Erstwhile Urban Wanderer

December 19, 2007 – As usual, the government’s efforts to “help” us are actually going to harm us. Concentrating personal information within ID cards or national databases simply makes life that much easier for identity thieves.

By Dave Eriqat

It’s amazing that with identity theft rampant these days, governments and corporations are bending over backward to collect ever more information from us that might be of use to identity thieves!

For the second time in two years a hotel has photocopied my driver’s license. The clerk at the hotel was so accomplished that they managed to photocopy it in the blink of an eye, before I could even object. For the second time in two years I requested that the copy be returned to me, and once again the clerk murmured something incoherent about it being a “state law” to photocopy licenses.

Get this, in Minnesota, where my license was first copied, the clerk there told me it was a “state law” intended to help prevent identity theft! How making millions of photocopies of vital identity documents helps prevent identity theft is beyond me. In Arkansas, where I am now, the clerk told me it was a “state law” to photocopy licenses of guests paying for their rooms with cash! Increasingly, I find that paying for things with cash is viewed with suspicion, as if cash impedes the smooth operation of the total surveillance state. Or maybe it’s discouraged because it deprives credit card issuing corporations of revenue.

When I asked the clerks what eventually happens to these photocopies, they could not say. Nor could they adequately assure me that the copies are stored securely until such time as they are disposed of. Considering the number of guests that stay in any given hotel, it’s impossible for the hotel to store these copies forever. Their file cabinets would quickly be overflowing with copies of driver’s licenses. So at some point they have to dispose of these copies. Considering the pressure on lowly employees to “produce,” my guess is that when it comes time to dispose of these vital documents, they are simply tossed in the trash, creating a veritable treasure trove of information for an identity thief. Look at your present driver’s license. Look at all the information that it contains. Now look at a credit card application. It’s a simple fill-in-the-blank process to transfer the information from one to the other. All that’s lacking is a social security number, and that can be purchased online once you have the rest of someone’s identity information.

Real ID

This invasion of privacy could get a whole lot worse. The federal government is trying to impose a new driver’s license standard on the states, known as the Real ID act. This would require driver’s licenses to become virtual encyclopedias of peoples’ lives. Instead of name, address, and date of birth, which is bad enough, Real ID-compliant licenses will contain dozens of pieces of information, including a digital photograph of the individual. Let’s not make identity theft too difficult now!

RFID Passports

But wait, it gets even worse, for the federal government is planning to put much the same information as Real ID on our passports as well and equip these passports with RFID chips so that the information can be scanned from some distance! So when you carry such a passport, you will be airing all your personal information in public to anyone possessing a scanner that can read these RFID chips. You’ll be walking around with a device that is, in a sense, broadcasting all your personal information, begging someone to steal your identity. For those who don’t know it, the “RF” in “RFID” stands for “radio frequency.” It is a system that effectively turns a passive chip into a radio upon demand. It doesn’t require a power source, such as a battery, because the power is supplied by the radio signal sent to the chip by the scanner. Thus, someone can walk past you with a scanner, the scanner sends out a radio signal, and the RFID chip embedded in your passport wakes up and transmits its contents to the scanner. In an open area, someone could conceivably scan your passport from a distance of tens of feet. The distance is limited only by the strength of the radio signal sent to the RFID chip, the sensitivity of the receiver of the transmitted information, and sources of signal interference.

Information Security

Of course, having all this information on a license or a passport isn’t much use unless it’s also stored in a database somewhere, so that the license or passport can be verified as authentic. “Stored where?”, you ask. Who knows. But one thing is for sure, millions of such detailed identity records will be consolidated in one convenient location. Should a hacker break into such a database (happens all the time) or should such databases be stored on a laptop or removable hard disk or CD that ends up getting stolen (happens all the time), the recipients of the databases will have their hands on a gold mine of identity information. Or on an individual level, if you lose your futuristic driver’s license or passport, you will not have merely inconvenienced yourself; you will have basically opened your life to anyone with the means to read the information off a license or a passport, which is anyone who wants to. The equipment needed to read a driver’s license or passport is inexpensive and easy to obtain. Actually, for an identity thief, obtaining such equipment is risk free. They simply order it online using a credit card issued to someone whose identity they have already stolen!

When All Is Said And Done, Is Government Really A Benefit To Us?

It seems to be a common problem with all government laws intended to protect us that we law abiding people are harmed by these laws, while life is made easier for criminals. The government demands more information from us, and identity thieves enjoy easier access to our information. The government disarms us, and armed criminals rob us fearlessly.

Notice in the examples cited above, that it’s the government that is responsible for the consolidation of all this personal information into one convenient place. The corporations, which live by no principles, dumbly comply with the government’s edicts, no matter how imprudent or asinine. Yet where is the government when someone becomes a victim of identity theft? Then you’re on your own, buddy. Such victims sometimes have to spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars proving their innocence (remember, this is the land of innocent until proven guilty) to governments and corporations. What does the government care if their unreasonable demand for your personal information makes it easier for you to be victimized?

Update – 5 February 2009

As I postulated, those RFID passports are indeed readable from a distance, as this article explains.

December 15, 2007 – Voters are so naive. They believe they really have a choice in who they elect and believe they have control over the “system” and their lives. They don’t. The entire system is totally controlled by the elites. Elections are merely circuses to entertain the masses.

By Dave Eriqat

Ron Paul

I have long felt that Ron Paul’s platform, particularly his desire to eliminate the Federal Reserve, was a threat to the elite establishment. I even commented once that should he be elected president he’d likely be assassinated.

Yet I read something this morning that suggests he may be assassinated well before being elected president:

Best-selling author and Bilderberg sleuth Daniel Estulin says he has received information from sources inside the U.S. intelligence community which suggests that people from the highest levels of the U.S. government are considering an assassination attempt against Congressman Ron Paul because they are threatened by his burgeoning popularity.

What’s more, Ron Paul himself is aware of the threat he faces from the elite:

In a June appearance on The Alex Jones Show, Congressman Paul acknowledged that such a threat is ‘real.’

Mitt Romney

Meanwhile, whereas Ron Paul enjoys snowballing popular support, competing presidential candidate and member of the elite, Mitt Romney, is trying to buy the largest radio station network in the country, Clear Channel. No doubt, its 1,100 stations will endorse Mitt for president. It must be nice to be rich enough that you can just buy a network of radio stations to promote your candidacy.

