Venezuela, Venezuelan waters. And then last week, they actually did the first direct US Military attack on a sovereign Latin American country since actually 1989. With Panama, we've seen us pour lots of money into Plan Colombia. We've seen us do lots of coups like the coup in Honduras in 2009, and there's lots of examples of that. But this is the first time where we've seen a sort of direct U.S. military attack on a Latin American nation since 1989. And something like 20,000 people died when the U.S. invaded Panama. There's a lot of similarities between what we're doing with Maduro and Venezuela and what happened with Noriega. And they're doing this militarization and this saber rattling and saber slashing as it around this notion of the war on drugs, but also their role in the war of terror in. Because they think that drug cartel, they're designating drug cartels all through Latin America as, as terror, as terrorist organizations. And they're like, they do a lot of deportations based on what they say are like drug gangs, but trend agua, which is the Venezuelan Cartel and or MS.19 or things like that. There's also, there's like a lot of other important similarities to make here to other things going on in the world is that there's no accountability. There's not even any real knowledge of who those people were on that boat. So it's, it's, it's similar to what the IDF is doing in Gaza. They just like kill people. No accountability, impunity. And then it's an expansive notion of national defense, also similar to what we did in Afghanistan in 2001. But it's just these are extrajudicial killings based on like non state what, on what they call, what they claim to be a non state actors. But like I said, we don't even know who was on that boat. And I would also say that they're, they want to do something and change some things in Venezuela. At least the hardliners do. And I think it's an important thing that like Trump is at least playing along with it at a certain level. But Trump has also said that he's never going to get us into another stupid war like Iraq or Syria or Afghanistan. He's headed that direction, or at least people in his administration are.

[Bob Bozanko]

Yeah, you know, this picture behind me here, that's me speaking at the Venezuelan celebration of the Liberation day, which is July 5th and it was in Houston at the time. And I spoke and the point here is that this is something I followed for some time. And I used to Talk to the people at the consulate there quite a bit. And basically they said, I don't understand why the US Is coming after us. Right. Because what does Venezuela. That versus oil. At the time it was Citgo. Isn't Citgo owned by Chevron now? Is. I think it.

[Scott Parkin]

Well, they've actually just gotten a license to.

[Bob Bozanko]

Yeah, I was going to mention that. Right. Yeah.

[Scott Parkin]

I think that. I think it's an important thing to note is that it's just like in July that they got that license to be able to export Venezuelan oil to the U.S. yeah. And Venezuela has one of the largest oil deposits in the world, like after Saudi Arabia.

[Bob Bozanko]

And the American sanctions really have been directed at that. Right. So they have significant supply reservoirs of oil, but it's harder for them to get the tools, to get the drilling tools, to get the technology they need. Right. The United States has been waging a war in Venezuela for quite some time. Right. And now they're using drugs. Drugs has become the analog to WMDs in Iraq. Right. There's drugs everywhere. You books, you don't even know what was on that ship. Right. Even if there's drugs on that ship, you're not allowed to just summarily attack, which is what Israel's doing right now. Right. Within a day of each other, Trump blows up the ship and Israel drone attacks a flotilla bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza. Right. So you have these rogue actors who are doing and they're not accountable and they know it. Essentially, I think their thinking is, who's going to stop us? Who's going to stop them? Chuck Schumer, the King Jeffries Strongly worded letter.

[Scott Parkin]

That's all we need. That's all we need. Strongly worded letters. I'm waiting.

[Bob Bozanko]

Strongly worded letter. Right. The icc, I mean, it was going to stop that. Right. So they can get away with this. And which is why you have children being starved to death. Then you have these attacks now in Venezuela. And this is important because it's logical fallout of the kind of stuff the US NC has been doing forever. But it's exactly what was being warned against back in those times. Right? Now, when I forget somebody made a remark about the constitutionality and the meaning of this attack, J.D. vance said, what do you say? I don't give a shit. Basically, we violate international. I don't give a shit. Right now. Vance claims that because his mother was an addict, he hates drug dealers, his mother stole pills from her patient. Like that's. He was an Appalachian Quailo queen or whatever the Hell yeah. So that's irrelevant too. But of all the people who clapped back on him, was it Bernie Sanders? I don't think so. Was it aoc? I didn't see that. Who was it who clapped back at Rand Paul? And Paul did. Paul, now Paul's dad, I think is legit anti intervention Ron Paul. Right. I'll talk to him a couple times. This is 20 years ago. He was defending Cuba, opening relations with Cuba. He thought the United States should cut off aid to Israel. This is 20 years ago. Juan Paul said this, not so much. But in this particular case he said, look, this is, there are laws regarding this. You just can't go blowing ships up in the water. Right. So I guess he's channeling Robert Taft for the day or something like that. I don't know. But that's another thing. The fact that other than a few people on the left who really were relevant. Right. But other than that, no one is really talking about this and no one is questioning it. A few journalists have, I'm sure, I'm sure that Rashida Tlib in ll Omar and people like that have I even followed it that closely. But you're certainly not going to see Democratic leadership say anything about that because they've been drumming for this too. Biden was trying to strangle Venezuela. Biden kept Trump's policies on Cuba intact. This is part, this is a piece of that as well. This is the national security state on more steroids now than it had been before. And it's really been unabated. The idea that the Democrats are somehow weak or peaceniks or doves is utterly preposterous. If you look at Clinton in Kosovo or Clinton in the Middle east and Iraq, you know, Obama, the drone wars, what was it, 26,000 drone attacks or.

