In Beyond Vietnam speech at Riverside Church, New York City, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. prophetically warned the US of the consequences of military spending: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” At the time of MLK’s speech, the US military budget stood at $78.40 billion, a 9.42% of GDP. The size of the military budget continues to increase with no end in sight and US’ “spiritual death” is the daily reality experienced in cities, towns, and streets across the nation.
For the 2026 fiscal year, the US military budget approved by Congress and signed by the president set a record of $838.7 billion in discretionary spending, a sum greater than the combined spending of all other parts of the budget. The Trump administration is seeking to modify it and secure up to $1.5 trillion in funding. While this is a large amount, the actual figures are still greater than this if we add the Department of Energy management of the nuclear program, the Department of Health and Human Services, which has funding addressing veterans’ needs, Department of Education support for the military, and finally, all the debt servicing for previous military budgets and wars financed by massive loans. I can count a few other things hidden or greased into other parts of the budget, but you get the picture.
As it stands, the current US military budget is larger than the combined expenditures of the world's militaries, including Russia, China, all NATO members, Europe, and North, South, and Central America. Another element to consider is the massive expenditure on policing, surveillance, and security infrastructure, which might add a few more hundreds of billions into the total militarization of state, local budgets, and society itself. We are all inducted into militarization to the extent that our thoughts, visions, and horizons become polluted and shaped by it.
What are the impacts on society of such a lopsided set of priorities? America’s cities are experiencing a slow, methodical death, and it is due to misplaced priorities. City after city is facing a massive homelessness crisis, drug usage, failing schools, collapsing physical infrastructure, an inadequate social welfare system, and a corporate elite drowning in wealth and toying with people’s lives. A nation committed to death machines and all the needs connected to it is marching steadily into the deepening “spiritual death” spiral, while the poor, the homeless, the destitute, the drug addicts and everything else befalling the society are the physical outward manifestation of it.
The blame game and pointing fingers are a circular bus ride that all parts of civil society and politicians of all stripes take turns on with little meaningful challenge underpinning the massive crisis at hand. For some who work in downtown areas and inner-city spaces, homelessness and drug usage are the problems needing to be addressed, while parents and families rightly ask questions about schools, education, and the diminishing standards of living despite one of the lowest rates of unemployment and higher wages. For the over-indulged and over-compensated corporate and business elites, it is the higher taxes and regulations that is causing a decline and loss of competitiveness to other countries around the world.
Democrats and Republicans alike are too dependent on the daily polling data and what the TV talking heads are framing to be of any help to this massive crisis at hand and a basic understanding of the “spiritual death” spiral. Indeed, both parties passed the budget and never saw any military program or increase in the annual budget to oppose to the extent that each year they add more funds to this absurd level of expenditure while out doing each other in the process.
How much is too much? How much is enough? How many more death machines are needed at the expense of daily deaths on the streets of cities and towns across the US? How many smart bombs, drones, AI weapons, and aircraft are sufficient? How many more should be fed into the death machines at home and abroad to enrich the few while many perish?
We have known for a long time that the military budget is part of a military industrial complex whereby the spending is directed to corporations that are dependent on it for continued economic viability. The military spending is a scheme intended to facilitate a massive wealth transfer from taxpayers to the corporate elites and bankers who finance them, where the government and politicians act as the middlemen and women to seal the deal. Every dollar spent on the military industrial complex has a corporate claimant and a financial institution counting on it for its annual projections.
Martin Luther King spoke of spiritual death some 60 years ago, when the military budget was almost 1/10 of its current level, and the US was fighting the illegal war in Vietnam. The critique then and now must focus on the spiritual consequences of an economy and a society built upon death machines and the commodification of instruments of war as a growth industry. It is not fighting an enemy that is the core of the military industrial complex and the never-ending expansion of military expenditures; rather it is the self-referential need to expand and grow for no other reason than economy and pure materialism.
A spiritual death is visible wherever you turn, and the spark of life is snuffed, but those who speak of spirituality mistake the symptoms for the disease, as they condemn the suffering while being silent about the causes. Often it is the poor, the homeless, the drug addict, the thief, the destitute and other manifested ills in the society that pre-occupy the shortsighted and the ones that are keen to curse the tormented souls without shinning a light upon who and what causes in the first place.
