Jack Burns Lives!

is almost always a big loss for the environment.
Visa announces plan to turn your iPhone into a wallet. Huh?
Media “experts” announce it as a “win-win” for consumers. Why not just say “Visa announces a way to get people to buy more cheap plastic shit they don’t need?” Who believes this daft shit? Who gives a tinkers damn about all this gimmickry? It seems all of our engineering and innovation is focused on increasing consumption, not on issues that really need attention. Like making our cities more livable, developing high speed rail or sustainable point-of-use energy technologies.
We are a nation of fat, stupid louts running full speed to the cliffs, driven like cattle by madmen.

A late winter Sunday and my god awaits me. Low on the southeastern horizon, the giant orb greets me with blessings of warmth and life. With spring approaching, it seems to climb higher every day, gradually moving upward to its summer pinnacle directly south of the large bay window on the south side of the house. My dining room is bathed in light and warmth, a cheery respite from the bitter cold and icy conditions of the past week.

In the winter, the back of the house is mostly dark. Only the front of the house gets a lot of light, but even then, the sun sinks behind the trees and homes situated southwest of the dining room windows by 3:00 PM. From 10:00 AM to 2:30, there’s light. Enough to lift my spirits to a point where I can function. In truth, the house is very poorly designed. The roof is too high, so the rays of the winter sun only reach a small portion of the backyard. Fortunately, most of the trees on the east, south and west boundaries are deciduous, so their leafless branches allow light to pass through. Their full growth in summer protects the house, keeping it cool.

On the north side of the house, all of the trees are appropriately evergreen, so they protect the house from the north winds.

At least the landscaper knew what he was doing.

In winter, the dining room is my room of choice for writing, although I must say, I’ve had a temporary lull in productive thinking. This city and my lot within it have plunged me into a moderate depression. I’d been more hopeful a month or so ago, thinking I’d crafted a well conceived plan for escape. But those plans were quickly dashed. What killed them? The economy? Maybe. Being too aggressive? Possible. Pursing the wrong opportunity? Highly probable, but I think perhaps the people I pursued were simply too ignorant to recognize the merits of my proposal.

Now I feel trapped. Trapped in a city torn by racial divisiveness, high infant mortality and high rates of violent crime. There are few outdoor recreational opportunities. Just another monolith of concrete and steel, where many of the non-human inhabitants wisely fled ages ago. The few remaining natural predators, mostly foxes and coyotes, are viewed as dangerous nuisances since they’re forced to hunt domesticated animals in order to survive. They’re quickly captured and removed to new homes far outside the city the limits, further reducing our biological diversity while keeping property values high. Can’t have wild animals running about and ruining the neighborhood, now can we?

The amphibian population is decimated and genetically altered, thanks to a landscape soaked to the core with lawn chemicals. Only the avian population seems somewhat stable, but even there, trouble is on the horizon.

Memphis seems best suited for opportunists and crooks, prospering in their rackets thanks to the protections afforded them by the law. Bankers, insurance salesmen, real estate agents, developers, financial advisors and “wealth managers.” A despicable lot, they hop into their fancy cars each morning, race to work while tapping away on their fucking “smartphones” and listening to talk radio. Quotas to meet, reports to deliver, checks to cash and ecosystems to trash.

Their god is profit. Heaven is a constantly growing economy.

And when they finally leave their edifices of steel, concrete and drywall, it’s mostly to fiddle with their godddamn biomass blowers or to play golf. Can’t have things out of place, after all. A leaf or seedlings from trees must be properly managed. Blown into a pile, packed into plastic bags and picked up by a special truck that has no purpose but to pick up lawn “refuse.” The blower takes oil, the plastic bags were produced with oil and the truck runs on prodigious amounts of oil. And all for what? So these suburban fucktards can have a perfect lawn.

Yeah, they travel. In the summers, most of the affluent flock to Destin, Florida, and in doing so, they’ve turned a once “sleepy fishing village” into another Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, an over-developed hell-hole. In winter, they go to the ski towns like Telluride or Aspen, overpriced playgrounds for the rich, places now so expensive, the hired help can’t afford to live there.