Total Control

These two stories succinctly reveal how the elite seek total control over every aspect of our political system. They will assassinate a threatening candidate if necessary. Or they will simply buy the political mouthpieces if necessary. Whatever it takes to maintain control.

The rest of us go about our daily routines, falsely believing in the “system,” when it’s so clearly rigged against us.

March 25, 2006 – It seems that everything sold in America today is made elsewhere, particularly China. So just what does America make?

By Dave Eriqat

I seldom watch TV because I can’t stand commercials, so I buy movies and TV shows I like on DVD. And I am partial to older movies and television shows, which are often only available on DVD anyway. Recently I found myself with little in the way of video entertainment to watch, so this morning I went to one of my favorite venues, Fry’s Electronics, to buy something new to watch.

Some Americans might know of Fry’s. I believe the store was founded in the 1980s in Sunnyvale, California. It started out as a one stop shop for computer stuff and electronic parts. If there was a computer part or electronic part made, it could probably be found at Fry’s. They also had a huge library of computer books and computer software. For a computer geek like me Fry’s was heaven on Earth when I moved to San Francisco back in the 1980s. Fry’s had a sense of fun too. Many of its stores were decorated inside and out to conform to different themes. For example, the Sunnyvale store looked like a giant integrated circuit chip from the outside, and was suitably decorated on the inside. The San Jose store, my favorite, looked like a Mayan pyramid on the outside, with a faux evening sky and palm trees inside.

Today Fry’s sells everything from small electronic parts, electronic test equipment, computer parts and peripherals, whole computer systems, all manner of appliances, office furniture, consumer electronic items, digital photographic equipment, video games and consoles, music, DVDs, books, software, hand tools, indoor lighting, food snacks, and even luggage.

As I entered the store a fun idea entered my head: What if I randomly selected items off the shelf and examined where they were manufactured? So taking a circuitous route to the back of the store where the DVDs are, I began randomly pulling diverse items off the shelves, trying to ascertain where they were made. I looked at USB memory devices, empty DVD/CD cases, luggage, dual layer DVD writers, extension cords, hand tools, 400 GB external hard disk drives, appliances, computer speakers, all kinds of things.

The results of my very unscientific poll were even more surprising than I expected. Eight or ten items I examined were Made in China. One or two were Made in Taiwan, which I pretty much regard as China. One was Made in Thailand. An electrical extension cord was Made in Indonesia. A single item, a can of compressed air for blowing away dust, was Made in USA.

Two ironies struck me. First, that the only item Made in USA was a can of ethereal nothingness. And second, that I selected “Dallas – The Complete Third Season” to purchase. Not only does this TV show depict a bygone era of American history, the late 1970s, when America was still a great nation, but here I was buying this quintessential American television show in a store where everything for sale is made elsewhere. Although I scanned every square inch of the “Dallas” DVD box, I could not determine where it was made. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it, too, was Made in China. That would be a supreme irony.

October 15, 2007 – Some irreverent, politically incorrect observations about America’s newfound culture of fear and its contribution to our march toward tyranny and fascism.

By Dave Eriqat

Introduction

Observing our relentless march toward war abroad against Iran and looming dictatorship at home, it’s obvious to me that our “leaders” are getting away with this agenda because Americans are so fearful. But why? What are they afraid of? Answering this question is important because I think this irrational fear is finding an outlet in anger, which is evident in the police brutality we see domestically and wars we launch abroad.

When did our slide into emasculating fear begin? I think it started to become palpable in the early 1980s, following the economically beleaguered 1970s, which closed with the sobering Iranian hostage crisis. Reagan’s “Morning in America” slogan was so successful during the transition from the 1970s to the 1980s because Americans, having experienced their first protracted taste of society-wide fear, longed for a safe haven, even if it was just an empty campaign slogan. Without being judgmental, merely making an observation, fear ratcheted up during the Reagan years (Sting’s song “Russians” is emblematic of the anxiety felt during the 1980s) and both Bush presidencies, but seemed to be suspended during the Clinton years. In fact, people seemed quite optimistic during the Clinton years, although it’s not clear why people were optimistic then, or if their optimism was real or just Prozac-induced. Recalling the widespread and irrational fear surrounding the overblown Y2K computer problem, I think perhaps people were just as fearful then as now, but their fear was tempered by the illusion of prosperity that prevailed during the latter 1990s.

What might be some possible explanations for our national epidemic of fear?

Financial Insecurity

Financial security has declined sharply in the last three decades, thanks to globalization and the shift away from high paying, secure manufacturing jobs to lower paying, tenuous service jobs. In the last three decades we’ve experienced several powerful financial shocks: double digit inflation as we exited the 1970s and entered the 1980s, severe recessions in the early 1980s and early 1990s, and bursting stock market and housing bubbles in the 2000s. These shocks left people feeling vulnerable and bewildered about how to protect their wealth and safeguard their future.

During the 1980s Americans felt economically threatened by the ascendancy of Japan; today they feel the same threat from China’s ascendancy. But why should Americans feel economically threatened by another country’s progress? Because by the 1980s Americans were no longer in control of their career destinies. By the 1980s much of the American labor market was controlled by multinational corporations that had no qualms about shipping formerly American jobs to other countries. In the 1980s the destination for these jobs was Japan; today it’s China. In earlier times, many Americans were self-employed or worked for small, local businesses and had a great deal more control over their destinies.

Perhaps the way to counter fear about financial security is for people to return to the earlier model when they were in control of their lives. Doing this will necessitate a drastic change in most of our lifestyles, in particular, to a much lower cost of living. Yet this is possible if people are willing to move back to depopulated rural areas, take labor intensive jobs in local agriculture and manufacturing, and grow food on their own property. Even if such people lack financial security in terms of dollars and cents, having an inexpensive roof over their heads, home grown food to eat, and a supportive network of family and friends will go a long way toward fostering a sense of real security. I have spent considerable time browsing the Internet looking at rural property for sale. Many houses, including enough land to grow a vegetable garden, can be purchased in rural areas for one or two year’s worth of rent in an urban area. My house is such a house. Reducing one’s cost of living in this manner doesn’t mean a reduction in one’s standard of living. In fact, the opposite is true: our quality of life will improve, and I can say that from personal experience. Of course, people who have been brainwashed by corporate advertising will be incredulous that one’s quality of life can improve by moving to the “sticks” and eschewing materialism.

