Jack Burns Lives!

Spring fever here in the Mississippi Delta…. We had bright sunshine yesterday and will again today. The birds are singing like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir this morning, as they dart about gathering nesting materials and food in preparation for raising their offspring. Chipmunks are warily poking their heads out of their holes, hoping to fill their hungry bellies while avoiding equally hungry hawks circling overhead.

And while greys and browns still dominate the landscape, there are little splashes of green here and there foretelling the splendor that’s to come.

It’s comforting, seeing life spring forth from death, as it gives me hope for the knuckleheads piloting our country. But as I ponder that point, it suddenly occurs to me that Washington and Wall Street don’t run things. We, us little folk tilling our gardens and recycling our waste, are the ones that really run things or can run things, because collectively, we have great, unrealized power. Power to change that which we do not like. If only we’ll act….

My actions yesterday and and those of today are, at least in my own not so humble opinion, indicative of a life well lived. I started clearing the garden, a bit early perhaps, but the warm weather got me all excited. I laid in the sun and read a book. Played with the dogs, and even cleaned up the front yard so my anal retentive, God fearin’ neighbors would stop worrying about their property values. We’re all part of community, so it’s best to at least attempt to show respect for the community mores and values. Here in the Bible belt, that’s a squeaky clean yard where you demonstrate your presumed control over nature. Leaves properly collected, side walk trimmed, driveway swept.

That part, however, seemed odd to me as I pondered Ma Natures big show this weekend. I must have appeared comical in my pitiful attempt at controlling nature, but She mercifully allowed me to continue and no doubt found great amusement in my folly. I pictured her looking at me and smiling like a Mother does while watching a young child confounded by something very simple. Silly boy.

The only thing missing, a hike of course, in my beloved West, but I’m here, not there, and as the saying goes “Love the one you’re with.”

The best instituted governments carry in them the seeds of their destruction: and, though they grow and improve for a time, they will soon tend visibly to their dissolution. Every hour they live is an hour the less that they have to live.”-Henry St. John, First Viscount Bolingbroke, 1738

The Course of Empire is a five-part series of paintings created by Thomas Cole in the years 1833-36. It is notable in part for reflecting popular American sentiments of the times, when many saw pastoralism as the ideal phase of human civilization, fearing that empire would lead to gluttony and inevitable decay.-Wiki

Edward Abbey gave us 100 years back in the ’80′s. That could well be correct, although since it took us more than 200 years to get to this point, our cultural suicide may take a bit more time to reach a flat line on the monitor. Although, in some respects, Ed probably should have started counting at the end of Second World War, since that’s when the real acceleration of decay started. In that scenario, we have about 35 years remaining.

Today’s New York Times makes 35 years seem optimistic, and many believe there are triggers that can rapidly accelerate the process, meaning, you may be able to put a fork in us in a matter of months. Consider Wall Street, which is about the closest thing we have to a beating heart. It teetered on the brink of failure last year but was narrowly bailed out by the government in what seemed to me a very uncertain, much disputed plan. Afterward, the government didn’t respond with an appropriate amount of regulation and oversight. It added some window dressing by slapping those greedy executives on the hand and holding their bonuses for a few months. Then suddenly, all was back to normal. Tally ho, mate.

Looking back, we know that was a mistake. Banks are still teetering, and AIG once again posted huge losses. Foreclosures are up, and unemployment remains a massive problem.

What does Washington do next time around when its foolproof plan is shown to be foolish?

The Savage State

The Pastoral State

The Consummation of Empire

The Destruction of Empire

Desolation

The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders-Edward Abbey.

With spring approaching, I find myself once again yearning to head west. To cross the mighty Mississippi and flee to the land of mountains, mesas, deserts, cowboys and Indians. In the interest of balanced reporting, I should also say the land of hydrofracturing, Mormons and water shortages. No place is perfect.

