“What are we waiting for? The time is late.”-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Edward Abbey was born this day in 1927. He’d be 85 and while almost certainly in a state of utter outrage over our current affairs, I think it’s safe to say he wouldn’t have been surprised. Abbey’s work is amongst the most prescient in American literature. Even a cursory evaluation of our current affairs confirms Ed’s grave predictions for American society, environmentally, socially and culturally. With phenomenal clarity, he confronted us with some of the most simple but profound truths of our time.
One, unrestrained growth is the philosophy of the cancer cell. Unchecked, it will ultimately destroy its host. And two, when humans are too far removed from nature, from their natural homes, they become mad.
“Men and women are trapped in the drudgery and tedium of meaningless jobs and the despoliation of a continent, the gray skies, the ruined rivers, the ravaged hills, the clearcut forests, the industrialized farms, all to keep that Gross National Product growing ever grosser. Madness and folly Untouched by human hands. Unguided by human minds.”
As a people, we’ve unfortunately ignored Ed’s wise instruction. We’ve marched onward, bulldozing, cutting, drilling and fracking, making more and more of our magnificent planet literally uninhabitable. Fucking up the entire planet isn’t enough, however. A few lunatics on the right, along with their mad scientist friends, now want to fuck up the entire solar system.
Abbey predicted what happens to humans when they don’t have enough space. Enough room to roam, room to escape the suffocating grip of of the cities. We go mad, and I honestly don’t have enough time or perhaps even room on this server to list all the examples of our madness.
Although there is one recent example that sticks out.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “afraid of a mouse.” Turns out we probably should be afraid of them, because today, the electronic version has become the trigger of a powerful weapon. So-called freedom fighters in the employ of the United States government can end your time on the planet with a single click. They sit in comfy chairs, hidden in secret bunkers, staring into computer screens, effortlessly dealing death with their menacing toys. Like the Christian god, the reach of the United States military is now almost infinite and its gaze omnipresent. It’s apparently also omnipotent, as it reserves the right to determine policy for the entire planet. Global judge, jury and executioner. A rogue state.
What sort of sick mind comes up with these ideas? What’s happened to real science? Ed, as usual, was right. Science has become “the whore of industry.”
“Science with a human face-is such a thing possible anymore? We live in a time when technology and technologists seem determined to make the earth unfit to live upon…the mad scientist, once only a comic figure in a specialize branch of fiction, has now come luridly to life in a hundred thousand forms. Together with his co-workers in big government, big industry, and the military, he dominates our lives. Ultimately, they will tyrannize the planet.”-Edward Abbey, “Science With a Human Face”
Ed missed the gradual erosion of human rights in America. In his time, we made some progress with racial and gender inequality, but since then, we’ve taken ten steps backward. In 2012, an American citizen can not only be indefinitely detained without representation, he or she can be executed by agents of the United States government and at the behest of a single person. In the twenty three years since Ed’s passing, we’ve fully militarized our police forces and seen private prisons become one of our largest growth industries. Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot executed anyone that got in their way, but mass executions don’t go over so well in the U.S., at least not on our soil. Americans are driven by profit, and tossing more people into prisons, people who are often victims of economic inequality and economic oppression, is the solution du jour. Why kill ‘em when you make money off ‘em?
Corporations can now buy elections, as corporate powers are now free to spend whatever they want on whomever they want.
Abbey’s predictions about the effects of industrialization are nearly fully realized. Don’t believe me? Check the numbers.
Millions have lost their homes to foreclosure schemes. Thousands die without health insurance, and the gap between the wealthy and the poor is as great as its ever been.
And yet, here we sit wondering “what to do?” Most of us are so busy just trying to keep a job, pay expenses, take care of our families and have some peace. To most of us, the problems of American society, much less those of the planet, seem completely overwhelming. Ed himself said we should be reluctant enthusiasts, part time crusaders, half-hearted fanatics, that we should save some time for ourselves and for adventure.