[Scott Parkin]

Something like that, or Biden and Ukraine.

[Bob Bozanko]

And Russia, Biden and Ukraine and Russia, Obama's deportations. The Democratic response is, yeah, but we've deported even more than you do. We do even more that than you do.

[Scott Parkin]

Although Trump might have them beat now. But yeah, yeah.

[Bob Bozanko]

The point is that it doesn't matter. The point is that's the way they approach this. You can't, the Democrats, the opposition won't give you any kind of like counter argument. It's always, we're even better at that than you. It's like Monday in the debate, right. You know where in, in the presidential debate that Same year in 1976, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, said essentially the Republicans have let Poland come under climbing his domination. And Gerald Ford said I don't think you could say Poland is under communist domination. And Carter pounced on that in the same way that Nixon pounced. Kennedy pounced on Nixon in 1960 for being soft on Cuba. Right. Now, the fact of the matter is Gerald Ford wasn't really wrong because Solidarity emerged not long after that. Poland and Eastern Europe had a level of political openness that no one in Latin America associated with the United States did. You would never choose to be a peasant in Guatemala over being a dock worker in Poland. That's an easy call. Right. And so all this stuff is going on. This is exactly what people like Henry Wallace, but even more people like Robert Taft and John Rigor had warned against in 1947. And now Chicago, it's coming home. The chickens are coming home to roost. And I keep thinking of 1968 and the days of rage and everything else like that in Chicago. And Trump is now using the rhetoric, the language of military intervention against an American city. And that's pretty fucked up. That's really fucked up. Other politicians have called the guard out, but generally there's some level there where you could consider a crisis, whether it be Newark in 1967 or South Central after the Rodney King verdict or during natural disasters or whatever. But these are utterly contrived disasters based on this threat of. Or this fear of a crime wave that doesn't exist right now.

[Scott Parkin]

For they use language around invasion. Like when he testified before Congress about Marine 800 Marines on the streets of Los Angeles, he said, don't you think we should use the military to protect us from this invasion? And got really. Got into it with some of the Democratic senators, I think. And I. It's all contrived, right? It's.

[Bob Bozanko]

Oh, absolutely. Whatever.

[Scott Parkin]

The crime rates amongst migrant communities are much lower than they are amongst non migrant communities.

[Bob Bozanko]

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, the crime, the violent crime rate has gone down just in the last two or three years. It's gone down like 30. 30% or something like crime rate today is about half of what it was in the 1970s. Right?

[Scott Parkin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bob Bozanko]

I'm not saying people don't have to worry about crime. Essentially what you have now are people who've never stepped foot in Chicago, never set foot in Washington state, never been in downtown la. Basically white people. Karen and Earl. Oh, there's Negroes in Los Angeles. We got homeless people.

[Scott Parkin]

The other thing to note too, is they only talk about the crime wave in sanctuary cities and blue states where he has political rivals, like, for whatever he is, Gavin Newsom and J.B. pritzker. But the crime, the murder rates in some of the blue of the red states are actually much higher. Like the right now, the murder capital of the US Is Jackson, Mississippi, which has a Democratic mayor, but still it's red state. The same with Little Rock, Arkansas. And wait, who's the governor of Little Rock, Arkansas? What's her name? Hillary Clinton? No. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I think it's all just like, really worth noting. It's like this is completely a political game based on the Trump administration, based on Trump's political rivalries, which is what.

[Bob Bozanko]

People were saying in 1947. People were warning about that in 1947. And the Democratic Party was the handmaiden. They were the midwife of that. The Democrats were Harry Truman and the rest of them. We have 6% of the world's population, 50% of the wealth. Our task is to maintain this position of disparity, to keep it that way. It's not anymore, but the US still has 25% of the world's wealth and 5% of the world's population. So the United States is disproportionately so much more wealthy and powerful than anyone else. Right. Who knows how long that's going to last with tariffs and migration and all that kind of stuff, deportations and everything else. So I think this is important to understand it within this larger historical context. And we'll probably talk about this some more too, because I think it's really an important historical idea and really I don't see anybody else talking about it this way.

[Scott Parkin]

Yeah, I think this is a, I think this is a pretty important concept sort of frame to be like continuing to push. And I definitely think thinking about how it fits in regime change that we want, that we may or may hardliners in our government, maybe associate with Venezuela or Iran or Cuba or wherever is actually an important thing to keep, as well as the sort of domestic militarization we're seeing. Yeah, I'm going to wrap it there and we'll be to be continued on this for sure, because I think this is a great topic for us to continue to talk about.

[Bob Bozanko]

Get the hats and shirts.

[Scott Parkin]

Yeah. So if you like us, please check us out on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Bluesky. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit the subscribe button. If you listen to us on a audio platform, give us a rate and review. And then if you want some swag, we have these lovely hats for $25 plus shipping or included in shipping that Bob just showed to you. And Then we also have these awesome t shirts for $40. And just give us an [e-mail] or check us out on greenredpodcast.org and hit that support button. Or become a patron at patreon that patreon.com Green Red podcast. Blah, blah, blah. It's a mouthful right there. And until we talk again, everybody make trouble and misbehave.

[Bob Bozanko]

Now, you masters of war. You that build all the guns. You that build the death planes. You that build the big bombs. You that hide behind walls, you that hide behind death? I just want you to know I can see through your mask. You that never done nothing but build to destroy. You play with my world like it's your little toy.