Sometimes I wonder if every generation has felt like the world was ending.
Apocalypse seems to go in cycles, but when will it stick? When will this planet
get fed up enough with human beings that it will unleash enough incurable diseases,
earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires, cyclones, floods and reality tv shows to drill into the skulls of humanity
that we have royally fucked this place up and Mamma earth aint happy about it.
Regardless of whether you imbue the planet with a personified emotional state, ready to shake off humans like flees or see this place as a godless rock in a meaningless void, you must surely have noticed that the small corner we've cut for ourselves isn't doing so hot. Blame Bush. Why not? He seems like a good scapegoat. I'm all game for digging in the toolshed to find granddad's old torch, stop by the hardware store for some tar and eagerly pluck the feathers out of my luxurious bed bath and beyond comforter. Really though, as much as king George II has done to flush the economy, world relations and human rights down the drain, I think one would be hasty to paste a stamp of blame on his empty cavernous head.
I blame capitalism. The very thing which has made this nation such a world power is the very thing that is causing it to implode. Ok, so capitalism is great in theory, but it's structure has no checks and balances to help control greed. Everyone wants a piece of the pie, but once they've had one slice, they want another. Before you know it they have the whole pie. Why find satisfaction in one pie when you can have the whole pie shop? Why not two pie shops, the pie factory, all the cherry trees, flour mills and every pie tin. Now that they've got all that and the millions, make that billions it brings, they're still not satisfied. They have to buy out all the competition and desimate the towns where they had built factories. God, this money is like a drug. How can they make more money. Fire all the local workers and ship the factories to china or india. Yes, they don't have to pay them very much and they can have more money, piles of it.
I think of this as trickle up economics. So the people who worked at the pie shop and the pie factory aren't doing so well. They start putting expenses on credit cards because they can't afford to live in a nation with so little pie. The banks that loaned that money aren't doing so well, so they have to borrow from the government. The government isn't doing so well, so it has to borrow from china. Well, china's got all the factory money coming in from all the pie manufacturing, so they don't mind making the most powerful nation in the world their bitch. It, afterall is part of their plan for world domination. Stupid Americans, so arrogant.
While this is going on most people are so fascinated with buying crap they don't need because it takes their minds off the fact that the carpet is being pulled out from under them in their foreclosed homes. Btw, that crap they don't need was made in china by people who took away their jobs.
I found it fascinating to watch elaborate arrangements of dominoes stacked and stretched for miles. All that work and then one little flick and you watch this chain of events that is quite breathtaking.