But there are other problems, of course, not the least of which is turning myself into a willing and hypocritical participant in the metastasis known as industrial tourism. Hoards of humans with cameras ’round their necks, Visa’s smoking in their pockets and screaming children in tow. All of us filling the friendly skies and highways of a country on life support. Millions of people looking for a “getaway,” so many in fact, parks like Arches and Yosemite are beginning to resemble the places we’re attemping to escape.

The airport experience alone is enough to keep me at home. It’s a house of horrors where the terror begins the moment you reach the overpriced parking lot. That’s just the foreplay, however. From there comes the full scale rape. There’s your non-refundable ticket, a contract between you and the airlines where the airlines is held harmless from everything. They don’t even have to get you where you want to go within a reasonable amount of time. And if there’s a problem, they can hold you hostage for hours on the runway. Try to leave, and goon-like Federal agents will be waiting for you at the gate, ready to haul you off to a dingy room for several more hours of torture.

Once your ticket is purchased, you’re herded like cattle in a slaughter line through an inefficient, bizarre security apparatus and treated like a common criminal.

But wait. There’s more.

There’s the flight itself where we’re jam packed into a giant metal, mechanically deficient suppository frequently managed by underpaid, undertrained operators. If there’s a big mistake, it’s adios. C’est fini, monsieur.

And if you survive all of that, you have also endure the terror of wondering if your luggage made it followed by the bus ride to the rental car terminal where you’re once again raped. There’s no lube in any part of the journey. The whole thing is abject misery, and I haven’t even touched the most important deterrent of all: burning prodigious amounts of fuel. Then again, maybe we just need to burn it up fast and be done with it. Let the healing process started posthaste.

I’m told by some that people visiting the parks is what’s needed to raise environmental awareness. Really? Why is this? Why do they have to see something “magnificent” in order to love the natural world and feel a responsibility toward it? Are the bees in the backyard insufficient to inspire our awe? Bats circling above the patio on a summer night? The symphony created by our amphibian friends after a spring rain?

Seems most people hardly notice such things, sufficient evidence to suggest the average bloke is nearly completely disconnected from the natural world. They know little about their own home, of the native flora and fauna and weather patterns. They’re disconnected from place, ignorant buffoons whose knowledge doesn’t extend far beyond what’s provided by their GPS or ESPN.

Which brings me back to myself and my own apparent inability to remain satisfied with place. I take some comfort in Ed Abbey’s own inability to remain in place. He was a rambler, and like me, a fellow Easterner that realized the desert and the West was his real “home.” Ed selfishly made the West his home, but he more than paid for his admission by becoming its greatest defender. Ed did as much for the West as he took from it.

So, unless I’m willing to become a foot soldier and give back in some measurable and meaningful way to its defense, therefore paying for my admission to this already overcrowded, much abused place, I probably need to stay home.

The West has enough people already, with nary a spot for one more. What it needs is more defenders.

At least according to this study. But I’m not so sure I consider myself a liberal these days. Too many liberals are supporting nuclear energy, bank bailouts and war. I much prefer Abbey’s term “agrarian anarchist.” Or even another, an “earthiest.”

Abbey also considered himself a libertarian and was a NRA member; however, I’m not sure he would closely align himself with today’s libertarians, much less the NRA, the latter of which has morphed into a para-military lobbying machine stocked full of weekend Rambo’s that enjoy killing wolves. Somehow I think Ed would pray for more hunting “accidents” the same way he prayed for earthquakes.

Abbey was concerned with the rights of the individual, but he was more concerned with the rights of all living things in community, a position which is more left biocentric than libertarian. And while Ed was certainly an anarchist that had major issues with the Federal government, I would be shocked if he didn’t see strong central government as a temporary and necessary evil to combat growing corporate power, a position espoused by Noam Chomsky. We need people like Dennis Kucinich in Washington to help protect the natural world from corporate monsters, at least for a short period.

And Libertarians are resolute in their belief in the free market and unrestricted competition, a position that’s not even remotely compatible with sustainability. You just can’t expect to have a decent environment with an economic system that has no restraints, so I have to think Ed would quickly drop this label if he were alive today.

