The Blog of toussaint

Martin Luther King Jr. said that America had borne triplets; racism, consumerism and militarism.  He was 3/4 right: he failed to recognize the fourth bastard child of anti-environmentalism (is that a word?).  In the early days of this country, most people lived off the land and appreciated what an important resource it is; but they often did not know the long term damage they were doing when they over hunted buffalo or dammed up some river, etc. 

We were, for the most part, not a high consumption nation at our birth, because we were too poor and TV wasn't screaming at us all day that we are not happy and the only way to fix that is to buy this new, improved and lemon scented crap I'm pushing. Don't worry if you can't afford it, we have low, low financing and you wont make a payment for a year.  Did I also mention this is a limited time offer? So act NOW, operators are standing by....

We must fight these four horseman of the Apocalypse in this order: 1) Consumerism, 2) Anti-earthism(now, that definitely ain't a word), 3) Militarism, 4) Racism.

Consumerism is the greatest of our mortal sins because it drives and fuels all of the others.  The wanting of things just for the sake of having them causes us to disregard the planet and pave over it for a new mall that will in turn cause more toxic run-off and flooding because the water can no longer be absorbed there.  Instead of having fuel efficient cars or mass transit that does not take 4 hours to go 10 miles, we have to have a Hummer that in turn pollutes the air we all breath and causes global warming/cooling that makes us use even more fuel to cool/heat our homes.  Consumerism gets us stuck in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East so we can get the fuel we need.  Consumerism also played a hand in racism: it needed to create a permanent under class to do all the dirty jobs we need done but don't want to pay for.  What better way to separate people than to create a myth of superiority, and, don't forget, Manifest Destiny?  Consumerism is a Moloch that fuels itself because you have to keep up with the Jones'.

Now that we have defined the problem, what to do?  i believe we have to fight money with money at first.  What i mean is, since all the politicians out there seem to be for sale($90,000 gets you a Democrat from La. and $250,000 gets you a Republican from San Diego) the reasonable 50% of this country needs to buy them. If we buy at least half of the for sale politicians and the other side out bids us for the other half, i believe the 1% of honest politicians left will be the margin of victory we need to win.  i know this sounds expensive, and it is but we can use the power of organization to help us pull this off.  If you are a service worker you need to join the Service Employees Inter. Union.  If you are interested in race matters, join the NAACP.  If you are an environmentalist, join Greenpeace.  You get the idea; and since these organizations are member controlled,  we can take them over from the inside and make them responsive to our needs.

On a less sour note, i truly believe that racism will take care of itself, slowly but surely, because these young kids out there don't see race as much of an issue as we did and it will continue to wane in importance.  These kids are sleeping with everyone and having babies of mixed heritage that make racism much harder to carry out and define.  No one is pure anything anymore, unless you count the inbreeds like the English Royals who have so many recessive traits they will soon be having babies with up and down syndrome.

We must marginalize the 50% of crazies on the extreme right and extreme left.  So why don't we start our own political party?  Because you'd actually end up with power in fewer hands rather than more, the third party movement i would so like to see flourish is doomed to fail. Why?  Look at Israel for example.  They have multiple parties but two main parties get most of the vote.  So, when it is time to form a government they have to sell out to the tiny party that is either on their left or right , thereby giving this tiny party veto power over a lot of issues.  Every time their government collapses it is because one of these tiny-minded parties pulls out of the government and that causes new elections to take place every 2-3 years on average.  Do we really want more of this electoral process?  i think NOT!  We would be in a never ending cycle of elections which would cause instability.  No, the Militant Middle must rise up and be heard and hijack this system for good the way the Radical Right and the Loopy Left have been doing for the last 70 years.