Jack Burns Lives!

Looks like the next successful Presidential candidate will need to spend $150 million to get there.

Where does this money come from? Wealthy business leaders, mostly. Folks that make their money in commodities, capital, development and various other extractive industries. Hollywood folks too, although their money pales in comparison to some the Wall Street power brokers. It’s accomplished via a variety of methods, including those fancy, black tie, $2500 per seat affairs held in 8000 square foot homes.

Most of the folks serving the food make up to 500% less than the people they’re serving. Ain’t capitalism grand!

So, when the winner gets into office, guess what happens next? The winner doesn’t bite the hand that feeds it. The winner returns the favor and enacts policies that favor the power brokers.

Every once in a while, the guvment throws the general public a bone, but when it comes to the big issues, expansion of capital, elimination of governments unfriendly to U.S. business interests, etc., the selected officials do what they’re told and protect business. Even if it means killing thousands of people, destroying habitat and doing gawd knows what else.

That’s how it works, folks.

Don’t be fooled by by the Obama effect. It would be grand if a fresh face with truly progressive ideas made it. Well, it’s not going to happen, because the system itself is set up to minimize, marginalize or even eliminate ideas that threaten the status quo. Unless you’re trusted to carry out the national agenda, you stand no chance.

And there’s the Hillary machine. Status quo Democratic politics at its best, which is designed to make concerned people feel like there will be a change when in fact no changes are planned. Just look at what she says during her speeches. Support her and get what you deserve.

Since there’s no help for the nitwits in the national asylum, what can we do?

While a lot of folks are busying themselves with the national masturbation, others carry on with the really important work. Building community, preserving habitat, planning gardens, lubricating their bike chains, painting, writing, creating music, teaching and permanently disabling their televisions with scatterguns.

Turn your back on the national charade and focus on things you can change. Focus on building self-reliant communities that are organized around the principles of mutual aid, democracy and sustainability. Eschew the concepts of centralized government and uncontrolled growth and recognize them for what they really are: a cancer upon the land.

“The health of the land is the health of the people.” Terry Tempest Williams

“What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.”- Edward Abbey

Magazines are becoming more like tee-vee. You have to dig and pan a long time to find a jewel in the piles of rubbish, but every once in a while you do. The February 2007 edition of National Geographic is worth a gander thanks to an article about the highly diverse Chihuahuan Desert titled “Desolate Majesty.”

It briefly reminded me of Ed’s Time Life picture book, Cactus Country and inspired me to go back and read “Disorder and Early Sorrow,” his account of an ill fated 1952 trip to Big Bend National Park. Ed and his fiancee survived, but her Ford convertible and the engagement were DOA.

For those not familiar with the Chihuahuan desert, it’s the largest desert area in North America, nestled on and around the borders of Texas, southeastern Arizona and Mexico. The fact that it transcends these borders tells us that it is in fact a bioregion whose boundaries are determined by biological and geophysical characteristics, not by silly man-made lines on a map.

The Lakota believed that U.S. government boundaries made no sense, since no man can see the dotted lines while on the land. I agree.

The article suggests the area is benefiting from a strange alliance of public and private interests, a “success story” that shows how positive results can be achieved when humans decide to use their brains. One of the private interests was a cement company that donated several hundred thousand acres for preservation.

Reading about the cement mixers with a conscience reminded me of a conversation I had years ago. I was installing a computer network at a large asphalt company whose owner was a major Republican contributor (big surprise there). The woman in charge of the project informed me in a protective, I know you’re one of us tones that “Those environmentalists are against us, you know. They don’t want any development. They want socialism.”

Don’t forget environmentalists all want forced sterilization and to force everyone to live in wickiups. All are communists and deadbeats on drugs.

The Chihuahuan desert, like so much of the North American continent, was logged, ranched and mined to excess. But there are now signs that Big horn sheep and black bear are recovering, thanks to Mexican ranchers that shifted from kill to protect mode. Folks are even going so far as to mention the reintroduction of grizz, Mexican gray wolf and bison, all native to the bioregion.

The article suggests the biggest factor in these recent, documented successes is an unwritten but effective policy of benign neglect. The National Park Service should take note and stop building all these goddamn visitor centers and roads and spending tax dollars marketing the parks. As Abbey said, we’re loving our parks to death.

The Chihuahuan still suffers at the hands of cactus poachers and reptile thieves, and as is normally the case when too many humans live in and around desert areas, there are water issues. The diversion of river water to urban areas and aquifer mining are serious threats to native fish, snail and other invertebrate populations.

But at least we can say the Chihuahuan desert has a chance. Despite the best effort of humans to make it truly desolate, it will not succumb. It lives on, inviting us, even showing us how, to make peace with it. It’s an arrid, mysterious, living, breathing, majestic canvas of color that refuses to buckle under the constant pressure of human encroachment and abuse.