Tough Ecological Love

To Tom Young, of Plaquemines Parish on the coast, who asks:

“…no one outside of these few parishes really cares. They say they do, but the don’t do nothing but talk. Where’s the action? Where’s the person who says these are real people, real people with families and they are hurting?” (MSNBC)

The people you are calling for in your hour of need were the idealists of the late 1960s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie , http://www.hippy.com/hippyway.htm) who advised all of us to: drop out (of the crapitalist bizshit), turn on (the natural mind), and tune in (to what’s really happening). The idealists, who counseled us to “make love, not war”. The idealists, who grocked the nature of the crapitalist industrialism that they grew up in. They called for us all to ‘return to the land’ and adopt an ecological communalism centered around the ‘expansion of consciousness’.

Now, you can imagine how all of this was received by conservative white Amerika (CWA) and other ‘establishment types’ all over the world. The idealists were set upon with a savagery well known to those who had taken a gentler approach to the earth (as mother) for generations before the acquisitive entrepreneurialists arrived on these shores. They are all now removed from view, having faded into the background of the culture, and taken to looking like everyone else. (Safer that way.)

Amerika made its ‘deal with the devil’ just at the point where the devil started to collect. Anybody remember ‘Love Canal’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal)? This is the point where I became aware of the depths of corporate indifference and the stupidity of local government! Then a ‘Love Canal’ was discovered close to where I lived and I got to see up close what a chemical panic is all about. (They just took the fence down this year!) I came to understand in the late 1970s that we live in a sump pit of greed, ignorance, intolerance, public relations (PR), and just plain downright orneriness!

And what did we all expect from big biz PR? Some (including me) expected a leap into space and a great expansion of amerikan know-how outward into the (obviously empty and ready for our use) galaxy forever! Some expected that we would dominate the world both militarily and economically and that every amerikan would get rich (because god wants you to— http://www.ivchristiancenter.org/30mtv/2006/10/god_wants_you_t.html , http://ezinearticles.com/?God-Wants-You-to-Be-Rich&id=173828 ) by a “trickle down” process that would cause “all boats to rise” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics ). Some expected that we would return to a simpler amerika as a Christian nation of strength and moral rectitude founded in our exceptional position in the whole history of civilizations (perhaps, as in, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificent_Ambersons ?).

This conservative worldview came to dominate our lives in the age of Reagan and governs to this day:

‘Campaigning for the Democratic nomination in 2008, Obama interpreted how Reagan changed the nation's trajectory:
“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think that people... he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.”’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_Era)

Blah blah blah…what a load of crap! Reagan was an idiot surrounded by a bunch of thieves and rouges who savaged this place, one good.

White amerikan’s were the greatest benefactors of the Reagan Age and remain so (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/31/business/economy/31memphis.html ). The southern states became ‘solid’ again, only this time, under republicans. The Bush-Cheney (BC) administration brought forth the highest achievement of CWA—the complete deregulation of corporations, the nearly complete elimination of taxation on the corporate elite, and the destruction of the middle class by wage flattening and ‘off shoring’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassionate_conservatism ). So, what did you expect with two texass oilmen in the white house and a majority of their type in congress?

Under BC, what I call govcorp came into full power. Govcorp had long existed by the revolving door between the top posts in corporations and the top posts in the government for graduates of the harvard-princeton-yale club. But, under BC, govcorp completely relinquished its control over corporate management of the regulatory agencies (e.g., http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/100179-report-obama-fires-mms-head , http://messageboards.aol.com/aol/en_us/articles.php?boardId=544758&articleId=1023804&func=6&channel=Rants+%26+Raves , http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-17-mms-goes-under-the-spotlight/ ). It is here that our bargain with ‘the devil’ was complete! And, now Tom, you stand knee deep in the corruption of what was the only good thing about Amerikan society, its engineering know-how. You can thank all of those who took us down the path of republicanism over the last 30 years to the utter failure of amerikan corporatism.

