The pols cry glory and revenge. They cry security. They cry greatness.

Then they stick in the needle, or the missile or the rifle shell, or the nuclear bomb. Or at least they imagine doing so. This will fix the world. And they approve more funding for war.

U.S. militarism, and the funding — and the fearmongering — that sustain it are out of control . . . in the same way, perhaps, that stage 4 cancer is out of control.

We talk about “the Pentagon” as though it were a rational entity, hierarchically in control of what it does, dispensable as needed to trouble spots around the world: a tool of America’s commander in chief and, therefore, of the American people. The reality, undiscussed on the evening news or the presidential debates, is something a little different. The American military is an unceasing hemorrhage of cash and aggression, committed — perhaps only at the unconscious level — to nothing more than its own perpetuation, which is to say, endless war.

I was well into my thirties before I learned that Otis Redding wrote and recorded Respect in 1965. As far as I–and probably many others–knew, Respect belonged to Aretha. Even Redding said so, and it took a bad ass singer to best Otis Redding. Respect was Aretha’s first number one hit and it marked her debut as the undisputed Queen of Soul.

A lot of ink has been spilled trying to tell the story of this complex woman. David Ritz is the goto collaborator for those in the music business who wish to have their lives and careers rendered in book form. Ritz worked with Aretha on her 1999 bio Aretha: From These Roots.