Finally, peace in our time. The Blue Angels’ annual Fleet Week assault on San Francisco has finally, blessedly, mercifully been canceled for 2013, the result of $85 billion in federal budget sequestration cuts divided equally between military expenditures and social service spending.
The Guardian has long called for the cancellation of this wasteful show of military might, citing its inherent danger to a dense urban area, wanton waste of resources and fossil fuels, disturbance of the peace and pets, glamourizing of war and its weapons, and its Soviet-style fetishizing of militarism.
But in the end – appropriately and a little ironically – it was conservative fiscal prudence that finally shot down the Blue Angels. The military is already the biggest item in the federal budget, a massive, unjustifiable expenditure caused by imperial over-reach and the bloat of crony capitalism and pork barrel politics. Spending millions more just to show off their toys over scenic San Francisco was the ridiculous cherry on top of that sloppy sundae.
Real people and the real economy are suffering real harm from reckless sequestration cuts to social programs that have been inflicted by the anti-government ideologues sent to DC by the plutocrats and their minions. To keep the Blue Angels flying high against that backdrop would have been simply obscene, and surely a sign of decadent late empire in decay.
This decision by the Navy to nix the Blue Angels is a small but significant sign of sanity in a country gone mad, and the Guardian proudly salutes this decision.