Speaking of god, I should also mention we’ve got more than our share of god peddlers ’round these parts. Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Jews and Baptists. Lots of Baptists. In fact, they’re fucking everywhere, and you can bet a non-believer like myself frequently finds himself the focal point of suspicious eyes.

“Ethel, they don’t even go to church. But they sure drink. Their recycle bin is full of beer cans and wine bottles.”
“What about the children, Louise?”
“Well, let’s hope they find the Lord on their own. We should add them to our prayer list.”

To complicate matters further, we now have a raging school debate. Seems the mostly black city schools in Memphis want to give up their charter to the mostly white county school system. Guess I don’t have to explain in any great detail what happened next. The mostly white folks in the suburbs pitched a fit, thinking their high scoring, well funded schools were going to be ruined if combined with the lesser funded, lower scoring city system. Most black Memphians support the measure, as do many white Memphians, although there is a small, increasingly vocal group of black community leaders that “don’t want to give up the power they’ve worked years to obtain.”

Abbey said power “attracts the worst and corrupts the best,” but can you really blame Southern blacks for wanting to sip from its chalice? I don’t. What do you expect from a community that’s honestly only had an equal opportunity since the 1970′s?

Now we’re in a full fledged war and using our children as pawns. A few white power brokers called in some debts and got their marionettes in the state legislature to file a motion delaying the merger, maintaining they need at least two years to “properly plan the merger.” Whatever. They need two more years to figure out how to kill it or get rid of the people pushing it. But whether is passes or not is largely a moot point. Either way, the schools and the money will remain segregated. If it passes, the white community in the county schools will flee and build more private schools. They’ll take many of the best teachers with them, just like they did in the 1970′s. And if it nothing changes, Memphis will become another Detroit where less than 50% of its children graduate from high school.

This, of course, is the equivalent of a terminal disease for a city. A rapidly expanding population of poorly educated, economically depressed, angry people will eventually choke the life out of the city, but as Memphis goes, so go the fortunes of all those suburban folks safe and comfy in their enclaves.

I should know. I’m one of ‘em.

I live on the outskirts of Memphis, but I also fully understand that my livelihood is undeniably and inexorably tethered to Memphis. What’s good for Memphis is ultimately good for everyone in the metropolitan area. Conversely, what’s bad for Memphis is bad for all of us. There’s no escaping it. You can’t move far enough “out east” to escape it.

But none of these issues are really my primary issues with Memphis and the Mid-South. My biggest issue is the landscape. There’s no redrock, mesas, canyons, mountains or clear flowing streams. Edward Abbey was mostly miserable during his days in Hoboken, not being in what he called his “natural home.” I feel the same. This landscape is trashed. The entire area is mostly characterized by poorly planned development and farm land soaked to the mantle with poison so it can sprout Monsanto’s Frankenstein seed. Even our old growth forests, the few remaining, are little more than commodities.

A section of the old growth forest at Overton Park is now threatened by zoo expansion. The zoo administration, obviously mindful of the benefits of highlighting our natural flora and fauna and creating an educational opportunity for our youth about bioregionalism, plans to convert the old growth forest into an exhibit on the Yukon. Yes, right here in the Mississippi Delta we’re going to have an exhibit on the Yukon, and at the expense of more native plants and animals. So, what the children will obviously learn is that in a capitalist economy, the most important thing is growth, because growth means means more jobs and more money. Nothing is more sacred. Even an old growth forest.

But wait, there’s more. The City of Germantown is “moving” a State Natural Area to build an unneeded road. How do you “move” a natural area? Is nothing sacred? Apparently not with these money grubbing, ignorant whores.

What about the Mighty Mississippi, you say? Oh, it’s mighty alright. A mighty mess. Woe be to the man that ingests fish from its waters. Its poison muck flows straight down, past Baton Rouge through a section known as Cancer Alley and on to New Orleans where its over-engineered banks meet the oil soaked Gulf of Mexico. That’s the centerpiece of our bioregion.