So, yes Tom, there are those of us outside of the parishes that care and understand and feel your hurt. But, at this point in amerikan history, there’s not a damned thing we can do to help you. There is nothing you can do either. Voting the republicans back into power will only return the people who put you in the situation you now find yourself in back into position to give you more of the same! There is nothing govcorp can do either, because, this time, when they tried to trick ‘mother nature’, they were playing with forces beyond their control. I’ll tell you what the politicians and the bigbizboys won’t: your life living off the gulf is OVER! Finished! Complete! Done! I doubt if even your great-grandchildren will see a thriving gulf. The oil will continue to gush until the pressure in the reservoir balances that at the bottom of the Gulf.

You asked: “where’s the action?” you missed it! It was forty years ago when you or your parents were given a distinct alternative as to what sort of life they should live. It was forty years ago when students all over the world took over universities in protest of the hypocritical relationship between academia and govcorp. It was forty years ago in fights in the streets against the cops of all most all of the major cities in this and other countries to protest police brutality and corruption and poverty (which has only gotten worse). It was forty years ago when we Liberals liberated black people from white conservative slavery and stopped a war in Vietnam! It was forty years ago when a toothless ‘great society’ was formed and shined a ray of hope into what was a pretty hopeless country (now hapless). So, now you know. And now, let me tell you what you have to do.

You have to save what sea life in the gulf there is to save! You have to help build a vast inland sea simulating the conditions of the various niches in the gulf (and soon to be the whole sea) in such as way as to form an ark to take sea life into a future where the natural environment has been ruined. You have your work ‘cut out for you’!

'The Road', A Film Review

‘The Road’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbLgszfXTAY) is a difficult film. Difficult to watch and fearful to contemplate. After my single viewing, I arrived at the conventional interpretation: an american post apocalypse. But, this is wrong. A more careful 'reading' of the film shows that the film is not so much, post apocalypse, but ‘apocalypse now’! Consider: there is no pre-apocalyptic world depicted and there is no reason given for the apocalypse that is shown and the whole world, as suggested by the father when asked by his son if there was something different on the other side of the ocean, is as it is in the story before the viewer.

The Road is now. What blinds most of us from seeing it is our cupidity. Our homeless are on The Road now. Our sick without insurance are on The Road now. Those from foreign lands who come to amerika to seek out jobs on the bottom rungs of employment are on The Road now. Our long-term unemployed will soon be on The Road.

The most striking metaphor in the film is the mansion that the father and son happen upon. That mansion is the myth of amerika. The cellar is the reality!

We are dupes of dopes. We are led by fools. The Road shows where that leadership leads. The Road also shows us what happens when we tire of that leadership and put it down like a rabid dog. The Road shows us the ending of the myth of amerikan civilization. And, to that end, The Road is a parable of justice. What a tough justice it is. But then, who said justice would be a sunny day at the beach? Unironically, The Road gives resonance to our next ‘great leader’, sarah pallin’s, remark: “We eat therefore we hunt.”

bon appétit!

Film Review: Capitalism—A Love Story

Just viewed ‘Capitalism—A Love Story’ (http://www.capitalismalovestory.com/).
Michael Moore completes his critique of America. What more can be said. Moore clearly shows that America (i.e., the American dream of my childhood) is dead for all of us who have to work for a living at average jobs which pay average wages. Klepto-corporate Amerika (see Citigroup Oct 16, 2005 Plutonomy Report Part 1) is where we live now, and it is an obscenity! (http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Insurance/P64954.asp) American exceptionalism. America, ‘the greatest country’. America, ‘the land of the free’. All 100% US Bulls Hit! Moore shows that class warfare is real and deadly. Congress is bought and sold. Republicans and Democrats are bought and sold. The White House is nothing but a corporate outhouse. The Fed and Treasury are nothing more than boardrooms of Goldman Suchs (http://www2.goldmansachs.com/ -- oh look, some peasants!).

‘Capitalism’ shows that there are some small rays of hope in a few isolated cases of rebellion against foreclosure and a certain thieving windows company (and its bank—The Bunk Of Amerika), but for the most part, what sticks in the memory, is the face of upper class white male Wall Street indifference. Moore is quite clear in his solution: capitalism must be eliminated! We may not be able to eliminate our corrupt capitalist ruling class (without eliminating ourselves—the working class), but we need never hear their BS lies again.