Deification of Greed

The deification of greed (“Greed is good,” from the 1980s movie “Wall Street”) has made those who are not “successful” feel inadequate. Such people fear becoming social outcasts by “missing out” on the latest investment boom, whether it be in stocks or houses; or because they don’t drive the fanciest, most powerful car; or because they don’t wear the hippest clothes; or because they aren’t festooned with all the trendiest technological gadgets. The fear of looking like a “failure” in a material sense, which is all that seems to matter anymore, drives people to acquire those phony emblems of success using debt, which then causes financial insecurity, which fuels fear.

Although I appear to be talking more about materialism here than greed, materialism is the principal vehicle for satisfying greed. Grotesque displays of greed are not scorned today, but are lauded, aspired to. However, most of us are too poor to participate in ostentatious displays of greed, such as building a 50,000 square foot house or buying a 200 foot yacht, so we are relegated to mimicking the rich by stretching to acquire the materialistic trappings of “success” that we can afford, or pretend we can afford.

People need to relearn to be themselves. Don’t worry about what other people think of you. Don’t succumb to peer pressure to acquire the latest and greatest doodad, unless you truly desire it and can afford it. Personal success or failure should be defined by each individual. I’m not rich, but I feel my life has been more or less successful. I know who I am and I like who I am. And I don’t need to use material things to reinforce my self esteem. I’ve never been embarrassed to drive a wreck of a car, and I’ve owned many such cars. I’m not embarrassed to wear shabby clothes or go unshaven if I’m more comfortable that way. If people are too shallow to accept me for who I am rather than what I possess, then I probably don’t want to be acquainted with them anyway.

Government and Media

The government and the media have, with seeming relish, sought to instill fear in Americans. The government does so to compel citizens to relinquish their rights, contrary to the prescient advice of Benjamin Franklin. The media enjoys instilling fear to raise their ratings (“If it bleeds, it leads”).

Of course, in a fascist system such as the United States has become, where the government and the corporate-owned media have developed a symbiotic relationship, it’s no longer surprising that the two speak with one tongue.

Virtually no field has been left un-sown with seeds of fear: terrorism, domestic and foreign; “other” races; unsafe food; diseases; unsafe children’s toys; chemicals; pollutants; drugs; guns; crime; religions; cults; identity theft; sex; and now climate change.

The government stokes these fears using “official” mechanisms, such as feel-good legislation that doesn’t really accomplish anything other than to heighten public awareness of, and anxiety about a potential danger; by parading manufactured villains before the public; or with cute devices such as color coded terrorism threat scales, or maps showing the residence locations of “sex offenders.”

The media feeds fear with TV shows such as “24,” “Cops,” “America’s Most Wanted,” and that “news” program, the name of which escapes me, that seeks to entrap sexual predators, stoking fear while turning sick perversion into titillating entertainment.

While there are genuine potential dangers in some of these areas – NEWS FLASH: life is risky – the likelihood of any American being directly affected by one of these threats is grossly overblown by the government and the media. Yet it seems that Americans feel vulnerable to all of these threats, all the time! What a way to live.

I don’t know if the dumbing down of Americans is the result of a sinister conspiracy, of our ever declining educational standards, of apathy and intellectual laziness on the part of Americans, or of Americans simply working harder and harder to stay in place so that they don’t have any time or energy left to become engaged, so they rely on partisan sound bites for their information. Whatever the reason for Americans’ lack of insight about the real threats posed by these fertile fields of fear, it is that lack of insight that makes Americans vulnerable to manipulation by the government and the media.

What is especially sad is that Americans have been brainwashed into always believing their government, and more importantly, that questioning their government is unpatriotic. I don’t believe in patriotism, at least as it’s presented today, as blind allegiance to the government. Blind faith such as that deprives one of the opportunity to use their intellect to weigh the facts and draw their own conclusions. There are times when I will stand behind my government, and times when I will not. In any case, the government is not the nation, so it’s improper to equate allegiance to the government with patriotism, which is what the government has done for self-serving reasons.

Individual Americans should ask themselves what harm they’ve suffered recently and how does the frequency of the harm they’ve actually suffered correlate with the degree of threat hyped by the government and the media. I think people will discover that real life is far less dangerous than the propaganda would have us believe. We should make an extra effort to study the things that we fear. The best antidote to fear is knowledge. Knowing the reality of the dangers we face will inoculate us against manipulation of our fears. We must also study the causes of the threats we face. We must have the intellectual courage to honestly assess whether our behavior is increasing or decreasing particular dangers, such as the threat of terrorism.

We should also take everything the agenda-driven media reports with a big grain of salt. Aside from the obvious profit motives that taint its reporting, the mainstream media has allowed itself to become the propaganda mouthpiece of the government. Instead of passively absorbing the soothing, brainwashing emanations of the TV, we should make the effort to seek out, research, and cross check the news for ourselves. The Internet makes this quite easy, at least for now. The powers that be are clearly trying to reign in the freedom that the Internet offers today. That’s what this whole “net neutrality” debate is about.

Immigration

Immigration has been a chronic cause of fear in America. According to some people the U.S. is apparently being flooded with Mexican immigrants who are bypassing the orderly legal immigration process – which is tacitly endorsed by the government and corporations, by the way – and supposedly taking jobs away from Americans. Whether Mexicans are actually taking jobs from Americans or not, the mere possibility of an American losing his or her job to an immigrant evokes fear. And of course, we innately xenophobic human beings are initially fearful of any people we perceive as “different.”

It seems that the most recent immigrants to America are always convenient scapegoats for any problems of the day. Today the scapegoat group is Mexican immigrants. In the 1970s and 1980s it was Vietnamese and Cuban immigrants. Before that it was Italian and Irish immigrants. Before that it was Chinese immigrants. This list of persecuted immigrant groups is merely illustrative, but by no means exhaustive.

When America was thriving economically there was plenty of wealth to go around, so after a time Americans grudgingly accepted each new group of immigrants. During the waves of immigration that began in the 1970s, however, it seems though the animosity toward immigrants has grown more intense, probably because our standard of living has been declining at the same time. More people sharing a shrinking pie does not make people happy.