Edward Abbey believed that humans need a place to escape. I wholeheartedly agree, but also believe you shouldn’t have to fly on a damn airplane or drive four to sixteen hours to find it. Everyday, I live in a capitalist nightmare, constantly dealing investors, creditors, bankers and lawyers, people constantly calling me on my cellphone, something I loathe, but can’t get rid of. Only the customers are a pleasure. They’ve been faithful and undemanding. Otherwise, it’s the same old shit, everyday. There’s no skill required or involved. Certainly not the skill it takes to write a sonnet or even a haiku. It’s as intellectually challenging as playing Candy Land. But the pressure is real. I feel it everyday, and it’s wearing me down. Slowly but surely, day by day, I feel life ebbing away.

The solution? Get up off my ass and start doing something different. Find another plan. There’s always a way out. Stop moaning and start acting. I know these things, yet I feel frozen, like my mind is no longer functioning properly. Like an alcoholic or drug addict that’s given in to its plight.

My wife and dear aunt believe pills will solve my problem. That I should take Prozac painkillers and sugarcoat reality. Frankly, I disagree. I think depression and anxiety are often your body telling you that you are in an unhealthy environment. It’s just like any other ache or pain. Your body is telling you something isn’t right. Somehow, they either deal with it or fail to see how fucked up things really are.

5mg later….

Oh so happy now. I feel so happy in this suburban shit hole. I love to get up in the morning and navigate through a morass of steel and concrete with thousands of angry, hurried drivers in 8000 pound behemoths yapping on cellphones. Spend most of my day in an office building fielding calls from creditors, bankers, lawyers and salesmen. We all meet for lunch and pretend we’re happy. Drive home, park our cars in the driveway, open a bottle of something, pop a pill or two and watch America’s Biggest Loser on my one thousand inch Sony teevee until I pass out.

The next morning on the toilet I conceive a plan.

…Jack walks to the bedroom and loads the lever action rifle propped up against the wall. Walking into the den, he props the rifle up against its wall and then opens the door to the patio. He walks to the television, unplugs it, lifts it from its stand and takes it outside to the patio, placing it on the ground. He retrieves the rifle and walks outside.

He heads southwest.

The Obama administration just unveiled the largest military budget in history. The cuts are in domestic spending, and the “proposed” future military cuts will probably never be seen.

The United States government is basically a crime syndicate. It operates like the Sicilian Mafia running protection rackets. Abroad, its soldiers wear camouflage and clean out any and all opposition to foreign policy. They are the advance guard for capitalism, opening markets and securing strategic resources. At home, they wear suits and call themselves the IRS. They extract payments that are ultimately passed up the ladder to the bosses in private industry in the form of direct spending, tax cuts, earmarks and regulatory management. The captains in Congress and the boss in the White House make sure all the big bosses get their not-so-fair share.

In return, we the people, receive “protection.” Protection from a various assortment of enemies, boogeymen that lurk in the shadows, just waiting for the right moment to take action and bring the U.S. to its knees.

This is the reality of life in America. Corporations and the wealthy elite run America, not “the people,” the common rabble or as Alan Simpson said, “the lesser people.” Money is extracted from us and used to fund the greatest killing machine the world has ever seen. The machine is used to open markets for U.S. capitalist interests, and along the way, thousands of people are murdered and ecosystems are destroyed. A swath of destruction so rich people can get richer.

Obama? Oh, he’s a master manipulator. He says all the right things and throws his pathetic, sycophantic liberal establishment a bone here and there, but at the end of the day, he simply represents more of the same. And how do you expect him to be different when the upcoming Presidential election is expected to cost one billion dollars? That’s right. A cool billion to reach the White House. Well, when you need that kinda money, you have to go to the bosses. And when you take money from them, well, they’re going to expect repayment. Timely repayment.

Let’s just say they’ve given Obama “an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

Incidentally, the Sam Peckinpah film, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, is a real work of art. It contains one of the most moving and well done scenes in film, a death scene that features Slim PIckens by a river with a fading sun, scored by Bob Dylan.
Lonely Are the Brave is not a “wild west film,” but it’s still good to see Ed getting the recognition he deserves.

The List: Best Wild West lawmen
By Alex Cox
Published: February 11 2011 23:49 | Last updated: February 11 2011 23:49
Not so long ago, I was at the railway station in Tucson, Arizona, and noticed they’d erected a statue of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. I ambled over to read the inscription, expecting the usual Wild West blither-blather. Instead, the plaque recorded this as the site of an extra-judicial killing, by Earp and others, of one of his enemies. Revisionist history is alive and well, and frontier lawmen are being viewed as the predator drones of their day: indiscriminate regenerators. As a Coen brothers’ remake of Henry Hathaway’s True Grit is released in cinemas, here’s my list of the top six western lawmen.

