During the earlier part of my life it seemed to me America was home to a lot of good guys. There was the civil rights movement, the women's movement, the ant-war movement, and the beginning of the environmental movement. The first big oil shock had come and with it a growing understanding that the oil supply was not infinate, that conservation and devising alternate means of providing energy were simply challenges that would have to meet. The need to eliminate poverty and provide a quality education for every child was a given in the national debate. There were conflicting ideas on how to go about reaching those goals, but no one suggested that the poor deserved to be poor and their children deserved to be uneducated. Very often much of religion, including my particular tribe of Christianity, was on the right side of these efforts.
Those were tumultuous days and the bad guys were putting up a fight. The governments of Johnson, Nixon and Tip O'Neil were as least as corrupt as any modern counterpart. The war in Vietnam went on endlessly, without hope of "winning" and with no exit stragity while uncounted millions were sacrificed to the bottom line of the war profiteers and the military. Southern politicians went to war against civil rights and in many places cities burned and tanks took to the streets. Leaders of religion waviered on civil rights for women and, knowing who buttered their bread, quietly began to abandon the poor so their patrons could get tax breaks. American Christians flocked to the prosperity doctrin teachers and kneel before their alters of money to this very day. Industry leaders started to suggest that protecting the environment could only be done at the cost of middle class jobs and moved jobs oversees to prove it.
In fact, the bad guys put up such a good fight that they eventually won and I now live in a country in full retreat on every front of human progress.
And I'm not sure what to do with that. I can't even vote in good conscious, seeing it as giving some legitimacy to a comply debased system, like voting in Cuba or the old Soviet Union. I can pick between deeply evil people, just evil people, or occasionaly well intentioned but utterly incompetent people. (People who, by the way, have no chance of making a difference.) I take a lot of heat for my opinion of voting but tell me, who do I vote for? Who is the anit-war candidate? Who is the anti-Wall Street or pro-union candidate? Where on the ballot will I find a politician who is openly pro-science, who will dare critisize the excesses of religion, who will keep the creationists out of the schools, and who would consider even a 10% budget cut for the D.O.D., let alone the 40 or 50% cut that we should be discussing? Vote? Sure, except there is not a single progressive anywhere to be found.
I could take to the streets and join the protesters, but there are no protesters any more. Occupy Wall Street has faded for lack of interest and focus, and it turns out the T-party types are the bad guys.
Unless I want to give up eating I can't really boycott big corporations. We do have a local hardware store around the corner that I use when I can. But often Wall-Mart or Home Depot is the only place to find I need. I ride a motorcycle, but it is a big one that only gets about 40 mpg. And to be truthful, I don't ride to be "green" but because I like to go fast and be out in the wind. (I'm also not brave enough to take a 100 mpg scooter out on the highways around here.) Corporations who abuse the planet, their suppliers, their workers and their customers in order to boost their stock price to its maximum are about the only game left. The entire US of A is now like one big company mining town from the late 1800s, only it is Multi-national corporations who own the place.
It is starting to feel like being a rational, moral, compassionate human being is to be in the minority on our little planet.
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