Regarding God, Abbey was pretty clear on his views. He made it clear that all things, even rocks, were important, equal even, in the grand scheme of things, a position that has zero compatibility with the Judeo-Christian position. In his essay, Science With a Human Face he wrote, “Even a rock is a being, a thing with character and a kind of spirit, an existence worthy of our love,” and concludes with “Don’t talk to me about other worlds, separate realities, lost continents, or invisible realms-I know where I belong. Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now.”

I agree.

A little over a year ago, there was much hope in America. Many people falsely believed they’d elected “their guy,” a man that would fairly represent the average, standard fare citizen, if there is such a thing. Our first black President. A community activist, liberal and Constitutional scholar. Someone that would stand up against power and bring reform. Healthcare for all. Close our illegal prisons and bring the troops home.

But now, it seems as if the sun is setting on those hopes and what we really have in the White House is just another power broker beholden to the whims and wishes of an elite cabal. The war effort is expanded. The healthcare “debate” began with secret meeting of insurance executives and the President. Single payer was never even on the table. And now we have the latest slap across the face, the President’s plan for addressing climate change and energy independence, the cornerstone of which is an aggressive expansion of nuclear energy.

As we ponder this recent announcement, it might be helpful to take a short stroll down history lane and have some honest talk about what got us into this mess.

The government is pushing nuclear for two reasons. The first reason, the one they’re telling the public, is to help combat global climate change. To curb our use of coal, surely a nasty thing, responsible for all sorts of issues, not the least of which are dangerous levels of air pollution. At one time, you could see over one hundred miles from the Anakeesta ridge in the Smokies. Today, thanks to TVA coal fired plants, you can see about twenty-five miles on average. It’s damaging flora and is a health hazard for humans, especially those with asthma and other respiratory issues. Burning coal is bad, and the only people that are defending it are people in the coal industry and Republican sycophants.

But the real reason the government is pushing nuclear, however, is money. It’s a nice little deal for businesses like The Southern Company, which will receive over $8 billion in government guarantees. Venture capitalists and bankers won’t touch nuclear, and the reason is nuclear projects typically end up going about 250% over budget. They’re big losers for years, but thanks to savvy lobbyists, a small group of people have figured out a way to get the tax payer to fund the bill.

It’s sorta like a bailout. Remember those sweetheart deals the big banks and GM got at your expense? Isn’t it funny how the government bails out major corporations but when you need help, as in health insurance, it suddenly becomes a “socialist” plot?

But back to the mess. The energy conundrum. What are we facing such massive problems with energy?

Well, there are several reasons, but primarily two really big ones. One, the industrial, capitalist machine itself, that ever growing, energy hungry behemoth that has to keep growing exponentially in order to meet Wall Street expectations. It’s a ravenous beast with a non-sustainable appetite, and it requires a strong central government and centralized energy systems to keep it moving along. We created the real Frankenstein monster, and as with Mary Shelley’s story, there’s really no hope for a happy ending.

Secondly, there’s too many people. We passed the point of having a sustainable population a long, long time ago. The United States alone has over 300 million ravenous users of energy, very few of which seem willing to turn down the thermostat, open the windows or god forbid, hang clothes out on the line. We’re energy addicts that keep hitting the button, like a lab rat addicted to cocaine. We’ll keep on going until we kill ourselves.

But now, instead of searching for real solutions, we’re slamming down the accelerator and going in precisely the wrong direction. We’re moving toward more centralization, more corporate subsidies and dumping more resources into a completely unrealistic alternative. Not only is there not enough money to build the number of plants required based on energy projections, there aren’t enough qualified engineers. We frankly don’t have the money or the people, and there’s still no answer to the issue of waste disposal. It’s all a big lie, sold to conservatives and liberals, that will do little more than give billions of dollars to corporations.

