We're not going broke

[drexel dave]

We're just finding ourselves unable to pay for a horribly misguided living arrangement of sprawl and corporate consumerism gone totally awry.

This land has plenty. Just not plenty for stupid living arrangements and belief systems that lead to a country with four percent of the globe's population using 25 percent of the world's resources through the implementation of a global military and economic empire.

A slower, economically poorer life isn't a necessarily worse life. We just assume it is. It can be rich, fulfilling and fantastically amazing in its wonder and possibilities.

I really don't care to go back to the America of an infinite growth philosophy based in a world of finite resources. The two just don't mesh.

And look around. Do you think all of these morbidly obese people whose ear wax is covered with the residue of cheetos, funyuns and various prescriptive anti-depressants while entertaining their feet at the expense of little oriental ladies so they can style and profile in their latest Air Jordan's are actually living rich and most importantly FULFILLED lives?

I don't think that question needs any answer.

Here's a toast to a peaceful end of American Corporate Statism. It has made us an uglier people, and left us with an uglier place.

Peace, and please think about listening to my music and buying my art should you deem it worthy of your entertainment dollah!

[colorado thinker]

1. Thank you very much.

You said it perfectly.

Everyone needs to calm down, think about a different way of living and focus on getting there.

Thank you.

[drexel dave]

3. I've lived in depression like conditions for almost a decade now

Come to Dayton, Ohio if you don't believe me. They don't call us little Detroit for nothing.

But here in Dayton, I have been able to meet fantastically wonderful people, be exposed to a cornucopia of different cultures and our interrelation to each other, grow big ass vegetables in an urban setting, be involved in one of the greatest music scenes America has ever witnessed (I'm even in a Guided by Voices song, although it must be said that Bob ain't exactly a fan, long story). I've made love to beautiful women, gone fishin', witnessed the Kentucky Derby up close and real drunk and a million other great entertaining stories I've racked up over my time here. I've gotten a great, low-cost education beginning with a community college and leading to law school the year after next.

And I live in the 'hood. The part of town all the suburbanites are afraid to come to, but if they did with any kind of dignity, they would help clean up in no-time through community inclusion in all aspects of life, social AND economical. Or maybe they would make it worse. I'm not quite sure. I've seen it happen time and again in places people had written off as a crappy place. A few dedicated people, and voila...from 'hood to neighborhood.

Corporate statism and the advertorial brainwashing of the masses that comes with it doesn't even offer up this kind of thinking as a possibility in the realm of normality that they promulgate.

Fortunately, I think it will take the entire corporate Mall culture to collapse for this brainwashing to end, and fortunately, we are seeing corporate mall culture come to a shit screeching halt before our very eyes.

Hooray!

A new economy will emerge. It is a natural function and essence of human cultural behavior.

[colorado thinker]

7. The possibilities are endless

I have been trapped in Corporate America for a while now (had a child to raise by myself), but enlightenment to the brainwashing came back in the mid 90's. The kid is old enough to fend for himself now, so I'm moving to transition my life before it gets forced on me.

I've been rebelling against the "mall on every corner", must have everything now, must buy cheap imported crap we have no room to store, stuff is more important than people, mindset for a long time.

I am thrilled to find so many others in this country who do not mindlessly fall in and buy, buy, buy. Yes, transition will be painful and some may not make it, but I truly believe that what is waiting on the other side is infinitely better than the life we've been living for the last 25 years.

Keep writing, I really enjoyed your post.

[drexel dave]

9. Write more?

Thanks for the compliment. But instead of writing a bunch, how about a video?

This is me in my garden last summer talking about some of these very philosophies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip64agLTeXc

[colorado thinker]

12. I started a garden last summer and

learned a lot of lessons. Such as 4 tomato plants plus hot days and cool nights and a drip system will create more tomatoes than the whole neighborhood could eat.

Learned to put squash and squash-like plants in their own bed, away from the carrots, peas, beans etc.

Learned that pumpkins will grow just about anywhere and will try to escape through the fence to the green space behind the house and beyond!

I also learned that I loved to be in the garden. Even though I have a bindweed infestation here in Denver, and it requires daily weeding (sometimes twice a day) to keep up with it, it is peaceful and satisfying to be in the garden. Very meditative, actually.

Do you collect water? We can't here, it's against the law in Colorado. All rain that falls belongs to the collective population, if you put catch barrels out, you'll receive a ticket. It must go through processing and be paid for before you can use it. (It is a desert, after all). I found that the drip system was extremely efficient and my water bills was extremely reasonable.

I could only watch part of the video, got interrupted but will watch the rest later.

[Peace Patriot]

14. They had a whole revolution in Bolivia over being charged for collecting rainwater.

Now they have a new leftist president, with a 70% approval rating--Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia (a largely indigenous country)--a new Constitution, voted on by the people, which, among other things, sanctifies water as a human right; it also makes coca leaf chewing and tea drinking (a traditional medicine in the Andes) a Constitutional right--and many other wise and humanistic things.