Why should immigrants be a cause of fear? Is it because they are “different” from us? If so, then perhaps the way to quell fear is to get to know these immigrants. I’ve had occasion recently to talk with Mexican immigrants and have had no problem getting along with them or seeing them as little different from me. In fact, I’ve found them to be more open and friendly than many Americans. As always, fear of the unknown can be overcome by knowing.

Are illegal Mexican immigrants today really taking jobs from Americans? If so, then it’s probably occurring mostly in occupations that are controlled by corporations, such as in the service sector and large scale agriculture. Despite official condemnation of illegal immigration, illegal immigrants help keep the economic engine of corporate America humming. They are officially condemned, but unofficially welcomed. One solution is for Americans to create jobs for themselves that cannot be taken away. That is, become self-employed. Of course, even this is not a perfect solution if one’s chosen trade is also popular with illegal immigrants, such as construction or landscaping. Unfortunately, illegal immigrants are often willing to work for less money than Americans, but the main reason they can afford to do so is that they have a lower cost of living. The lesson, then, is that if Americans want to compete directly with illegal immigrants, they have to reduce their cost of living too. The alternative is to select a trade that’s not popular with illegal immigrants, or for which they are not qualified because they lack the necessary education or language skills. Attempting to stop the flow of illegal immigrants is probably futile, unless we repeal corporate-backed treaties such as NAFTA, which has severely harmed Mexico’s economy, or the new SPP, so it would be better to find a way to cope with illegal immigration.

Urbanization

Urbanization has undermined self-efficacy and made people overly dependent on others and too little dependent on themselves. I grew up as an urbanite, and I still love urban life. Yet a few years ago I moved to rural Kentucky, which I also love. One of the first things I discovered is that out here one has to be self-sufficient. One cannot simply open up the phone book and choose from a plethora of services for hire. So I’ve reluctantly become a roofer, electrician, landscaper, tree trimmer, exterminator, house framer, carpenter, floorer, plasterer, blind installer, plumber, painter, appliance installer, household mover, auto mechanic, bicycle mechanic, farmer, and furniture repairer. Many of my neighbors, including some who are pretty old, are equally self-sufficient. When I lived in cities I used to farm out all of these tasks. Now it’s easier to do them myself than try to find someone else to do them. While I don’t particularly enjoy many of these activities, I do appreciate the renewed feeling of self confidence that I’ve acquired as a result. During a phone conversation just the other day, my cousin told me that I sound more confident than I did before I moved to Kentucky.

By contrast, living in an urban environment, one becomes dependent on a good job to pay for the high cost of living; public transit and taxis to get around; police for protection; people available for hire to perform any kind of service; stores and restaurants and entertainment venues (I’ve returned to reading books for entertainment and enlightenment); a saturation of infrastructure, including high speed Internet access outside of one’s house and dependable mobile communications (my mobile phone doesn’t work on my property, so a few weeks ago when my land line went out I had to drive a mile to get close to a mobile phone tower to call the telephone company). I’ve grown accustomed to living without all these things that urbanites take for granted. It took some getting used to, but in the end, it’s really not much of a loss at all.

The high population density associated with urbanization also increases the likelihood of our being afflicted by frightening diseases or victimized by crime or terrorism. It’s one thing to read about the crime rate or a horrific disease in a far off city. It’s downright frightening to read about crimes or diseases in your own city, where perhaps you spend a lot of time in public places.

For the better part of a century there has been a migration from rural America to urban and then suburban locales. I believe a reversal of that trend, a re-population of rural America, would do much to restore our self-confidence and reduce our fearfulness. And where I live, I have no fear whatsoever of crime, disease, or terrorism.

Environmental Desecration and Destruction

Environmental desecration and destruction, real or imagined, has long been a source of fear for Americans. Surprisingly, the vast majority of Americans – perhaps 80% – favor protecting the environment, which probably explains why they seem easily threatened by environmental problems. In the 1970s the grave concern was pollution (recall the anti-littering TV commercials featuring the teary-eyed native American). Today it’s the scarier and more nebulous concept of climate change.

I am an environmentalist at heart. I do everything I can to minimize my impact on the environment, to leave as small a footprint as possible. Nevertheless, I don’t buy into the anthropogenic climate change hysteria, and I have nothing to gain by rejecting this mantra. First of all, the earth’s climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years. It would be astonishing if our climate were not changing today. We know the earth has undergone radical climate changes in the past, without human cause. We also know that the earth regularly cycles between climate episodes, such as ice ages and warm periods, dating back to before humans even existed. It’s amusing to recall that back in the 1970s there was a hysteria about global cooling that was to occur with the onset of an overdue ice age. Today it’s global warming – oops, sorry, climate change. Even if humans are somehow responsible for today’s climate changes, it’s the result of nearly two centuries of industrial activity. It stands to reason that it will take two more centuries to reverse the damage we’ve caused, during which time we will have to cease all industrial activity.

Governments around the world, and most recently the U.S. government, have discovered that people can be terrified by predictions of environmental devastation, and that this terror can be channeled into convincing people to give up their rights in order to avert this coming environmental apocalypse. Countless acts of legislation are being formulated around the world to exploit and fuel this fear of environmental devastation in order to tax and control people.

Why fear something that we cannot control? As I said, even if we are responsible for climate change, we will effect no evident improvement to the climate within our lifetimes. The best we can do is seek to minimize our individual impact on the environment and hope for the best. If we are not responsible for climate change, then there is also little we can do, except what I’ve already advised. So why be afraid? Why not instead recognize that humans are marvelously adaptable and trust that we will find a way to cope with whatever climate changes occur? For instance, where I live I would be quite happy with warmer winters and an extended crop growing season. I’m not making light of climate change. I realize that such changes bring negative consequences as well as positive ones. I’m simply pointing out that if the climate is going to change, we might as well find a way to work with it instead of cowering with irrational fear.

Unwholesome Food

Unwholesome food probably plays a role in elevating Americans’ anxiety. When people lived in rural areas they ate wholesome, farm-fresh foods and drank well water. Now they eat fast food garbage oozing from the unsanitary orifices of food factories and drink water contaminated with chlorine and fluoride and god knows what else. It seems to me that this unhealthful diet has to affect peoples’ mood, behavior, and thinking ability. In addition to any physiological effects unwholesome food might have, thanks to the globalization of agriculture people are more anxious than ever about what’s in their food and where it came from.