Yes, there is a solution, but to understand the solution you have to understand a few things about how the United States and capitalist society works and how humans lived before the advent of state societies.

First of all, let’s stop fooling ourselves about our country. What we need to do, as Edward Abbey once said, is follow the truth no matter where it leads us. If we have the balls to do it.

Let’s start with our government. The United States is not a democracy and never has been. It’s a Representative Republic where the only people really being represented are the wealthy. The people that run it are selected in a process dominated by wealth. If you don’t have money or can’t raise prodigious amounts of money from wealthy benefactors, you don’t gain admission. And if you make the cut, the price of your admission is being beholden to your benefactors. Yes, there are a few exceptions, most notably Dennis Kucinich, an honorable man that’s consistently marginalized and unfairly labeled because he tells the plain truth about things.

Within the facade of democracy stands a revolving door where Washington and industry tycoons effortlessly rotate back and forth playing on both sides of the fence. You get to Washington and help enact policies and laws friendly to business then you go back to business and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Or, become a lobbyist and represent your corporate buddies back to your friends in Washington. Dick Cheney, the former Haliburton tycoon, is perhaps our most glaring example.

Those in power have no responsibility to follow the will of the people once “elected” into office. Their only responsibility is to make their benefactors and friends even wealthier and maintain centralized control. And thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, elections in the United States will now be further dominated by corporate wealth.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. At one point, even on this continent, there were truly democratic (anarchistic) societies that not only did not develop state-level, centralized authoritarian social structures, they actively guarded against centralization of political and economic power as a form of social stability. These societies attempted to stop precisely what we’re trying to accelerate.

Humans lived in anarchic societies for tens of thousands of years, until the development of state-level societies coincident with agriculture and domestication, within the last 10,000 years. Examples of these on our own continent are the Nez Perce, The Manitos of Northern New Mexico and even the Chirachua Apache. Other examples outside of North America are The Piaroa and The Tiv. While state societies grew and overtook neighboring non-state societies, non-state societies that remained undisturbed did not develop state-level social organization. Even non-state societies existing today have complex social mechanisms to guard against acquisition of centralized power by any individual or sub-group.

In contrast, state-level societies and centralized authoritarian social systems create conditions of inequality (think healthcare and energy) that support exploitation of humans within a society and non-human species and habitats in bioregions where societies from. They require centralized energy systems, like nuclear or hydroelectric power, subject to concentration and commodification so as to remain under the control of the central authority. Therefore, state-level society cannot be maintained for any length of time without creating conditions resulting in its decline and eventual destruction. Frankly, our current form of societal organization is a brash start up if you consider all of human history, and it doesn’t appear that will last for very much longer.

Edward Abbey gave the current system another 100 years back in the ’80′s, so maybe (if we’re lucky) we only have 80 or so odd years remaining.

The twin challenges of global climate change and Peak Oil were created by exploitive state-level societies. Therefore, they can ultimately only be met by a return to non-state social organization and decentralization. This will result from social breakdown as energy depletion reduces state society’s ability to support large populations in an industrial, centralized authoritarian social structure. There is, however, good news. Preparation for the inevitable is actually very simple is already underway in communities all over the world. The creation of community associations, gardens, cooperatives, greenways and point-of-use energy systems. Anarchism, specifically social anarchism, that dirty word that unnecessarily raises so many eyebrows, is alive and well and taking place as we speak.

Nuclear is the antithesis of decentralization, and therefore democracy, as it only represents an expansion and strengthening of the current centralized system. Nuclear energy only benefits the elite industrialists that control it.

It’s opposite is renewable, sustainable energy sources which are dispersed, available to all, most efficiently used at point of need, on small, scale specific use applications. Appropriate technology means appropriate to its place of use and the nature of the resource. Solar and wind are dispersed resources, so must be used in dispersed applications. Building huge solar and wind farms and distributing the resulting electricity on the grid is an absurd misapplication of technology. Again, as we spin down from industrial civilization and return, inevitably, to local production for local consumption, we will also, of necessity, return to local dispersed energy sources that are not suitable for concentrated central control.