Bechel Inc. came in there, invited by the previous rightwing government, privatized the water system in the city of Cochabamba, and immediately jacked up the price of water for the poor of the poor, even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater. The people of Bolivia rebelled, with peaceful but unstoppable protests, and rallied to Morales, a coca leaf farmer and head of the coca leaf growers union, and elected him president. Morales re-negotiated Bolivia's international gas contracts, and increased Bolivia's gas revenues from $1 billion/year to $2 billion/year, to be able to pay for social programs, for instance, a small pension for the elderly, universal medical care and schools. He also was able to settle a hundred year old dispute with Chile, and gained access to the sea for landlocked Bolivia, and attracted a project that Brazil and Venezuela are helping to fund, to build a new highway from the Atlantic coast of Brazil, across South America, and through Bolivia, to the Pacific Ocean, which will turn Bolivia into a major trade route between Africa and Asia, and up and down both South American coasts.

This last September, the U.S. (Bushwhack) ambassador in Bolivia and the DEA instigated fascist riots against the Morales, in which they trashed government and NGO buildings, beat up indigenous people, blew up a gas pipeline and machine-gunned some thirty unarmed peasants. They were trying to split off Bolivia's gas/oil rich eastern provinces into a fascist mini-state in control of the resources. Morales threw the U.S. ambassador and the DEA out of Bolivia, and all of South America rallied to his side. All the leaders held a meeting in Chile of their new, all-South American 'common market'--UNASUR--formalized only a few months before, and unanimously backed the Morales government, and sent delegations to Bolivia, where they successfully negotiated a peace agreement with the saner faction of the white separatists, and helped Bolivia to peacefully hold the Constitutional referendum.

Evo Morales said something, about two years ago, that really stuck with me. He said, "The time of the people has come."

It all came from Bechtel privatizing the water and charging for collecting rainwater. I don't know if things will ever come to such a pass in Colorado, but, if they do, remember this story, and what Evo said, who was given a special blessing from the tribes of the high Andes, upon his investiture as president of Bolivia, at which he wore a wreath of coca leaves around his neck: "The time of the people has come."

[Demeter]

15. This Needs a Separate Post so I can Rec it!!!

Bravo! You gave me hope to get through the day, if not the year.

[Myrina]

2. I agree but ...

... that 'peaceful end of the American Corporate State' is going to cause a whole lot of hurt for us on the bottom and in the middle of the food chain when those lumbering millionaire giants look for someone to cushion their fall.

:scared: We shouldn't have to suffer for their greed and stupidity, but here we are.

[drexel dave]

4. Pain is a natural tranformative stage into another realm

It is a natural part of the experience of change, which is our only constant. Fear is the only true mutagen in the process.

[drexel dave]

6. Here's one way to make money

Open a school that teaches kids from the ghetto how to make battering rams out of old Cadillacs for use on the gates of gated communities.

[drexel dave]

5. just think about this

everywhere Americans go, they bring 4,000 pounds of metal with them.

How absurd is that?

[Warpy]

8. We have become an overworked and joyless country

with public life often regulated into extinction by well meaning laws against loitering, public nuisances like buskers (street performers), and street vendors. We're ghettoized into bedroom communities and are supposed to find community in a mall, conversation on a cell phone, and entertainment only on a TV screen.

It's become a very isolated, inhumane way to live.

[drexel dave]

10. buskers are a nuisance?

damn, I always thought a rich place culturally just came with buskers. I've done some buskin' myself.

You are dead on though.

So the question is: Why would ANYONE miss this?

[ixion]

16. Yep, it has...I agree completely

Our so-called 'civilized' society itself has become inhumane.

There are a couple silver linings that I hope will come out of what we're about to go through: The first is the return to the localized "mom and pop" economy. The second, and I guess this encapsulates the first, is a return to living like human beings, rather than sterile automatons.

There's nothing like poverty to infuse a bit of humility back into the mores of US culture.

[Peace Patriot]

11. I agree. We're not broke. It's just that the wealth has been cornered by 5% of the

population, who have used the power of that wealth to impoverish and enslave the rest of us (we, the workers, who created all the wealth in the first place), not just by stealing us blind, but also by "selling" us a crap culture (including crap 'news' media), AND by seizing our government and vacuuming huge swaths of our tax dollars into nazification boondoggles, such as

the war on Iraq
the war on Afghanistan
the war on drugs
the prison-industrial complex
nuclear weapons and the rest of the war budget
no-bid contracts and grand theft in all of these projects

We could save trillions and trillions of dollars just by ending the "war on drugs," legalizing all drug use, and granting amnesty to all drug-related, non-violent offenders (most of the people in our prisons). This would put an immediate stop to virtually all drug-related cartels, mafias, gangs, crimes, murders and mayhem. There would be no outsized profit in it. And it would reduce drug use. And with that money, we could begin to create decent, livable communities, and rebuild our country and our democracy on healthier and more sustainable principles. The money's there--it's just being massively stolen and grossly misused.

[drexel dave]

13. we've allowed it

the elite of the United States are a much smaller, much less powerful in reality group than you would imagine.

Easy pickins.