But now things are more grave. We face a critical moment in time when inaction is unthinkable and half-hearted commitment seems unavoidably insufficient. A few brave individuals, like Tim De Christopher, have put their asses on the line for all of us, human and non-human. Bill McKibben has become an important voice. But it’s not the responsibility of any one person to fill the void or lead the fight. It’s the responsibility of every person that loves this planet, and all of its inhabitants, to take a stand.
Be bold and unafraid. Stand for what you stand on.
Oh, and happy Birthday, Ed. We’ll do better.
“This is what you shall do: Be loyal to what you love, Be true to the Earth, and Fight your enemies with passion and laughter.”-Edward Abbey
”New dynasties will arise, new tyrants will appear-no doubt. But we must and we can resist such recurrent aberrations by keeping true to the earth and remaining loyal to our basic animal nature. Humans were free before the word freedom became necessary. Slavery is a cultural invention. Liberty is life: eros plus anarchos equals bios. Long live democracy. Two cheers for anarchy.” -Edward Abbey
I had the pleasure of seeing Noam Chomsky Saturday evening at the 30th anniversary celebration for the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center in Memphis. His comments were tailored to the event and centered around Dr. King’s legacy and vision. His message was deep but clear.
The answer to the key question, are we any closer to achieving Dr. King’s dream, was pretty straightforward: no. Chomsky correctly made the point, that in many ways, we’re further behind. Just look at the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the upper classes since the 1970′s. This has been aided by the movement of manufacturing jobs overseas, one sector where African-Americans did have an opportunity to obtain better paying jobs with benefits. But of course American capitalists seized upon the opportunity to pay much cheaper labor rates overseas, frequently benefitting from the use of child labor. The jobs here were largely lost, and African Americans have been amongst the most heavily impacted.
Trace the decline of U.S. manufacturing since the 1970′s to the decline in net worth amongst the African-American population over the same period. Then trace the rise of a new sector, the private prison industry.
According to Pew, the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households. From 2005 to 2009, inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared with just 16% among white households. Today, the typical black household has less than $6000 in wealth. The typical Hispanic household has approximately $6,500. Average white households have approximately $113K.
But the transfer of wealth is just one issue. All Americans have seen an erosion in human rights. Any American can be held indefinitely and without representation for vague, unconstitutional reasons. And thanks in no small part to a politically motivated Supreme Court, corporations anywhere in the world can essentially buy elections.
Have we made any advances? Sure. Women have seen clear advances. The Internet has become a valuable tool in spreading information and exposing misinformation. We elected a black President, although it now seems clear he’s not the leader we’d hoped for. American power, often supported by violence, has expanded exponentially around the globe, and the disparity in wealth is worse than its ever been. Our home, the only home we’ll ever have, now approaches a state of ecocide. This portends a very poor future for all of us, humans and non-humans.
The uncomfortable truth is we’ve moved further away from Dr. King’s dream and closer to an Orwellian nightmare.
“Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break.” -Edward Abbey
So, after doing some research on the Red Army Faction and the Baader-Meinhof Complex, I thought I’d do a little research on violent revolutionary activities in the U.S. One of the sites I examined was the Council on Foreign Relations site, which interestingly included this statement on its site:
Ecological extremism (BaltimoreSun) gained particular notoriety in the 1990s, and in 2004 the FBI declared these groups the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat.
Which is interesting since groups like ELF (Earth Liberation Front) have been largely condemned in the broader environmental community, even amongst supporters of “monkeywrenching” or sabotage. And the reason is ELF has used methods that endanger life, namely fire, which can not only kill humans and non-humans, it’s a counterproductive strategy. Burn down the ski lodge, and guess what? More trees will be harvested, and the owners will probably build an even larger one just to say “fuck you.” Fortunately, their activities have more or less come to a complete halt.
Also of note is the fact that two-thirds of terrorism in the United States is conducted by non-Islamic American extremists from 1980-2001; and from 2002-2005, it went up to 95 percent. So, why this massive assault in the Middle East? The terrorists are mainly white males and are here. Could it be the war on “terror” is big business, but it ain’t the kind of business these assholes want conducted on their own soil.
Final conclusion: Violence only plays into the hands of the state and is counterproductive in building a democratic society. The emancipation of the working class can only be the act of the working class itself, not carried out by a few isolated militants with guns. Capitalism will collapse upon itself. All you have to do to help is withdraw support from the ruling class.