Like it or not, anarchism is the only form of human social organization amenable to decentralized power sources. It encourages self-reliance and self-responsibility, self-knowledge, democracy, community and mutual aid. An anarchist society is not built on appeal to central authority. Anarchy is built on personal responsibility, first and foremost, democratic, consensus decision-making and community. And as we come down off the peak of energy availability, we will also come down off the peak of coercive, central authority.

Much credit goes to Michael Lewis on this piece. He’s been writing and speaking on this subject for many years. Many of the ideas and words are his….

If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream.-Edward Abbey

Ah, the American Dream. An oft repeated phrase we all probably first heard in our youth. The official national myth that any hard working, honest person can and realize their dreams. Start from nothing, work your way up, save, get a starter home, maybe a starter wife and gradually increase your net worth until you reach the economic summit.

Most Americans probably don’t dream of reaching the same heights as people like Bill Gates or Ted Turner. For most of us, just having a nice home, a comfortable living and decent healthcare and education for our kids is sufficient. But like most summits, the trip to the top is fraught with peril.

2009 was a wake up call that perhaps even the most basic achievements in life are becoming more difficult to realize for an increasing number of people. Healthcare costs are astronomical, and our public education system is so bad in many large cities that private schools are now viewed as “necessities” by families that want their children to gain admittance to even moderately selective colleges and universities. And even if you’re fortunate enough to own a home there are certainly no guarantees you’ll keep it. Most of us are just one major illness away from bankruptcy and potential foreclosure, but alas, you can protect yourself from that via another miraculous capitalist invention, mortgage insurance.

Why do I always think of those bogus 19th century opportunists selling “miracle tonics” when I see an insurance salesman?

I simply don’t believe the American Dream is what was, and I don’t believe we’re anywhere close to recapturing it. It’s become a perverted lie, cast upon schoolchildren at an early age and repeated like a mantra all the way through compulsory high schools where kids are fed whitewashed versions of history, and where everything seems predicated on your ability to pass standardized tests where the odds are incredibly stacked against inner-city youth. From there, the fiends at Sallie Mae sell the concept of going into massive amounts of debt so you can get a college education and from there, a tedious, meaningless job selling cheap plastic shit manufactured in China. Credit cards, mortgages, bigger houses to house all the shit you accumulate. Then there’s the inevitable depression and anxiety followed by therapy and drugs. You’re a rat on a wheel that keeps turning but goes nowhere.

That’s no dream. It’s a nightmare.

My own dream has long been to have a small house or cabin with a reasonable amount of land for farming, gardening and livestock. My own version of the Vogelin Ranch. A refuge and a place where I can live out my remaining days in peace and a respectable level of self-sufficiency. I don’t want to see my human neighbors peering into my window from their own windows while I eat breakfast. Wren’s and Chickadee’s are welcome. I don’t want to hear their stupid leaf blowers or the hum of their swimming pool pumps. I don’t want religious nutjobs knocking on my door.

So how do I get there?

Remember the phrase “40 acres and a mule?” It was a practice in 1865 of providing arable land to African American former slaves who became free as Union armies occupied areas of the Confederacy. Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s January 16, 1865 Special Field Orders, No. 15 provided for the land, and some of the recipients received from the Army mules for use in plowing as well; the combination was widely recognized as providing a sound start for a family farm. 40 acres (16 hectares) is a standard size for rural land, being a sixteenth of a section, or a quarter quarter-section, under the Public Land Survey System used on land settled after 1785. (Wiki)

Well, that much land can cost you a pretty penny these days, especially if it’s already got a house, barn and driveway. In some areas of Tennessee, my home state, you find places for less than $300,000. I suppose if you’re in California, that sounds like a deal. But where does even that much money come from? Unless you were in the lucky sperm club and inherited it, you’d probably have to spend years working in the belly of the beast. Living in the city, working a corporate job and saving money. You had to save, a reasonable endeavor, but you probably had to have some luck along the way, and even if you do all that, you have to make a living once you find your nirvana.