Unfortunately, our declining standard of living, combined with misguided government subsidies to corporate agribusinesses have together pushed people away from wholesome foods toward this garbage we call food. Because more people in a household have to work longer hours, they are forced to eat highly processed, chemical-laden, microwaveable food or fast food. And because government subsidies encourage the production of junk food instead of wholesome food, junk food is cheaper.

Were people to move back to rural areas and eat fresh produce from their own yards or nearby farms, drink purer water, and eat home cooked meals, they’d probably be healthier, happier, less stressed, and have one less thing to fear: their food.

Modern Medicine

Modern medicine in America seems paradoxical to me. On the one hand, treatment of disease is far more profitable than prevention, so the former is emphasized and the latter is shunned. On the other hand, the medical system seems to encourage people to be afraid of so many things, so long as it can sell prophylactic medicines to “prevent” whatever it is that people are supposed to be afraid of. So the medical system simultaneously avoids preventing genuine, serious diseases while selling medicines to prevent dubious diseases, such as “restless leg syndrome.”

Why do people take so many medications today? It seems it’s out of fear of being afflicted by some disease or suffering the slightest discomfort. When I was a kid, hardly anybody took medications, at least chronically. Today it seems like many people, at least older people, are taking two or three medications, and some are taking quite a lot more. Some people are taking so many medications that some of their medications are to counteract the effect of others! Has the human species evolved so much in my lifetime that it can no longer survive without medicines? Are we living better, longer, because of those medicines?

Then there’s the explosion of antibacterial products: dish soaps, hand sanitizers, and household cleaning products. I recently read that there are more bacteria inside the human body than cells! And we’re worried about a little bacteria on our hands? It’s been my observation that the human mind and body thrive when exercised, and I believe that includes the immune system. It’s my hypothesis that mild exposure to pathogens exercises the body’s immune system, making it stronger. So at best, antibacterial products are probably counterproductive, if they even work at all. To me, the thing that stands out is the fear people have of exposure to a little bacteria, a fear promulgated by TV commercials.

Or look at flu vaccines. I recall with amusement the panic that ensued a couple of years ago when there was an insufficient supply of flu vaccine, and how people resorted to unscrupulous tactics to secure for themselves a shot of flu vaccine, as if it were a matter of life and death. It struck me at the time that people seemed more afraid of not getting a shot of flu vaccine than of getting the flu! Is a flu vaccine any more effective than just avoiding situations that might expose one to the flu and washing one’s hands regularly? Is there any need to panic just because one cannot obtain a shot of flu vaccine? Of course, the media loves to hype such shortages and drive people to panic, fearing they won’t get their lifesaving dose of flu vaccine. It’s a wonder that the human species managed to survive all these millennia without all these medications.

Or how about the emotional roller coaster of dietary recommendations from the “experts.” It seems as if every food has at one time or another been demonized and lauded. It seems that virtually everything causes cancer. Instead of allowing ourselves be terrorized by these scare tactics, maybe we should stop listening to these so-called experts and just use our own common sense and eat what we like in sensible proportions.

The human body is remarkably capable of taking care of itself. It can repair injuries and neutralize pathogens. Sometimes it needs a little assistance, but most of the time all the body needs is proper nutrition, exercise, and rest, three things that seem to be in short supply in modern America. If we take good care of ourselves we needn’t be so fearful of disease.

Political Correctness

Political correctness has made Americans afraid of expressing an opinion. Not only do they fear social ostracism for thinking “differently” from the herd, but they fear the very real prospect of losing their jobs. It’s not just radio or TV hosts whose jobs are at risk for a politically incorrect slip of the tongue. Even a lowly airline employee who posts revealing photos of herself on the Internet, not involving her employer in any way, can be fired because her company fears her behavior may subject the company to charges of condoning politically incorrect behavior. Even an esteemed ex-President who dares to criticize Israel in the mildest fashion can be subjected to vicious attacks because it’s politically incorrect to criticize Israel.

What’s worse than embracing the notion of political correctness is our zero tolerance approach to dealing with offenders. Nobody is allowed to redress a mistake anymore. One mistake and the public ghoulishly bellows, “Off with his head.” People are prone to making mistakes, and unless they are given a chance to redress their mistakes and learn from them, they will probably just keep making the same mistakes. Instead of giving people a chance to use their mistakes to become better and wiser, punishing them will probably just reinforce their objectionable beliefs or at least make them bitter.

It seems to me everybody should be allowed to express their opinion, no matter how offensive it is. People hearing an objectionable opinion have three choices: they can stop listening, they can challenge the opinion, or they can make a mental note to apply more critical thinking to opinions that person expresses in the future. When people make a habit of expressing offensive or demonstrably wrong opinions, other people will eventually dismiss such people as nuts and their opinions will carry no weight (Ann Coulter comes to mind). There is a fourth choice too: punishing a person for expressing an “incorrect” opinion. That seems to be the option we as a society have zealously embraced.

Why are people so afraid of letting others express a divergent opinion? Surely if a popular belief is sound it can withstand being questioned and debated. If a belief is not sound then it should be debated, refuted, and abandoned. Maybe it’s like homosexuality. People seem to believe that gay and straight are on opposite sides of a sharp dividing line and that a single homosexual act tosses a straight person to the other side of that line. (I wonder, does a single heterosexual act make one straight again?) That’s why insecure straight men get so uptight about homoeroticism. They know that a single “transgression” will brand them “gay.” Similarly, I think people are afraid of having even one of their beliefs shown to be wrong, as if harboring a single demonstrably wrong belief makes all of their beliefs wrong. Maybe people are too insecure to accept that they can be wrong about some things while being right about others. So political correctness becomes a personal defense mechanism. If people just adopt the officially sanctioned beliefs they cannot be criticized and their beliefs cannot be challenged – political correctness sees to that. Since their beliefs cannot be challenged, their beliefs cannot be shown to be wrong, and the person’s mental temple remains unperturbed. It might also be that acknowledging upsetting truths will demand action, and people are basically lazy. For example, if Americans believed – and cared – that Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians, paid for by the U.S., they might feel compelled to act, to demand a change in U.S. policy. Since today’s political correctness forbids criticism of Israel on any grounds, people are free to ignore what’s going on in Israel and console themselves that Israel is simply protecting its right to exist.