National Geographic is airing an interview with George Bush about the 9-11 attacks on August 28. During one clip previewing the show Bush remarked “I was as shocked as everyone else.”
Why are these people, people that spread death and destruction all over the planet, so shocked when violence comes to their own doorstep?
“Gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice.” William Lloyd Garrison
For the past ten years or so, I’ve subscribed to and toyed with this notion of building a society in parallel to the existing society. A democratic society with the right mix of socialism and small scale capitalism bound by ecological law. Local production for local consumption. The theory being, our current system is inherently non-sustainable and will certainly collapse. After all, who can deny we’re seeing the cracks appear in the dam?
Texas, a boom state with phenomenally non-sustainable growth, is locked in year long drought and they’ve been known to have ten year droughts. But not with twenty-five million people. They’re now planning to treat sewage for drinking water. Drink their own piss to survive. Serves ‘em right, I suppose. Aquifers in the Upper Mississippi Delta are feeling the strain of industrial agriculture. Dead zones are found throughout our oceans. The air in many national parks is so bad the Park Service advises people to not visit certain areas within parks. The government is nearly bankrupt, and there’s apparently no end in sight to our insane $700 billion annual military budget. Wall Street is up and down like a roller coaster and the housing market has, finally and thankfully, collapsed. London burns and protests ring out loud and clear around the globe.
But where are our radicals? Where are our protestors?
The theory I’ve subscribed to and tossed about in leftist circles has been to build this society in parallel that will be composed of democratic, community based institutions and organizations. Employee owned companies, local businesses, cooperatives, local farming and other means of production so we can live largely unaffected by what goes on in Washington. Although I must say, that I’ve never really bought into the idea we could operate “unaffected” or remain “uninfected” by what happens in Washington. You get sucked in, and anyone that doubts that should examine the fates of many communes and subsistence communities that have attempted to exist within the capitalist system in the United States. Once the cash economy gets a foothold, you’re doomed. It’s like allowing a virus access to your hard drive.
Kenneth Dolbeare once wrote an essay about how western capitalism possesses inherent defense mechanisms that make it very difficult to topple, not the least of which is the ability of its powerful ideology to penetrate deep into the core of our society. It doesn’t maintain itself by raw power alone. It’s ideology teaches that the system is right and natural, people are naturally competitive, and that hard work, or lack thereof, is the reason for income disparity. Patriotism is another important aspect of the ideology, that people should revere the nation state and protect against “socialism, “communism” and worst of all, “anarchy.”
These things are taught to our children via a compulsory educational system. The indoctrination begins at a very young age, when we first learn the Pledge of Allegiance. And by the time we reach high school or our post collegiate careers, most of us have become willing, duped accomplices.
In the process of maintaining social control, the ruling class enjoys the enthusiastic assistance of the middle class, via a complex system of hierarchies. Lawyers, journalists, teachers, administrators, executives, etc., all committed to the ideology since their status provides a relatively comfortable life. They administer the state and make sure society conforms to the principles that make capitalism run well. If the working class becomes troublesome, they repress it as needed.
Many of the most idealistic people, ones that leave universities well educated in liberal arts and fully aware of what’s going on, end up getting sucked into the system and become silent. Frankly, they need jobs, health insurance and a way to care for their families. Most end up in the Democratic party, the formerly socially conscious organization within the “system.” It allows them to exist as capitalists and suppress their revolutionary conscience, since the Democrats have traditionally helped the poor and stood for the environment. It’s the party of compromise, a sort of social Xanax. You feel better, but it doesn’t solve the core problem.
Of course, anything that threatens this or questions its legitimacy is quickly marginalized. I faced this within groups dominated by mainstream Democrats, often virulent opposition to any discussion of moving away from the Democratic Party or god forbid, anarchism. I was blamed for Gore’s defeat, skewered, and damn near drawn and quartered because I supported Ralph Nader. I supported Nader when Obama ran. I could no longer support status quo politics and figured the only thing that would move the Democrats left was the threat of losing their base.