If you want to move to a remote place before retirement, assuming you’re not established there, meaning, you weren’t raised in a rural area and have no connections in the area, how will you make a living to pay the mortgage? Working at the local cafe won’t pay the mortgage and everything else. Neither will farming if you’re a city slicker like me. Real estate? Sure, show the locals how to carve up what’s left of the countryside into little ranchette’s and sell ‘em off to more city slickers so the property values and property taxes go sky high. Pretty soon, the locals won’t be able to live there any longer. Just look at Teluride, Colorado. And if you decide this is going to be your retirement home, assuming you’re paying your bills with your retirement, how certain is your retirement?

My aunt, recently retired, just lost $300,000 in her retirement during 2009. She’s reasonably wealthy, so that’s not a huge loss for her, but she was worried. Not enough to get her to resume practicing medicine, but people with more meager savings probably couldn’t take much of a hit before having to become a greeter at Wall Mart.

Want 100 acres so you can raise a modest number of cattle or sheep with your chickens and horses? Expect the numbers to reach closer and usually over the one million dollar mark. Sure, you can buy some dry, mesquite laden tract in West Texas for $90,000, but there’s no house and no water.

Build your own? Not a likely scenario for most Americans. We’re citified and too used to having things done for us.

Occasionally, however, you can find a good deal. Something that’s “ready to go” in so far as farming operations are concerned and that is potentially affordable. Assuming you’re willing to lease space to cellphone tower operators and hunters, which I am not. I suspect if you’re diligent and have some money, you can find a decent spot, but it’s becoming more difficult, and it’s certainly out of reach for most Americans. For those of us with a chance, because we’re smart and somewhat lucky, we bide our time in the corporate cesspool, or get a job with a real retirement plan and hope for the best.

Who’s to blame? We have to blame someone or some group, right? I say we start with land speculators and real estate agents, two of the most pestiferous, vile and despicable classes of people in the country. They thrive off uncontrolled growth and promote it without apology. It’s one of the reasons why I hate the notion of ever buying another home. I can’t stand the thought of having to deal with agents, mortgage bankers and credit bureaus. A pox upon all your houses.

There are too many people crawling all over the continent already. We’re jam packed into cities like New York, Houston, Atlanta, Detroit and Phoenix, towering edifices of steel, concrete and drywall, seasoned with inconceivable amounts of smog, traffic and noise. But such a landscape, if we can call it that, creates new industry and new profits. Anti-depressants, therapists, health clubs (since there’s nowhere to hike or do noble work like cutting your own wood), psyche wards and private prisons. Can you imagine what the countryside would look like if even twenty percent of the current population, which is over 300 million, decided to become self-reliant farmers or ranchers?

According to the United States Fact Sheet, there are over 2.2 million acres of arable land with slightly over 900 million acres used for farming in the United States, or 40.8 percent of the total available used for crops, woodland and pastureland.

That means that if even twenty percent of the total population decided to pursue the dream of being a self-sufficient farmer or rancher, they’d only have fifteen acres of the current total land used for farming, and that also assumes that they could somehow get their hands on the privately held land.

Revolution? Redistribution of wealth? Once again, do the peasants and serfs rise up against their wealthy capitalist masters and demand equality?

Which of course brings me to another issue, that of private property. The Holy Grail of the American psyche. The untouchable. You can attack or question just about anything in American culture except for the notion of private property. Even God is open game (as he should be) as evidenced by Richard Dawkin’s best selling and excellent book The God Delusion. Had Dawkins written The Private Property Delusion, he’d find himself banished to the far margins of acceptance, much like Marx, Abbey or Naess, perhaps even to the point of his name becoming a pejorative.