Surprisingly, universities, which once seemed to be sanctuaries of free thought are now prisons of thought conformity. Many of our politically correct notions seem to emanate from universities today. Why should that be? Judging from the uniformity of thought evident at many different universities, I think that government and perhaps corporate domination of universities is somehow responsible. Not only are many universities operated by state governments, but most universities, public and private, receive lucrative funding from the federal government. These two facts place the government in a prime position to dictate to the universities what constitutes acceptable thought. Although some politically correct thoughts, such as affirmative action, are openly codified, the government need not explicitly dictate all such thoughts. Politically correct thoughts can be nurtured, and politically incorrect thoughts extinguished through example. A professor seeking research funds for government approved realms of thought will get funding; a professor seeking funds for realms of thought the government disapproves of will not.

Eventually the administrators at the university get the message about what kind of thought is acceptable and what is not, and then they become the enforcers. Political correctness flows down from the administrators, to the professors, and suffuses throughout the student body. Students, interested in finding jobs after graduation, understand that they have to conform in order to get a job – implicitly a corporate or government job – so they suspend their “deviant” views, temporarily. But when people get in the habit of temporarily suspending their own beliefs, eventually it becomes ingrained. Behavior becomes Pavlovian. Witness the reaction of that Florida university student body to the tasering of one of their own – they applauded. Why” Because the student asked politically incorrect questions about the 2004 election, a topic that still demands vigorous investigation.

It’s not just universities that impose political correctness on their students. Elementary schools initiate the inculcation of political correctness and are actually even more oppressive. “Zero tolerance” is the favorite phrase in public schools anymore. I’ve read several stories about children as young as five years old being punished for drawing a gun in art class. Guns, of course, are one of the most politically incorrect symbols today. Is not “zero tolerance” the antithesis of civilization, which should instead promote tolerance? Aren’t Islamic countries, which Americans are so afraid of these days, infamous for their “zero tolerance” policies? It’s politically incorrect to practice zero tolerance toward gays in Iran, but acceptable to practice zero tolerance toward gun-drawing kindergarteners in America.

A specific example of political correctness run amok is California’s new law that imposes a fine of $100 for smoking in a car containing minors. It is not clear who gets fined if a non-driver is smoking. What if the only minor in the car is the one doing the smoking? What if the smoker opens a window to exhaust the smoke? That state is also exploring banning smoking in apartment complexes. It has banned smoking within 25 feet of a playground, and virtually all indoor, and many outdoor public places. What’s next? Banning smoking in one’s allegedly owned house when children are present? I’ll be surprised if this isn’t the next law to be passed. Why not ban smoking in one’s backyard when children are present? I don’t smoke, but this is getting ridiculous. Smokers must feel like they are under assault. You know, if I don’t want to be around smokers I just move away or politely ask them to refrain from smoking. The last time I picked up a hitchhiker I let him smoke in my car. I just had him crack his window and the smoke went right out without bothering me. There used to be a time when people were allowed to employ courtesy. Smokers are not even given the chance anymore to be courteous and smoke when and where they won’t bother anyone. They are simply crushed like a cigarette butt under the tyranny of laws imposed by the “moral” majority. Were I a smoker, I would be fearful of what anti-smoking law the majority was going to pass next. (Isn’t it interesting how the state is persecuting smokers – though not the corporations that manufacture cigarettes – yet it looks the other way concerning the diesel exhaust spewing from trucks. We mustn’t impose an undue burden on the poor corporate trucking industry.)

To many people smoking is a vile habit, so they feel no regret about the plight of smokers. But where does this kind of politically correct thinking stop? Many states require people to wear seatbelts in cars and helmets on motorcycles. New York city has barred people from eating a particular kind of fat. Many counties where I live are “dry,” meaning one cannot buy alcohol there, although consumption of alcohol acquired elsewhere is permitted. In Britain they’re talking about monitoring kids’ health and penalizing the parents if the kids are deemed “unhealthy.” The logical extension of such thinking is to monitor everyone’s health and punish anyone deemed by the government to be “unhealthy.” Do we want such a policy here? Wouldn’t such a policy cause tremendous anxiety in the population? I mean, in addition to all one’s other worries, under such a regimen people would also have to worry about conforming to capricious state guidelines regarding the most personal of matters: one’s health.

And what of McMansions and SUVs? I have neither, but I don’t begrudge others the right to have them. After all, the owners of such hated symbols are paying for them. They are paying higher prices to buy them, higher taxes to the government, and higher fuel costs (and fuel taxes) to run them. But, of course, it’s politically incorrect to defend such symbols.

Of all the causes of fear in America, political correctness is perhaps the most difficult to counter, if only because violating the rules of political correctness carries potentially serious consequences, such as the loss of a job. While it’s relatively easy for an individual to break the shackles that reign in his or her opinions, how does one force everyone else who hears those opinions to consider them thoughtfully and not dismiss them as politically incorrect? We cannot force others to open their minds. The best we can do is open our own minds and try to set an example for others. We spend far too much time worrying about what others are doing, and not enough time examining our own lives to ensure that we live up to the standards we would impose on others.

Sensitive topics can be broached diplomatically. One doesn’t have to bluntly state an opinion as it it’s a fact, closed to discussion. One can instead offer an opinion and invite discussion. I have done this with people where I live, gently challenging some of their views. Instead of being offended, some of these people have described me as a “breath of fresh air.”

Government Brutality

Government brutality has long been employed in despotic countries to instill fear in the subject population; today it’s being used for that purpose here. The nationwide unleashing of police brutality and the unjustifiable, reflexive arrest of peaceful protesters almost seems coordinated from on high, as if it’s some kind of massive psychological operation intended to terrorize Americans into submitting to their government. Such a scheme would dovetail with all the recently passed laws and presidential executive orders apparently crafted to impose a police state in America with the throw of a switch.

One might assume that the government would seek to conceal its ugly activities regarding the torture of “enemy combatants,” the rendition of victims to foreign countries to be tortured, and the denial of constitutionally protected rights to American citizens. Yet exposure of these tactics instills fear in the American public. Slowly, Americans are starting to realize, even if only deep within the recesses of their subconscious, that they are not safe from their government. If the government wants to lock up any one of us and throw away the key, it can do so. If that doesn’t inspire fear in us, then we must be comatose. The English had their Tower of London; America has Guantanamo. Both are symbols of government power intended to fill the hearts of citizens with terror.