Despite considerable gains in educating the populace, this remains our largest hurdle, getting people to question capitalism, or more specifically, the unfair distribution of equity within our society, as well as the legitimacy of a Representative Republic that represents only the upper classes.
For those that have stubbornly supported the Democratic platform over the years, those that supported Obama, America’s great and now failed Hope, has it ever been more clear that it is time to move on? To abandon them and look to something else? Immediately after the healthcare debacle, I knew we were in trouble. I urged Democrats to protest Obama in an effort to get him to move left. I stated that continued support within his party would lead to nothing but status quo politics. No one listened, or perhaps they listened, but no one dared question our once deified President. It was hopeless on two fronts, because one, they had no intention of doing it, and two, even if they did, he wouldn’t change. Even a cursory examination of his record before his Presidency reveals he was an empty suit. His record after reaching the White House is now there for all to see. Obama opened negotiations via a secret meeting with insurance executives? The old closed door, proverbial smoke filled room meeting of fat cats planning on how they would get fatter. Then came the expansion of war and covert actions around the globe, actions that even went beyond Bush. Yet, I still heard cries from Democrats that we needed to support Obama. He was just setting things up. Bullshit. Total bullshit, but this fully illustrates the power behind the ideology and the system. It’s hard for many people, even well educated, compassionate, thinking people to break away.
So, our choices seem few. If we insist on this program of gradually building up a society in parallel, I suggest we step on the gas a bit. We need a large scale general strike that will destroy businesses unwilling to give equity and a voice to all employees. As purchasers, we must shun and ostracize these organizations and the people that support them. We need to work as if we’re preparing for an invasion, with great fervor, opening cooperatives, growing, harvesting and selling food locally. Train doctors willing to practice medicine for the greater good and run cooperative clinics. Produce other goods locally. Open employee owned pharmaceutical companies that can produce needed medicines. Whatever we’ve been buying from the Chinese (not junk…needed items) needs to be produced in our own bioregions. If you’re working within a capitalist enterprise, you need to pose the question about greater equity distribution for employees. Yes, it’s risky business, but this is no time for apathy or cowardice.
But we don’t have much time. The sand in the top of the hour glass is running quickly.
We can hasten things via sabotage. Hacking systems, using tools like Wikileaks to expose the bad elements and in some cases, stop them cold in their tracks. Tim DeChristopher had a good idea that only needs some slight modification. The general strike. Use our heads. We’re smarter, I do know that. But we can’t have Baader Meinhof type violence. People that go that route will be crushed and play directly into the hands of the state.
What do I hope will emerge? More democracy, greater equity for workers, stronger communities. Less dependence on Washington, more power in the hands of the people. Communism? No, that’s not going to work. A rational mixture smaller scale capitalism and socialism, industrialism bound by ecology, democratic enterprises owned by the workers but still with an incentive base. All pay doesn’t have to be equal. Some people will be more valuable and better trained. But we can’t support a system where some workers earn 250 times more than the average employee. Who can possibly say that is fair or just?
I do know one thing. The time to act has passed. We have to capitalize on this moment, on the anger and unrest all around us.
“All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying–a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour.” Edward Abbey
As much as I’d like to charge right up Pennsylvania Ave. with six shooters a blazin’, anyone that believes they can topple the state with violence is woefully misinformed. I simply don’t see this working out very well.
Are there some psychological benefits to monkeywrenching or sabotage? Perhaps. As Ed said, maybe for an hour we feel empowered. Maybe it’s one way to say “Fuck You!” But ultimately, it’s a narrow strategy that won’t lead to sustainable results.
Tim DeChristopher has come closer to a solution. A non-violent way to grind the machinery of the system to a halt, if only for a a little while. Tim’s mistake was he operated in the open. He was caught and now he’s behind bars where he won’t be very effective. But his actions can perhaps spur us on to think of more creative and covert solutions. He acted bravely, just should have put a little more thought into the strategy.
I’ve thought about the idea violent resistance a lot lately, as my anger with Obama, the Washington elites and Wall Street moguls gradually rises. It seems the blood pressure of the whole nation, perhaps the whole planet, is rising. Earlier in the week, I became entangled in a discussion with a fan of Derrick Jensen. He seemed to take offense to my suggestion we could building autonomous democratic communities in parallel to the current fascist society. I believed he called my suggestions “babble.”