Despite drawing careful distinctions between terrorism and sabotage, Abbey was marginalized by the mainstream literary establishment and labeled a “regionalist.” He was never accepted by the mainstream, even mainstream environmentalists, because he wrote about attacking private property. Dare bring up evil notions like the redistribution of wealth and most folks will respond with something elementary and ridiculous like “the USSR proved communism doesn’t work” or “Reagan defeated communism.”

To which I respond by saying such a system worked pretty well on this continent for hundreds and hundreds of years. Before whites showed up, and to some degree, even after whites showed up, at least for a period of time. At least until industrial, growth capitalism took hold and fouled the watershed. No, not the pure communism envisioned by Marx. Something better. Democratic, bioregional, steady-state subsistence economies where no man has the power to dominate others. Neither to serve, nor to rule.

Until we find our way back to that, the American Dream is just that, a dream.

Figured I’d at least finish this one. The second part of my post on capitalism, the system that gives so much but also comes with a terribly high price…

One simple step to improving things is to support more employee owned companies and cooperatives. Let workers share the equity and decide their fate democratically. Support companies that aren’t so myopically focused on growth. Do not support companies that activity seek to hurt other companies in support of their growth plans.

Quit sending your kids to these ridiculous business schools. Encourage them to focus on a classical education in language, math, science, history and fine arts. Teach them how to think. Who says you can’t run a business with a liberal arts education? I do. I studied mostly History and English in college, and it prepared me well for life. Throw in sufficient amounts of biology, anthropology, political science, sociology, language, and you’ll be much better off than had you majored in communications or fashion merchandizing.

You learn business as an apprentice. Take the time in college to learn to write and to develop critical reasoning skills. College should be about education, but like everything else on the planet, it’s apparently been taken over by CPA’s and MBA’s hell bent on running our colleges and universities as businesses.

And for those of you that remain unconvinced and still believe capitalism is a grand and benign as apple pie (low fat, of course), consider this. Let’s say you’re a small proprietor. The owner of the community hardware store or a locksmith. You’re making a decent living, know your customers and provide a valuable service to the community. Somewhere along the way, your community gains the attention of Wall Mart and before you know it, they’ve negotiated a deal that will provide tax breaks for them and the necessary zoning changes so cranky old Mr. Gentry can rezone his property to commercial and sell it to Wall Mart.

The rest of the story has been repeated many times all across the country. You’re out of business, thanks to “competition” and struggling to hang on to your home. You’re forced to take a job at some gawd awful plant, making shit wages for robotic, mindless, shit work. Wall Mart decides it’s time to move on to a bigger spread and gets the county to agree to widen the road and provide even more tax incentives. The former site, what was once farmland held by a single family for generations and before that, home to the Cheyenne, is now a community eyesore, an ugly, abandoned wasteland of concrete.

It’s all “progress,” correct? The American way.

No, it’s a cluster fuck, and the little guy, the average worker and homeowner is the one getting the shaft. For every executive toasting his buddies and vacationing in Southern France (thanks to those rising stock prices), there are multiple families struggling to stay on the road and out of the ditch. But the road to riches is strewn with all sorts of ugliness and unnecessary peril. It’s the ugly underbelly of the system so many people believe is so grand.

Capitalism is cruel. Don’t be fooled, and don’t think for a minute that your time will never come.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in Clint Eastwood’s masterpiece, Unforgiven. It’s just before the final scene when Clint and The Schofield Kid are waiting for their bounty money outside of town. A discussion ensues about killing, and the very real consequences of taking human life.

Munny: It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.
The Schofield Kid: Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.
Will Munny: We all got it coming, kid.

Yes. In this system, we all have it coming.

Well, this is the end of Jack Burns Lives. I’ll be taking the site down after the next billing cycle to focus on my new endeavor.

There are things I thought I liked about capitalism. My Apple laptop. DVD’s and being able to download music. My digital camera and the Internet.