Observing the participation of the mercenary corps known as Blackwater in both Iraq and New Orleans, I believe that it is being exercised for future deployment here in America. Besides training the members of Blackwater in effective tactics and to be insensitive to the people they oppress, the government is fine tuning its tactics for deploying these mercenaries. When the police state here becomes overt, Blackwater may well become a new instrument for instilling fear in the American public. Currently such fears are only hypothetical and are harbored by a small minority of the population who recognize the potential dangers in utilizing such forces, which are free of any accountability.

A significant percentage of Americans now believe 9/11 was an “inside job.” For the first three years following 9/11 I accepted the official account. But following the publication of the 9/11 Commission Report I started to get suspicious. Not only was the report itself wanting, but one day it suddenly dawned on me how similar the events before, during, and after 9/11 were to those of the Oklahoma City bombing, which I had long ago concluded was perpetrated by the U.S. government for similar motivations, namely, to pass Clinton’s repressive legislation. The more I investigated 9/11, the more fishy the official story smelled. Today I am 99% convinced that the U.S. government was deeply involved in perpetrating 9/11, and I’m not alone. Many ordinary Americans and many highly educated experts in various fields of study harbor similar suspicions. All we mere citizens have to work with in the cases of Oklahoma City and 9/11 is circumstantial evidence because the government, in the name of “national security,” conceals from us all the physical evidence, but in both cases there are mountains of circumstantial evidence of government involvement. Frankly, the London and Madrid subway bombings smell of government involvement too.

There’s also no doubt that the war in Iraq was desired before 9/11. There’s increasing evidence that the Patriot Act was written before 9/11. And now there’s new evidence that warrantless spying on Americans began before 9/11. What the sought for war in Iraq and the Patriot Act needed to become reality was a justification, a “New Pearl Harbor,” which 9/11 conveniently provided.

What effect do such momentous conclusions have on one’s psyche? It should scare the hell out of most people to acknowledge that their own government could commit such horrific acts in order to justify repressive legislation at home and unjustified wars abroad. It has certainly had that effect on me. The significant numbers of Americans who believe the government was involved in 9/11 probably cope with that belief in different ways, including simply avoiding thinking about it. Nevertheless, the fears are still there, gnawing away in the back of one’s mind. People have pointed out that governments sometimes use shock treatment to pummel their subjects into submission. Well, 9/11 was one doozie of a shock. About the only thing that could surpass it in shock value would be a nuclear detonation in an American city …

Some government brutality is psychological rather than physical. For instance, “airport security” is primarily intended to inculcate Americans to being corralled, herded, and humiliated by the government. How many “terrorists” has tightened airport security intercepted in the last six years? None. How many Americans have been terrorized, humiliated, and inconvenienced by tightened airport security in the last six years? Millions.

The various “watch lists” are tools for terrorizing Americans. I’ve read several comments recently by ordinary Americans who are genuinely fearful of being put on these watch lists. I admit, that I’m afraid of being put on these lists myself, and I fear essays like this one will expedite my inclusion on such lists. I’ve lost track of how many loyal Americans, including active duty military soldiers and officers, who have found themselves on these lists. Clearly, any list of potential terrorists that includes large numbers of loyal Americans, such as the government’s own soldiers, cannot be all that effective. So why do these lists exist? Because they give the government the power to deprive Americans of the freedom to travel. And, shrouded in secrecy, such lists are convenient tools for punishing Americans who criticize the government. These lists are nothing but tools of psychological brutality.

Another kind of psychological brutality is the government’s recruiting of us citizens to tattle on each other. I read an article recently about a child being interrogated by his doctor to inform on his parents’ lifestyle! Driving down the freeway in urban areas one sees signs reading, “Report drunk drivers.” In airports and subways one hears, “Report suspicious activity.” We have volunteer citizen patrols now that wander through our neighborhoods looking for suspicious activity. What qualifies as suspicious rather than simply nonconforming activity? I guess that’s up to the citizens doing the patrolling to decide. If you piss off you neighbor today you might yourself being reported to the “authorities.” Must we now fear our neighbors and our own children? It would seem so. This is so “1984.”

Voter disenfranchisement is another form of psychological brutality. Depriving people of the opportunity to vote increases their sense of helplessness. Some disenfranchisement techniques deliberately instill the fear of arrest in would-be voters should they attempt to exercise their right to vote.

In between physical and psychological brutality is economic brutality. Asset forfeiture, which started out targeting the mafia, has undergone steady mission creep, and now gobbles up the assets of drug dealers, drug users, people who hire prostitutes (and even people who decline the uninvited services of undercover cops posing as prostitutes), drunk drivers, terrorists, and law-abiding citizens carrying any amount of cash the government deems “excessive.” The government has an incentive to confiscate peoples’ assets as well because it gets to keep the cash proceeds from auctioning those assets. The government circumvents the Constitution by absurdly charging one’s assets, rather than the individual, with a crime. Assets are not guaranteed due process by the Constitution, although I still cannot see how asset forfeiture gets around the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. No doubt, the fear of having one’s assets confiscated instills fear in many Americans.

Similar to asset forfeiture are new executive orders “blocking” people’s property, whatever that Orwellian phrase means. In the last five years president Bush has issued fourteen executive orders “blocking” peoples’ property for various reasons. These orders mean that, among other things, one’s bank accounts are frozen. Imagine trying to survive in our modern society without access to your money. Most peoples’ lives in America would be quickly ruined if they could not access their money. In addition, these “blocking” orders extend to associates of “blocked” people, and then to associates of associates, and so on. Assuming the six degrees of separation theory is correct, a mere six iterations of this blocking process could “block” the property of all Americans.

One of the things that’s wrong with our whole system of government and business is that it lauds competition. Competition may be fine for genetic traits or animals, but humans, by virtue of their intellect, should be more sophisticated than that. It seems that the people best equipped to compete against other people are those without the burden of a conscience. In fact, the more of a sociopath one is, the higher they are likely to rise in government or business. That’s because decent people will not engage in the sort of behavior that sociopaths will, which gives the latter the advantage.

Ultimately, it seems that one has to essentially become a criminal to reach the top tiers of government or business. It’s no surprise, then, that a thuggish, criminal mentality trickles down through the ranks to the foot soldiers at the bottom, such as our increasingly brutal police. Making matters worse, the Army is issuing increasing numbers of “moral waivers” in order to admit genuine criminals into its ranks.