He could be right. Time will tell. I admit to having my own doubts. And trust me, I’m not one to shrink from a fight. But when you ask these passionate but (in my opinion) misguided people to describe their plan, they have none. Nothing. Just a lot of talk about the need to bring about collapse and the sooner the better.
What they’re forgetting, or perhaps they simply don’t care, is in such a scenario, if it were even possible, a lot of people would needlessly suffer. A lot of people that depend on the current industrial infrastructure for critical medicines and food. Like my wife and my daughter, who would suddenly wake up one day and not be able to get their meds. I’d be pissed and dangerous at that point.
A better solution is a gradual winding down. Not a walk, but not a full gallop, either. A trot.
To this they counter, “We don’t have time to wait!,” and to that I counter, “What’s the plan?”
I’m not interested in any system that harms innocent people or non-humans. I’ll fight against that as surely as I’ll fight against the fascist bastards living unjustly off the backs of others.
Let’s not forget what happened to the brave and passionate Baader-Meinhof Group or any other revolutionaries that decided violence was the answer. Most of them died or lived their lives in hiding and the state kept on keeping on.
My guess is that when the shooting starts, Derrick Jensen will be the first one crawling under the bed. Let’s hope he doesn’t have to scurry for cover and that we can find peaceful solutions to our problems.
An important message from my compadre on the Left Coast.
Industrial civilization is like a tsunami. You can’t stop it. All you can do is live wisely and stay out of its path. You don’t want to be part of it. You want to survive until the water recedes and returns to the sea.
It’s destructive and powerful, but it will pass.
Thus, we preserve knowledge and life ways for the survivors, like the ancients who crafted tsunami warning signs in Japan. The survivors and those that come later will rebuild. Woe be to those that ignore the signs.
”Defiance is beautiful. The defiance of power, especially great or overwhelming power, exalts and glorifies the rebel.” Edward Abbey
What’s happened to Tim DeChristopher is most unfortunate in the short term, but in the long term, he’s going to be the winner. The government and the corporate lackeys that direct it have further entrenched Tim as a folk hero. He’ll get out and have an opportunity to be even more vocal and reach more people. So, in a way, it’s a win for our side, not theirs. Not so great for Tim for a couple of years, but I doubt he’ll serve the full sentence.
In some ways, those that oppose the shameless and misguided use of land are like the American Indians in the 19th century. We keep losing a little bit at at time. Little by little, capitalist interests are gaining greater and firmer footholds in the public sphere. But who or what is the real enemy? What really ended the empires of the Great Plains, for example, wasn’t the government so much as it was the capitalist interests that wanted the land. The government, as it is today, was little more than the advance guard of capitalism. Nothing more than a pawn.
So, in hindsight, what should they have done? What could they have done differently? Perhaps nothing would have changed the ultimate outcome, but I think if they could do it over again, there would have been a much more coordinated and forceful resistance from day one. And that’s precisely what we need. A coordinated and forceful resistance.
Ultimately, the American Indian was overwhelmed by numbers and technology. They didn’t have the same tools to fight American capitalists. But we do. The primary tools are money and the law, not guns. Let’s use our money, our minds and good lawyers, ones willing to enlist in the cause, to fight these bastards. Let’s not acquiesce, march on to the reservation with our heads bowed, and declare ourselves willing to take up “the way of the growth capitalist.” Let’s fight to the last man. To the last dollar.
I’ve been reading a fascinating account of the last days of the Comanche empire titled Empire of the Summer Moon, by S.C. Gwynne. Gwynne’s background is in journalism, not in history, but the account is well written, highly entertaining, and for the most part, well researched and accurate.
In the spring, I finished Pekka Hämäläinen’s academic work, The Comanche Empire, the 2009 winner of the Bancroft Prize in History. Hämäläinen’s work is they type of work you’d expect from a historian, it’s heavy footnoted, extremely detailed and accurate. But it’s also revisionist, posing interesting challenges to many of our long held views of these people and their history on the North American continent. I highly recommend both, and I highly recommend reading them back-to-back, or simultaneously, as they compliment one another well.
