Irony Boom

We’re creeping toward a billion in trade deficit just for the matter alone of celebrating our “Independence” Day.  Try not to miss the irony that we import most of our fireworks from our biggest competitor/rival/potential enemy, China.  We give them money so we can celebrate how “independent” we are.

If we were doing okay overall, this would be no bother at all.  China apparently has a competitive advantage in fireworks making; okay then, we’ll buy from them.  But we’re also buying a lot of other things as well.   Even with our increased export situation of the past few years (a weak economy makes your goods a bit more competitive, other things being equal, which they never are), we’re still not far from a trillion dollar a year trade deficit.  That’s wealth transfer to others.  Others who may not have your best interests at heart.  And you, America, get weaker every day it happens.  You don’t make enough here that gets sold elsewhere.  Hence the problem. You’re a net consumer, not a net producer, not even a break-evener.

All in service to what the corporate masters and plutocrats, who worship at the altar of unregulated, unthinking globalization, call the wonders of the “free market.”

"They got used to it"

Isn’t that how we’ve become? We keep adapting to changes—everything from roads and stations and buildings that don’t get repaired to pensions that disappear in favor of “voluntary contribution plans” (and, insult to injury, for people who aren’t paid enough to save).  These changes are wrought by our “elites.”  We have time for everything else in the world—TV, internet, video games, eating out, movies, boating, driving, and on and on—but we have no time to push back, to question, to try to change, all the things that are being forced upon us. 

Sort of a “That sucks; I’m going to do X to make me feel better or take my mind off it.”  So no discussions ensue.  We are left with the scream domination competitions of the fervent believers of the various political philosophies.

Fail.

Can's End

To the kick-the-can-down-the-road American public and “their” Congressional legislators, the highly respected Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has delivered this: The CBO’s computer model can’t envision an American economic and budgetary model that can function past 2027. 

Compare and Contrast

After listening to superintendent, principal, education board directors and just walking around watching and listening to people at a high school graduation, I got the feeling that people are just trying to manage lives and situations, not fashioning their society.  I sensed no energy-infused purpose, for themselves or their society. 

I contrasted that with viewing Chinese TV, which, despite its occasional heavy hand of government interference, seems to reflect a society that, despite its deep problems, feels it is going somewhere, that it is making progress, that it is doing things that infuse pride.   Oh, they have problems, deep ones, some of character, but being economically sound gets you breathing room to deal with that.

We Americans get excited about things that divert us, not things that propel us, as individuals or society.  How will Americans react when they wake up down the road to find they are not number 1, maybe not even in the top 5 anymore?

REMEMBER

Given what today is, the message is all on the Professor and Housewife side of this blog...

Pleading With Their Tormentors Because "Their" Servants and Protectors Are Neither

Want an indication that the environmental battle is being lost?  The National Resource Defense Council’s best answer (and Robert Redford’s) to strip mining on public land is to ask you the citizen to write a letter to the CEOs of the strip mining companies. They aren’t even bothering to ask you to write a letter to your Congressman, or to the President, or the Secretary of the Department of the Interior. 

Perhaps ownership of the country has become nakedly apparent.

50th Anniversary

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s seminal book, Silent Spring.  In re-reading it after all these years, I am shaken, jolted, struck, shocked, and disturbed, all over again.  Why?  Because although we congratulated ourselves at having cycled back half a notch, we have in reality changed no ethic at all.  Sure, there are some bright spots, some successes, and our air, water, and soil MIGHT overall be a bit better than they were then, and yes, certain chemicals are banned (in the US) and rivers are rarely on fire anymore.  But we have no true environmental ethic.  We have slowed down—maybe—our descent into environmental self-poisoning and self-degeneration.  But we haven’t stopped, let alone reversed course.  We produce poisons, and continue to diffuse them everywhere, and they come back to do us in, as individuals and civilization.  When she dedicated her book to Albert Schweitzer, and his quote,“Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall.  He will end by destroying the earth,” she hoped we would really wake up.  We merely cracked one eyelid—and, with a few notable exceptions, went right on as before. 

Extraterrestrial and other existence beings must look on us as the most bizarre and unwise supposedly sentient creatures anywhere.  It is bad enough that we are a species that preys upon itself, but we also consciously poison ourselves, our habitats, and our posterity, not to mention the life around us.

Where are you, homo sapiens sapiens (wise, wise, humans)?  Do you really think you are separate from nature? Our self-destructive path is evident, yet we choose to ignore, instead embracing denial, diversion, escapism, and illusion.  We are not stewards of creation, we are monsters—mindless, selfish, destructive monsters.

Something to think—remember that seldom used faculty?—about the next time we have to choose, in another false dichotomy, “between jobs/money/foreign dependence/etc. and the environment.”