1. John Wayne, True Grit (1969)

In westerns, the Duke rarely played a cop. Despite Wayne’s (justified) real-life reputation as a political reactionary, he usually rode on the far side of the law: he was a young outlaw in Stagecoach (1939), an old ’un in The Searchers (1956). Sheriff Rooster Cogburn gave Wayne a chance to cut loose at last: to play a drunk, and a half-blind old man, and still outshoot the bad guys. This was, incidentally, the second film in which young Dennis Hopper, the epitome of hippiedom, died in Wayne’s arms.

2. Henry Fonda, My Darling Clementine (1946)

A beautifully photographed, tidy and sanitised version of the OK Corral saga, from the old master John Ford. Fonda was a clever actor, and his Wyatt Earp is stranger than you would expect: heroic, but also an Indian-abuser and a prig.

3. Harris Yulin, Doc (1971)

This was Frank Perry’s anti-western, made on a spaghetti western set in Spain. Yulin plays Marshall Wyatt Earp as a small-town politician with a propensity for violence. “I run the law,” he tells Doc Holliday (Stacey Keach), “you run the gambling. We’ll both end up rich.” The OK Corral “shoot-out” is staged as a shotgun massacre, which it most probably was.

4. Lee Van Cleef, The Big Gundown (1966)

Jonathan Corbett, a western lawman seeking to retire and run for governor, was Van Cleef’s most complex role. He’s hired by a wealthy cattle rancher (Walter Barnes) to dispose of a troublesome Mexican but ends up siding with the revolution instead. “You’re too smart to be a politician,” the rancher tells Corbett. Corbett shoots him. Excellent cowboy agitprop.

5. Walter Matthau, Lonely are the Brave (1962)

Matthau as Morey Johnson is the most sympathetic of all western sheriffs: a nice man with a terrible job to do. George Kennedy, as his deputy, is the meanest of ’em all. A fine film from a wonderful book The Brave Cowboy (1956) by Ed Abbey.

6. James Coburn, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)

Coburn is the tired, cynical sheriff hired by the good people of Lincoln County to arrest and hang his best friend. Though I don’t buy Kristofferson as Billy the Kid (Bob Dylan, who plays a minor gunfighter, Alias, would have been remarkable), Coburn is perfect as Garrett in this, Peckinpah’s last great western. (Make sure you watch the version recently restored by editor Roger Spottiswoode and not the studio re-cut: only when we see Sheriff Garrett’s fate does the rest of the film make sense.

Alex Cox is a film-maker and author of ‘10,000 Ways To Die: A Director’s Take on the Spaghetti Western’ (Kamera Books)

“What is both necessary and sufficient-for honest literary work-is to have faith in the evidence of your senses and in your common sense. To be loyal to your family, your clan, your friends and-if you’re lucky enough to have one-your community. (Let the nation-state go hang itself.)-Edward Abbey

I’ll second that. Especially the part about the nation-fucking-state.

One of my favorite Abbey essays is “The Writers Credo.” He opens by saying, “It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives….the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home: to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own government, his own culture. The more freedom the writer possesses the greater moral obligation to play the role of critic.”

But too few people are willing to tell the plain truth about things. They’re afraid it will hurt their business if they’re too outspoken. Attract the attention of FBI goons or find themselves ostracized by people they thought were friends but turned out to be little more than cowards more concerned with their portfolios than their friends. No more church socials, dinner invitations or invitations to business associations. Frankly, I never gave a shit about the church socials, because I don’t give a shit about the church. And I honestly could care less about being in business associations, either. Nothing but a bunch of golf playing, yuppie money worshippers. Who needs ‘em.

I see a lot of this in my own community. People terrified to tell the plain truth about things. But by not raising your voice, you exacerbate the problem. The politicos get too comfy, the bankers get too bold and before you know it, your community is little more than a hell hole of homelessness, crime and overdevelopment.

