The Jenna Flanagan WBAI panel connects Troy Jackson’s working-class Senate campaign, Israel’s continued genocide in Gaza, and Washington’s staggering $1.5 trillion defense budget.
The embedded video contains solely the questions that WBAI’s We Decide’s Jenna Flanagan asked me. The entire panel discussion can be viewed here (Episode: 2026-07-27). We Decide is a joint Pacifica Affiliate, WBAI production, and the We Decide: America at the Crossroads with Jenna Flanagan.
Summary
The WBAI We Decide panel connected three stories that corporate media too often treats separately: Israel’s widening violence across the Middle East, Washington’s nearly limitless military spending, and Troy Jackson’s working-class campaign against Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine. Together, they reveal a government that readily finances destruction abroad while claiming scarcity whenever Americans demand healthcare, childcare, housing, or economic security.
- Israel’s attacks in Gaza and neighboring countries reflect an expanding regional strategy enabled by unconditional American support.
- A United Nations commission has concluded that Israeli authorities continue committing genocide and other atrocity crimes in Gaza.
- The Trump administration requested $1.5 trillion in total defense resources for fiscal year 2027.
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Troy Jackson offers Maine voters an authentic working-class alternative rooted in labor, rural communities, and economic populism.
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Real resistance requires replacing political resignation with organized, fearless democratic participation.
The nation does not lack resources. It lacks leaders willing to prioritize human life over military contractors, corporate power, and permanent war.
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Troy Jackson, Gaza, and the Pentagon Budget Expose America’s Distorted Priorities
The WBAI We Decide panel connected three stories that corporate media usually treats as unrelated: Israel’s continuing devastation of Gaza and military actions across the region, Washington’s proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget, and Troy Jackson’s working-class campaign against Republican Senator Susan Collins in Maine. Together, these issues reveal a government that always finds money for warfare but suddenly discovers fiscal restraint when working people demand healthcare, childcare, housing, education, or economic security.
Israel’s attacks cannot be dismissed as isolated military responses. The violence in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and the West Bank reflects a broader regional strategy made possible by American weapons, money, and diplomatic protection. Temporary pauses and selective ceasefires do not change the underlying reality. Israel continues exercising overwhelming power while Palestinian civilians endure displacement, hunger, destroyed infrastructure, and death.
American leaders understand what is happening. They receive intelligence reports, humanitarian assessments, and extensive documentation from international organizations. Yet they continue treating the Israeli government as exempt from the human-rights standards Washington claims to apply elsewhere. That hypocrisy turns the United States from a passive observer into an active enabler.
The discussion of Gaza also connects directly to the explosion in military spending. The administration has requested approximately $1.5 trillion in total defense resources for fiscal year 2027. Political leaders will debate portions of the request, stage hearings, and perform outrage over individual decisions. In the end, however, the military-industrial complex will likely receive most of what it wants.
That outcome transcends one president or political party. Republicans openly celebrate military expansion, while too many establishment Democrats criticize the details without confronting the system. Defense contractors fund campaigns, employ armies of lobbyists, distribute production across congressional districts, and convince lawmakers that every weapons program represents both national security and local employment.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans cannot afford medical treatment, childcare, rent, prescription drugs, or higher education. Politicians tell them that universal programs cost too much. Yet those same politicians rarely ask whether another missile system, foreign military operation, or weapons contract remains affordable.
The country does not lack money. It lacks democratic control over how that money gets used.
Imagine Congress treating preventable illness as seriously as it treats military threats. Imagine lawmakers declaring war on medical bankruptcy, homelessness, childhood poverty, or failing public infrastructure. The government would mobilize resources, direct production, hire workers, and overcome procedural obstacles. Washington already demonstrates that capacity whenever the Pentagon demands action.
Troy Jackson’s Maine Senate campaign provides a domestic answer to this distorted political order. Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and former president of the Maine Senate, speaks with the credibility of someone rooted in rural, working-class life. He does not need consultants to teach him how economic decisions affect laborers, families, and communities abandoned by corporate consolidation.
His candidacy challenges the Republican Party’s fraudulent claim to represent rural America. Republicans use cultural grievances to win working-class votes while supporting policies that weaken unions, privatize public services, concentrate wealth, and deny affordable healthcare. A candidate like Jackson can expose that contradiction by speaking directly about wages, labor rights, healthcare, corporate power, and economic dignity.
Jackson still faces a well-funded incumbent and a national Republican machine. Victory will require more than hopeful polling or favorable speeches. It will require organization, turnout, independent media, and voters who refuse to let fear, immigration demagoguery, or manufactured cultural conflicts distract them from material conditions.
The connection between Maine, Gaza, and the Pentagon budget is ultimately about power. The same political system that finances destruction abroad often denies security at home. Changing that system requires leaders who will challenge concentrated wealth, reject permanent war, defend human rights, and place working people at the center of public policy.
America possesses the resources to build a humane society. The question is whether the public will organize strongly enough to take control of those resources from the corporations and political institutions that currently profit from suffering.
