Dan Sullivan

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan’s office has been preparing for the coming election season’s stormy bluster by issuing a series of fair-weather letters touting his accomplishments. The senator generally flaunts the fantastic benefits of the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, from cutting taxes to fighting the perpetual war on drugs. His office has carefully refrained from referring to the act by its first, most infamous name: the Big Beautiful Bill. The senator has good reason to avoid the early marketing tag since the bill was always only about ICE, and ICE is not very nice, murdering Americans, kidnapping families, caging children and violating more than 4,000 court orders. So the senator euphemistically refers to the ugly nature of this act in terms of “historic investments to secure our border and help our law enforcement,” providing “more than $100 billion for border security, including $46 billion for the southern border wall and $48 billion in additional law enforcement funding.” Since we clearly have plenty of money to spend, imagine what that kind of money could do for compassionate causes.

The Big Beautiful Tax Cuts Act snipped a smidgen of the tax burden for some near the most in need, now rendered moot by gas prices and inflation; severed a huge chunk of the tax responsibility for many who are not at all in need; amputated a whole lot of seriously needed medical aid from the public body; and pumped an oil pipeline’s gush of money into institutions of violence. In truth, when you take a clear look at spending and the priorities of our politicians, our highest national value appears to be violence. Violence is clearly among Sen. Sullivan’s highest values, as he consistently emphasizes how much we need to seek more opportunities to use it, to give its agents and institutions undebated magnitudes of financial and moral support at every political opportunity, to skip legal due process in designating human “targets,” and to maintain a solid stance against requiring violent agents be identifiable and held accountable.

Perhaps the most disturbing of Sen. Sullivan’s recent missives are those in which he celebrates America’s largest military buildup since World War II. He does not say why we are doing it; he glories in it as a good in itself, as though the massive preparation for a catastrophic global conflict is a worthy goal in itself. He seems to forget that war is horrible, that only criminal nations use war as a means to glory and riches. When moneymakers are invested in the industries of war and detention and talk of “making a killing,” they mean it literally. World War II was a genocidal calamity that killed millions and destroyed nations. The preparation for such a cause is no cause for celebration.

When a nation already superior in its defense capability massively builds up its military and security powers, it does so for one purpose only: violent aggression. That is, no doubt, why we no longer speak of a Department of Defense, calling it instead the Department of War. We are being led by politicians who equate greatness with the exploits of conquering armies and secret agencies of violence that, if successful, will never be held accountable for crimes. This is psychopathology as foreign policy.

And what about the budget, the inflated national debt conservatives have always been so vocal about? How have conservative politicians, so prideful of their business acumen, come to welcome a policy of borrowing beyond our means while eliminating our most important source of income? Can we really balance the budget by spending trillions of new dollars on violence while cutting millions of old social dollars and eliminating the most bounteous source of tax revenue?

Since when have Republicans been so enthusiastic about maxing the credit cards, quitting their day jobs, throwing parties that trash the house, and saying we’ll worry about it later or Dad will take care of it? Is this the MAGA version of fiscal responsibility? Is modern conservative governance a form of piracy by mutiny, where the ship of state is looted by the crew who then escape by yacht to the Bahamas?

What happened to us? When did we become a nation so dedicated to waste? Are we so lost in self-importance, so unable to change our lifestyles, that no matter how high gas prices get, we will never give up our God-given right to waste?

President Trump said lately that he does not care about the effect of war on people. He said he does not care about gas prices, that they do not matter. Suffering does not matter. Death and destruction do not matter.

What does matter?

Scott Justesen has lived in Fairbanks for more than 15 years and works as a commercial pilot for a local air carrier. He served in the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) and the Reserve Army Medical Corps, a year of which was spent deployed to Iraq.