Yes, you’ll get pushed to the margin of society, because what the mainstream likes is moderation. We’re in love with political moderates that tippy-toe on the fence, never getting a goddamn thing accomplished. But that’s fine, because those of us on the left margin of society have a responsibility to maintain pressure that keeps moderates like Obama from moving too far to the right. It’s like a game of tug-o-war with the lunatic fringe on the right.

And hell, even if it’s too late to influence any real change, it’s worth it to me to just protect one little patch of land here and there or to simply be a pain in the ass to all the low class motherfuckers on the right hell bent on stockpiling profits, regardless of the damage they do in the process.

As Ed stated, “The writer must be useful to his people, to his community. Otherwise, who needs him.”

Write something true and worth reading. We sure aren’t going to get truth from our institutions, especially the church or the media.

Otherwise, just be silent. Don’t waste everyone’s time with worthless mishmash.

I may have posted this before, but so what. It’s worth another look. One of Ed’s old buds….

“…the religion of endless growth-like a kind of mania, a form of lunacy, indeed a disease. And the one disease to which the growth mania bears an exact analogical resemblance is cancer. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. Cancer has no purpose but growth; but it does have another result-the death of its host.”-Edward Abbey, “Arizona, How Big is Big Enough,” One Life At A Time, Please.

First published in 1978, containing essays that had previously appeared in multiple magazines, newspapers and other publications. Nearly 35 years later, nothing’s changed. If anything, it’s worse. Now the Chinese are in the game, clamoring for cars and oil. And less than one half of one half a percent of humans even have clue as to what’s going on. Numbed and dumbed by propaganda, humans somehow believe more growth is the answer. They believe technology will save us.

“I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization.”
-Chief Luther Standing Bear

I’m grumpy. The excesses and inequities of capitalism, our ridiculous political leaders and the steady stream of lies spewed forth from the public and private sector have taken a toll on my spirit. At least the Egyptians have the balls and sufficient energy to take a stand. Me, I’m looking for new escapes. Lately, it’s been in old films and books, which almost always seem superior to more recent releases. Many are old westerns or films set in the west, films that deal with men being “out of place” or “past their time.” Peckinpah films like The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Junior Bonner and my old favorite, Lonely Are The Brave. I identify closely with these stories and the lead characters. Men out of place or past their time. Men not all at comfortable with the direction society is headed.

Approaching fifty years of age, I look around and see a world that hardly resembles the world I remember from the late 1960′s. Surely Abbey felt that way in the ’70′s, thinking backward to simpler times in Pennsylvania or as his days as a student at the University of New Mexico.

Considering the possibilities, I honestly question whether I want to live past 70. I shudder to think what type of world we’ll have in twenty years, the world my children and perhaps grandchildren will live in. I see a fascist, corporate dominated, technological nightmare, a panoptic society similar to what Abbey described in Good News. Twenty years? Hell, we’re damn near there already. Who am I fooling.

Am I becoming an anachronism? Perhaps, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of as I see it, since civilization is becoming so lank and devoid of substance. I wear the Scarlet A with pride. The scarlet representing anarchism, as well as my anachronistic state.

Speaking of technology, for twenty-six years now, I’ve made my living in the technological sector. It wasn’t my first choice (I was an English and History major), but it was the only choice I had as twenty-three year old father with a young bride. A graduate assistantship and waiting tables wouldn’t cut it, so I started looking for a so-called “real job.” I found one, a nightmarish existence in a cubicle city working for one of the most corrupt bunch of folks I’ve ever seen. The upper management could eat nails and shit out corkscrews. By 1990 or so, I buried the notion that I’d ever be able to extract myself from corporatedum (or is that dumb?) and become a professor or a professional writer, as I’d originally planned. I was trapped. Three kids, college to pay for and a fat salary with insurance benefits I couldn’t leave behind.

I’ve kept myself off the ledge with hiking and writing. They were outlets, escapes from my corporate drudgery. As Abbey said, a man needs wilderness, “a place where he can go to go crazy in peace.”

