The Trillion Dollar Silencer investigates the astounding lack of popular protest at the death and destruction that the military industrial complex is inflicting on people, nations, and the environment, and its budget-draining costs. Contractors and bases serve as the economic hubs of their regions. State and local governments are intertwined with the DoD. Economic development commissions aim to attract military industries and keep the existing bases and corporations. Veterans Administration hospitals are boons to their communities. Universities, colleges, and faculty get contracts and grants from the DoD and its agencies. Reserve Officers' Training Corps programs are subsidized by the DoD. Civilian jobs in the DoD provide opportunities for scientists, engineers, policy analysts, and others. Every kind of business and nonprofit, including environmental and charitable organizations like The Nature Conservancy and Goodwill Industries feeds at the DoD trough via contracts and grants. How can we replace the multitude of dependencies on military funding and restore the boundary between it and civil society? Surely a first step is to see how military spending results in the complicity of civil society in its pernicious outcomes. That is what this book tries to reveal. The book is published by Clarity Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks. "A masterful primer on an institution – the United States military -- how the military industrial complex has been able to acquire so many taxpayer dollars..." (Catharine Lutz, Professor Emerita, Brown University) "A powerful and insightful contribution...encourages ongoing discourse on the complex relationships between the military and civilian sectors..." (Patrick Hiller, Peace & Change) "A new and much needed book that explains much about praise and support for the U.S. military." (Counterpunch)