Oh, and I should also mention Dispossessing Wilderness, Mark David’s Spence’s book about Indian removal from the National Parks. I just finished that one, as well, and give it very high marks. Digging deeply into that history will challenge your views about the National Park Service, because frankly, what happened to those people, particularly the Blackfeet, is a national embarrassment. A huge mistake! There should be Blackfeet in Glacier today, but of course, there’s nary a one. Plenty of gift shops, restaurants and SUV’s. Industrial tourism run amok!
But it’s also been interesting to read these books as our nation’s so-called leaders haggle back and forth over the debt limit, our ongoing wars, unemployment and the economy in general. I keep thinking back about how the Indians lost a little here and a little there until they lost everything. The Blackfeet, for example, signed a treaty that gave them what they thought were perpetual hunting rights in Glacier. As along as it was “public land.” They didn’t expect the trickery that would follow, however, when judges ruled the Indians had the same hunting rights as American citizens (which means no rights), since when Glacier became a National Park, it was no longer “public land.”
Huh?
The logic, or lack thereof, was that public lands can be sold, and since Glacier was a National Park and couldn’t be sold, it wasn’t public land. So, you have no rights, Redman. Get in line and get some rations. How ’bout a blanket?
And we of course know public lands (think BLM) can be sold. To the highest bidder, so the bidder can bulldoze, extract and destroy as it sees fit.
Fast forward to the present day and ponder our system. A perpetual capitalist growth machine that requires new markets and new opportunities ad infinitum. Eventually, however, it hits a limit, a wall. There’s nowhere to go. And when it does this, it starts devouring its host, which is us. Like a parasite, it turns on its own people. The ideology, as Edward Abbey said, of the cancer cell.
Little by little, just like the Indians, we’re losing things. In order to prop up Wall Street and the sinking financial services industry, an evil coalition of political leaders and corporate hegemons have devised a plan to privatize Social Security. They’re demonizing it through a carefully orchestrated plan of lies and propaganda so they can hand over trillions of our money to their corrupt friends. They need a boost. What better than to rob the national treasury and hand over the trillions in the Social Security fund?
The same thing is happening in healthcare, as they’re demonizing the Medicare so they can turn that over to private interests. They’re selling our public lands. There’s the commodification and centralization of renewable energy (you didn’t think they were really going to allow decentralized energy to gain a foothold, did you?) Slowly but surely the vice is tightening and we’re gradually becoming similar to reservation Indians. But it’s not government handouts we’re dependent upon. Our nation’s most vulnerable are becoming completely dependent on the private sector, an entity which has only one responsibility, profit and returning shareholder value, not meeting the needs of the less fortunate.
Think about a world without Social Security and Medicare for a moment. For most of us, that means our security as seniors will be placed entirely in the hands of profit motivated, poorly educated, mostly selfish crooks. Look at the track record. A lot of people will basically just be reduced to begging. They’ll find themselves in squalor. When Social Security was enacted, nearly fifty percent of seniors were in poverty.
Some doctors are already refusing Medicare patients. They only want the higher returns paid by private insurance. Pretty soon, there will come a day when if you don’t have private insurance, and you’ll be required by law to have it, you’ll have nowhere to turn.
The inescapable, cold, sobering reality is a lot of people will simply die. They won’t have the money saved, and they won’t be able to afford private insurance. They’ll die under a viaduct, cold, sick and destitute.
And so, it’s autumn in America. The season before winter, before the death throes set it. You can feel the chill in the air, those cold northern winds starting to kick up. The leaves are turning and soon they’ll fall. Except its anything but pretty like golden Aspen in late September. This is ugly. It’s brutal.
It’s the gloaming of America, a nation that turned on its own people but in doing so, insured its own death. Then again, maybe it was inevitable. Maybe we’re getting what we deserved, since our history is stained with the blood of so many innocents. How we built our nation is shameful. There’s no denying it. Maybe it’s just our time to face the music.
Let’s hope that out of the ashes we can build something better.