During those twenty-six years, I’ve also tried to find a middle way, to rationally co-exist in our rapidly “advancing” world, embracing some technologies while rejecting others, but it’s becoming more difficult as I age. For a while, I thought cellphones were benign, but I was wrong. They’re everywhere, and people have become addicts. Too many people believe they can’t live without mobile devices, and most people now believe everyone in their circle of family, friends and associates should always be almost immediately accessible. If you don’t answer the goddamn thing, there’s something wrong. It’s absurd, and they’re ruining our minds. No one has any patience these days, and I believe technology is the reason. Everything’s available in a nano-second. Except me. My goal is to make myself as unavailable as possible.

Cellphone towers are what billboards were in Abbey’s day, and they need to come down. Where’s the Monkey Wrench Gang when you need ‘em?

Even books are no longer sacred. Pretty soon, I reckon you’ll need one of those fancy digital reader gizmos to read a new book. Businesses will soon decide the cost of printing is too high, and under the guise of saving trees, they’ll build more datacenters to house the information and in the process, burn more coal. They’ll wrap it up in a nice green wrapping and say “Voila!” But not me. You won’t catch me using one of those stupid things. I prefer the real thing, volumes in the shelves, with worn, dog-eared pages and notes in the margins.

Oh, and if you ever see me with one of those ridiculous Bluetooth things attached to my head, deal with me as you would with any suffering animal. Have me humanely put down. At least have me committed. Tell the judge I’ve gone loco, and it’s for my well being.

Daily, man advances, and in the process, he digs his own grave. From the vinyl LP to 8-track tapes, from 8-track tapes to cassettes, from cassettes to CD’s, from CD’s to iTunes. None of it for the pure sake of “advancements in technology.” It’s all for profits. Capitalism drives innovation. True enough, but that doesn’t mean it should be allowed to run amok.

For all of our so-called advances, we’ve never been able to duplicate the magnificence of Half Dome, of Delicate Arch or of a redwood. For all our so-called brilliance, we can’t top what’s been here for the millennia and will still be here after we’re long gone. Of course, the mad scientists at Monsanto believe they can “improve” nature with their Frankenstein plans, but man should understand his limitations. If we go too far, we’re liable to create a technology or combination of technologies that destroys us.

Shit, we’ve already gone too far. We developed technology that could end all life on earth 65 years ago. Even Reagan understood the danger. We have nuclear technology, unbridled capitalism and millions of ignorant people with insatiable appetites for cheap plastic shit they don’t need. How much further down the path to absolute destruction can Monsanto take us?

It’s all, of course, the result of capitalism, a devil that lavishes you with riches but that eventually delivers a comeuppance. As I see it, our planet is basically in a state of occupation, and the occupying enemies are industrial capitalism and growth economics. Those of us on the left are the equivalent to the French resistance or the Underground Railroad, doing what we can to preserve life until the occupation ends. Everyone else has sold their soul and willfully and gleefully taking part in the orgy.

Yes, there are benefits to living within the devil’s empire. We have sophisticated health care, and a highly advanced transportation and communications apparatus that’s provided activists with tools far more advanced than Hayduke’s chainsaw. Julian Assange has made good use of it. But it’s all come at a great cost. Has it been worth subduing the entire planet, trashing ecosystems, killing thousands upon thousands of humans and non-humans? That’s the cost for building our “advanced” society, friends. Ecocide in Nigeria, the Gulf oil spill, the Exxon Valdez, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting proxy forces in South America, the subjugation and genocide of American Indians. A cruel truth, as Abbey would say.

Yet, even within the empire, there are certainly no guarantees. People die on the streets of America everyday. The homeless, the mentally ill, people kicked to the curb by what many believe is greatest nation the earth has ever seen. What we allow to happen everyday in America would be unconscionable in some human societies, and it would be an embarrassment to live large while others suffered. But we made sure not too many folks caught on to that way of thinking. We rounded ‘em up, moved ‘em to the rez, Christianized them and obliterated the concept of mutual aid like it was a herd of buffalo.

And to top it all off, we decided it made more sense to point and wag our sanctimonious fingers at the less fortunate, rarely if ever examining the deeds of those that played a part in their demise. It’s shameful, and we can do better.