But all of these things come at a heavy price. A cost that most folks don’t consider since they see capitalism as not only benign, but enormously beneficial. For example, capitalism has produced some miracle drugs that make diseases like Rheumatoid Arthritis manageable. In this country, it’s made it possible for people from all walks of life to achieve standards of living most in the world can only dream of.

So, why am I so sour on capitalism? Why am I starting to sound like a pinko-commie bastard? What’s the problem, Jack?

The problem is the undeniable, ugly underbelly of capitalism. The stuff that happens behind the curtain and sometimes right in plain sight of everyone in the theatre. What has to happen to open markets, to fuel expansion and deliver big screen teevees to millions of American mortgage holders. What has to happen for Wall Street to continue to deliver those gaudy returns and for bankers to collect those fat bonuses.

For example, the duplicitous behavior of wealthy people that puts thousands of out of work. All an executive has to do is hit the “send” button on an e-mail for hundreds of hopeful workers to suddenly find themselves out of work, so he’ll cut expenses, make “plan” and therefore his bonus. I’m sick of hearing about single mothers having their utilities turned off while fat cats in big banks gamble with taxpayer dollars and reap multi-million dollar windfalls. I’m sick of extreme economic disparity and don’t buy for a minute that it’s “how you were raised,” or “you didn’t work hard enough.”

For people to make that kind of money, an awful lot of horrible shit goes down. It often requires wars to open markets, degradation of natural resources and treating other humans like piles of horseshit.

I know what goes on, because I spent years in the belly of the beast, working for large corporations. I’ve been in country club locker rooms and private bars and listened to the banter of the privileged. Was I one? No. I was a pitiful, stressed out lieutenant most of my career in the big leagues, until I finally had the good sense and good fortune to get out and attempt to create a small, democratic workplace that is in fact the antithesis of every place I’d been before.

As it stands today, people that worked hard their entire lives, saved and did their best can lose everything and find themselves in dire straits in a nano-second.

Capitalism is a never-ending game of survival. Everyday brings new challenges and competitors. There’s a cursory amount of cooperation here and there, but it’s mostly dog eat dog competition, where a constantly changing list of interlopers works diligently to put you out of business. Altruism has nothing to do with it.

They don’t care if you can’t pay for your house. You should have been better.
They don’t care if you die from lack of healthcare. Should have planned better.
They don’t care if you lose your car. Public transportation was built for losers like you.
They don’t care if you don’t eat. It’s eat or be eaten.

Anyone that dares to point out the absurdity of such a system is quickly branded and marginalized. Cast downward to a pit that’s even worse than the one designed for failed capitalists.

Why do you hate America, you commie bastard?

Like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, it attempts to cloak itself and its real nature though any number of advertising campaigns and “initiatives” ostensibly designed to help the poor, save Bangladesh, the whales and the bears, protect us from global warming, blah, blah, blah. But in the end, the only thing it’s really working to save is itself and expand its profit-making sphere.

Those wonderful profits. Our raison d’être, and the reason the biosphere is under siege.

As the poet Lew Welch once said, “…the profit motive means very simply: you give less than you take. If you give less than you take, you grow mean and stingy….Greed, then, and Usury (the most pernicious form of greed, the selling of money) have always been the carbuncles on the neck of America. We have never been free.”

Of course, it wasn’t always this way. We even have examples of human societies right here on this continent that demonstrate other economic systems are possible. The Manitos of Northern New Mexico, Hispanic villagers that had a pastoral, subsistence economy that functioned well for many, many years before the advent of the cash economy. There was a time when their villages were self-contained and nearly self-sufficient. There were no fences, and “the most important civic virtue for a man to have was verguenza, a self-effacing probity that restrained him from advancing himself at the expense of others.” (deBuys, Enchantment and Exploitation, The Life and Hard Times of a New Mexico Mountain Range)

The Nez Perce lived in collections of democratic villages bound by kinship and economic well-being for all. At least until we showed up.

But I reckon the horse is out of the barn. There’s no going back to pastoral, steady-state, village life any time soon.

So, what can we do now? Part Two tomorrow….