I just finished reading Naomi Klein's new book, which was profoundly disturbing. If you haven't read it, why are you still here? Go and download it at once. You see, I thought that things were less terrible, that some progress had been made in the last 20 years. The truth was inconvenient a long time ago, and the speed of destruction has apparently gotten far worse, with innovative new ways of screwing up the environment in large swathes, while releasing the carbon that will eventually KILL US ALL.
You'd think that people would be alarmed, but they're not. Not at all. The corporate noise machine has been so very, very successful, that these days they basically just get whatever they want. Most Americans think exactly what they have been told to think for so many years now. And the corporate overlords are bent on extracting every last ounce of oil. If it took MORE oil to get that last little bit, why, I think they'd go ahead and get it.
They don't care if it kills everybody; in fact, I'm beginning to think that maybe it is a welcome side effect to certain elements of the right. It's a feature. What do they need four billion poor people for? They are looking forward to it, preparing for it, and intending to survive it if they have to kill every last poor person in the world personally. They already have the ammo hoarded, I bet.
In Naomi Klein's book, she writes about groups of Native people all over the world who are treating this like the crisis that it is and literally putting their bodies in the way of the machinery that is destroying our only home. To me, that is beginning to seem like the best response a human could have.
Then I go to my grocery store cashier job, where I wear a uniform made in China, and I sell things that are destroying the planet. Each of these items then goes into a planet-destroying plastic bag. Sometimes two. People buy milk, don't get me started on the cows, in a plastic jug which already has a handle, and then they want it double-bagged. If I don't mind. Well, I do mind, and someday I will say to a customer, "Don't you know that plastic bags are made from oil? There's probably five hundred of them under your kitchen sink right now. Why do you need another plastic bag?" I must convey this emotion to customers non-verbally, because often people will explain to me why they need a bag.
I don't need green living tips, because as a poor person, my impact is minimal. American minimal: I don't have a car. And I'm not going to live in a tent while the rest of you fuckers enjoy air conditioning and fluffy towels. Okay, I could be persuaded to live in a tent, but not while working for a corporation.
I want out. I don't want to participate in this, this BULLSHIT that passes for a society. And I don't think things have to be this way. I KNOW there are other ways to live. I want to matter to people, I want to help. I got a master's in community counseling because I wanted to help kids, and I did, for ten years, until the economy fell apart. Then SC passed a law prohibiting state agencies, or any agency getting state funding, or whoever since this is a right-to-work state, from hiring people who are in default on student loans, which I am. So I am a cashier. Everything that I am about, all my creative energy and love, is just wasted. I work and sleep and read and write; I could do that anywhere.
So where is the movement, and how do I join? Does anyone need me to live in a tree? Or chain myself to a backhoe, or something?