The solution? I’ve written about it many times before. No point in covering old territory at great length again, but we have to establish a steady state economy bound by ecological limits and make our workplaces more democratic. If you want to solve income inequity, that’s the way to do it. A huge undertaking, yes, since it’s the antithesis of how we’re set up today. The other option is continued course, but anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention can see we’re on a non-sustainable course. The only things preventing real change are ignorance, greed and sloth, all of which are curable diseases.

One thing I’ve learned from my time in corporate America is how the wealthy think. Perhaps one of the dirtiest words in a corporate board room is “dilution.” No one ever wants to be diluted when it comes to equity, because dilution, or loss of equity stake, means lower profits and less power. Everything is built on equity or ownership stake. Anyone that knows even the basics of economics and finance understands that to build financial wealth in America, and therefore power, you must have equity and as often as possible, controlling shares. Whether it’s through stock or real property. No one has ever gained power in America by saving pennies or even decent salary. You have to have an equity stake. With equity, you have power to set your own course and have a real voice. Think about the most powerful people in your community. They own the big companies or vast amounts of real estate. They’re considered the “movers and shakers” and the reason is their net worth, not just money in the bank.

The only reason your average, not-so-wealthy county commissioner has any power is because the people with the real power, the wealthy, support them. Otherwise, they’re nothing in our system.

And herein lies one of the major problems in American capitalism and in American society. The super wealthy, the ones that control a vast percentage of the wealth in this country, have all the power. Comparatively, the rest of us have little or none. If we’re to ever have a truly democratic society, that issue has to be reversed. Power has to be dispersed among all the people, so a greedy, self-absorbed few can’t dominate. And that means companies must be employee owned. Everyone should have equity stake and voting rights.

As Abbey said, all power rests on hierarchy, and hierarchy in this country is tied to wealth. Those with the most money have the most power to do as they please. Those with the least are the ones at greatest risk.

But, of course, only a handful of folks on the left are speaking in such terms. Obama doesn’t dare utter the words “steady-state” and talk about curbing growth. It would mean political suicide and send markets into a tailspin. What we thought could perhaps be our most progressive President in history is instead blowing the growth trumpet, loud and clear, and catering to the needs of Wall Street. And not only that, he’s jumped on the oxymoronic green growth bandwagon, or as he calls it, The Race For The Future. Our national strategy is to apparently do whatever it takes to keep things rolling, even if it’s perpetuating the second biggest lie in history. First place goes to Christians and the Jesus story. Still, by far, the most remarkable scam ever sold to the human race.

The rich and powerful won’t give up their power easily. They’ll hang onto it until the bitter end, which is why I say the whole sordid affair will just have to burn itself out. Literally. Once the cheap oil is gone, maybe there’s a chance.

Some folks think we can turn it around before then, however. A recent article by Peter Victor in Nature maybe gives a glimmer of hope:

He writes, “The idea that governments of developed countries should no longer pursue economic growth as a primary policy objective is widely regarded as heresy. Yet a growing number of scholars, policy-makers and citizens are coming round to the idea that the planet cannot sustain continued global economic growth. Even economist Robert Solow, who won the 1987 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on economic growth, said in 2008 that the United States and Europe might soon find that ‘either continued growth will be too destructive to the environment and they are too dependent on scarce natural resources, or that they would rather use increasing productivity in the form of leisure.’ The idea of steady-state economies, or even economic ‘degrowth’, in developed countries is gaining traction.”

I hope he’s right, but I have some well founded doubts. In this country, critical thinking was long ago supplanted with mindless religious belief and blind patriotism. Too many folks believe Jesus is coming back to save us, or that we’re too big to fail. Even as well-founded ideas like steady state economics gain steam on the left, the right won’t get with the program until the stern is below water, the bow is pointed toward the stars and one of their own screams, “Man the life boats!” And knowing those cowards, they’ll hop on the dories and leave the women and children behind.

No ticket for me, thank you. I’ve heard that “unsinkable” line before. Here we are, already taking on water, yet the leaders of our country are saying “full steam ahead,” serving champagne, oblivious and willfully ignorant.

Long live your death, morons.

I think I’ll just take up the rockin’ chair and find some place away from it all. Sit on my porch, watch the chickens run about, keep a couple of horses, an old pickup truck for errands in town. Inside my small but sufficient home, I’ll have walls filled with books and art. A big table to share hearty, good food with family and friends. A wood burning stove for chilly nights. And I’ll have a Winchester ready in case anyone shows up trying to sell me any “advancements.”

