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How the Trillion Dollar War Machine Robs Your American Dream // Kim Iversen
Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, could be retired on a beach eating Cherry Garcia — but instead, he’s speaking out against the biggest con in America: the Pentagon budget. And he’s not pulling punches.
America was the first country to build nuclear weapons. It’s also still the only one to use them in war. Since then, we’ve constructed a sprawling nuclear arsenal and now spend nearly $100 billion a year just to maintain and upgrade those weapons — a sliver of the $900 billion Pentagon budget that grows year after year.
For Cohen, the real obscenity isn’t just the size of the arsenal. It’s what that budget says about who we are. “A budget is a reflection of your morality,” he says. And by that measure, the United States is morally bankrupt.
From Hiroshima to 50,000 BBs
In one gut-punch moment, Cohen uses BB pellets to illustrate the absurdity of our nuclear stockpile. One BB represents the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Then he pours out 50,000 BBs — representing today’s arsenal. “Enough to kill everybody on Earth,” he says. “That’s f***ing crazy.”
But that’s only part of the madness. The Department of Defense isn’t just funding weapons — it’s draining the life out of public services. Education, housing, healthcare, even clean water — all sacrificed at the altar of the war economy. The U.S. doesn’t just have a Pentagon for defense anymore — it has a global military empire, with 800 military bases scattered across the planet. The next country on that list? Eight.
Manufactured Consent, Manufactured Poverty
Cohen highlights how our military economy is intentionally designed to be unkillable. Weapons manufacturers strategically distribute components of military systems across every congressional district. That way, if a lawmaker tries to cancel a failing or overpriced weapons program, they’re warned: “You’ll lose jobs in your district.” It’s not national security — it’s extortion dressed up in red, white, and blue.
And it works. Congress keeps signing off on bloated military budgets, while pretending we “just don’t have the money” for healthcare or affordable housing. That’s not oversight — that’s complicity.
Cohen points to the 75% of the U.S. discretionary budget tied up in war-related departments — the Pentagon, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs. “That’s why you can’t afford a house,” he says. “That’s why our school budgets are never funded. That’s why we poison kids with lead, even though we know how to fix it.”
The Price of Peace
Ben isn’t making utopian demands. He’s pointing to what other developed nations already do — provide healthcare, childcare, education, housing support — because they’re not spending a trillion dollars playing global police.
Cutting even a portion of the Pentagon’s budget could transform daily life for millions of Americans. Affordable housing could become the norm. School funding could stop relying on bake sales and prayer. Childcare could stop being a second mortgage. But instead, every year, Congress chooses bombs over bread — and Americans foot the bill while getting nothing back.
More Guns, Fewer Answers
There’s a deeper sickness at play here. Cohen sees the war mindset spilling into everyday life. “What we’re seeing with all these mass shootings is people just following what our government is modeling,” he says. If you don’t like something, use violence. Make war. Only most people don’t have cruise missiles — they have AR-15s.
We’re not just being robbed financially — we’re being eroded spiritually.
The Moral Bottom Line
The U.S. insists on being the global hegemon — dominating not just with economics, but with brute force. And maintaining that position has become a national obsession, regardless of the cost to those living within its borders.
Cohen leaves us with a chilling truth: we’re not being outspent by enemies. We’re self-destructing by design. “How much can you spend protecting yourself from without before you destroy yourself from within?” he asks.
In the end, the trillion-dollar war machine isn’t just about military power. It’s about priorities. And until we change those, the American Dream remains just that — a dream.
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