Grrrr

Sorry Lonesome Dove didn’t make it (although I understand why), but at least someone finally gave Ed some credit for The Brave Cowboy. Most people would not have put it ahead of Lonesome Dove.
I think The Brave Cowboy is perhaps Ed’s best “story,” right up there with Black Sun.

The five most important “cowboy novels,” according to Dr. James Work:

The Five Most Important Cowboy Novels Ever
Which are the best cowboy novels? James Work doesn’t know. But here are the most important.

By James Work, Guest Writer, 2-02-11

Old West or New West, our novels tend to get categorized by subject. Mountain man novels, ranch novels, cowboy novels, Indian novels, pioneer novels, historical novels, homestead novels—the list goes on and on. Once in awhile this leads to confusion, like talking about books in a Wyoming saloon and saying that Annie Proulx wrote a cowboy novel. Ooops.

Which are the best of the cowboy novels? I don’t know. (I can’t tell you which of my kids I like best, either.) Here are five important ones:

1. Owen Wister’s The Virginian

You know the classic shootout in the street, good guy and bad guy facing each other with sixguns? It became a cliché, but it began inThe Virginian.
The Virginian demonstrated that you could have a darn good cowboy book with no cows in it. It has long discussions of democracy and aristocracy, but there’s also romantic sparks flying between The Virginian and the schoolteacher Molly Wood. There’s good humor, too, such as The Virginian’s story about the cowboys who gave up cattle to raise frogs for eastern restaurants.

2. Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage

Here’s the start of another western movie staple, the man with one name who is rides the trail of vengeance. But it also pits a woman against an unforgiving land where lawless brutes have all the greed of a hungry wolverine and all the ethics of a tarantula. I’ve read it a dozen times and even edited it once and I still get a tingle up my spine when Lassiter and Jane flee into the hanging canyon with the bad guys in pursuit and she says “Roll the rock, Lassiter!”
(Side note: when it came out in 1911, Riders of the Purple Sage was heavily censored to make it more “moral” and less controversial. In 2005 Five Star Westerns finally published the restored edition containing the text as Grey wrote it.)

3. Jack Schaefer’s Shane

Here’s the hero without a past, a champion with no name defending the same farmers who signal the end of his open-range way of life. Shane is the spirit of the West, the symbol of all that’s wrong with it and everything that could be right about it. The book goes far beyond the movie, which Schaefer didn’t like. (Just for the record, Schaefer confided to me once that he not only liked the book better than the film, he liked his other novel Monte Walsh better thanShane.)

4. Andy Adams’s Log of a Cowboy

A “sleeper” is Andy Adams’s Log of a Cowboy. It’s a cattle trail narrative and became the prototype for books like Benjamin Capp’s The Trail to Ogallala. Many will swear it’s a true diary kept by a cowboy herding cattle up the trail out of Texas. You can taste the grit, smell the buffalo chip fire, hear the creak of the saddle leather. You’ll feel the excitement when the fight starts and the ramrod yells to his men “the stuff’s off, boys! Shoot and shoot to hurt!”

Despite the realism, Log of a Cowboy is fiction. Adams did go up the long trail and knew what he was talking about, but he meant it to be a novel.

5. Edward Abbey’s The Brave Cowboy

Where else can you find a cowboy breaking his pal out of jail and getting chased by a helicopter? It’s Abbey at his best, fighting the modern establishment and reaffirming the virtues of loyalty and honest living. Most importantly, Abbey brings the post-civil war cowboy into the era of Vietnam and shows his type is still alive and well.

In 1999 I surveyed more than three hundred members of the Western Literature Association and asked them to name the most important Western novels. Besides the ones I’ve mentioned, the following got the most votes in the cowboy category:

• Hal Borland, When the Legends Die

• Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Ox-Bow Incident

• Ivan Doig, English Creek

• Elmer Kelton, The Time It Never Rained

• Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

• Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

• Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Paso por Aqui

Dr. James Work is the editor of the textbook Prose and Poetry of the American West, past-president of the Western Literature Association, and author of eight novels set in the West.