Perhaps one way to improve the caliber of people serving in the government is to replace voluntary service with mandatory service. Like we do with jury duty, we could issue people a summons to be a senator, congressman, or policeman for a single term of service. (I deliberately avoided proposing the application of this concept to soldiers – i.e. conscription – because I oppose maintaining a standing army.) Once a person served in a particular position, they could never do so again. Such an approach would recruit a much more representative cross section of society into government, and since they would serve only a single term, there would be a constant flow of fresh and contemporary ideas into government. This, I believe, was the original intent behind the House of Representatives. People might object to such a scheme on the grounds that the people serving would be amateurs. Not only do I view that as a plus, but how much worse a job could amateurs do than the ossified politicians who are entrenched in the government today? At the very least, this new approach would greatly reduce the number of authoritarian sociopaths in government.

The “Injustice System”

The “Injustice System” is, unfortunately, the best term for the legal system we have in America today. Or as I like to say, “Justice goes to the highest bidder.” Both criminal and civil law have become farcical, miscarriages of justice.

It’s routine now for prosecutors in criminal cases to pile on as many questionable charges as possible in order to elicit a guilty plea from a defendant and bypass a trial altogether. For example, if someone robs a bank today they are likely to face at least three charges, each with their own prison time: bank robbery, using a gun during the commission of a crime, and fleeing the scene of a crime. For good measure they might also be charged with possessing an unregistered firearm or carrying a concealed firearm. And if they had a buddy along, then they might also be charged with conspiracy. And if the two conspirators planned their crime via e-mail, they might also be charged with wire fraud or some such thing. As a result of all this charge stacking and plea bargaining, very few criminal cases go to trial anymore. But just because the process results in the incarceration of the criminal, is it a just process? Is it justice for the prosecutor to pile on charges and threaten maximum retribution if the defendant opts for a Constitutionally protected jury trial, just to elicit a guilty plea?

Until recently, the justice system punished people for what they did, not what they thought. Modern hate crime laws punish people for what they think. Is the hurt felt by the victim of a crime dependent on what the perpetrator thinks? And how can the thoughts of the perpetrator be ascertained reliably enough – i.e. “beyond a reasonable doubt” – to qualify as justice? Hate crime laws simply create more reasons for people to be fearful. It’s not enough anymore to fear merely being a victim of crime. No, now we have to fear being singled out to become a crime victim because we are gay, black, foreign, or whatever.

The logical extension of hate crime laws that punish people for what they think is laws that punish people for what they intend to do. Has anybody seen the movie “Minority Report”? That is today’s reality! Many individuals have been arrested in America because they intended to travel overseas to have sex with children. These people are arrested in a completely different country from where the crime is supposed to occur sometime in the future! Senator Larry Craig was arrested because he supposedly intended to arrange for sex in a public restroom. As I understand it, the Senator spoke no words and didn’t touch or even see his would-be partner until he was arrested. He certainly was not engaged in an act of public sex, which is generally illegal. What if the Senator had simply left the restroom? Or what if the would-be child molester changed his mind on the way to Thailand and upon arriving engaged in nothing more criminal than visiting tourist attractions? In these cases, no crimes would have occurred. Yet the would-be perpetrators were preemptively arrested anyway. How can any “justice” system punish people for crimes they have not yet committed?

Then there’s the war on drugs. Half of the more than two million people in prison in America – more prisoners than in any other nation on Earth – are there for drug offenses, in many cases mere possession of drugs for personal use. What is the justification? That these users are harming themselves? If so, then we need to make cigarettes, alcohol, and fast food illegal immediately. And how much harm does the incarceration inflict compared to the drug use? And why should some drugs be banned, when other, more damaging drugs are legal? I’m speaking, of course, of cigarettes and alcohol, which cause more harm and kill more people than all other drugs combined. Could it be that the corporations that manufacture alcohol and cigarettes are politically well connected? Is a system that gives preferential treatment to politically connected corporations really a system of “justice”? Or is it a system of “Justice goes to the highest bidder”?

And what of our wonderful death penalty? Between corrupt cops and prosecutors, incompetent public defenders, and apathetic judges, there’s no question that innocent people have been executed, and in the most cruel and degrading manner. The recent Duke non-rape case is a perfect example of this corruption in action. The depth of malfeasance that the police and the prosecutor were willing to stoop to in that case was simply astounding. Had the defendants been too poor to afford competent attorneys, they almost certainly would have been convicted and the prosecutor would still be in office. Unfortunately, many, many poor defendants have not been so lucky and have been wrongfully convicted and even executed. It’s not uncommon today for the government to resist examining DNA evidence, a tool it championed, if it might exonerate someone who’s already been convicted, even if that person is sitting on death row awaiting execution. This is justice?

The civil “justice” system is equally perverted. Today one can be sued for any reason, no matter how frivolous. In fact, it’s routine now for opportunistic people seeking to exploit a mishap to sue everybody even remotely connected with a case, hoping to get a big settlement from whichever defendant – it doesn’t matter which – has the deepest pockets. Just recently I read about a police officer who is suing the grandparents of a child who nearly drowned in a backyard swimming pool. The reason? The officer, performing her duties by responding to an emergency, slipped on a wet floor and broke her knee. Hello?! Isn’t there an implied risk associated with being a police officer? Doesn’t the city have insurance for on the job injuries? Obviously, this officer is exploiting the justice system to indulge in a little opportunism, at the expense of a family that has already suffered a horrendous loss, as the child is brain damaged as a result of the mishap. Sadly, the officer will probably prevail.

It pained me to ask some local boys not to skateboard off my elevated front porch out of my fear of legal liability. When I was a kid I did stuff like that all the time. Christ, I could have sued the pants off lots of people back then for all the injuries I suffered on their property. If only I had known …

Lost in the myriad letters of the law is the notion of “justice.” People can try all they want to “do the right thing,” to have good intentions. It doesn’t matter. All it takes is for a clever lawyer to be able to show that they violated some letter of the law and they are screwed. Of course, considering how many laws are on the books, it’s pretty easy to find anyone in violation of some law these days. Purportedly, the IRS used to boast that it could convict anyone of tax evasion, thanks to the complex and contradictory tax code.

And what about the Christian notion of forgiveness? I thought America was a Christian nation, and that Christians are supposed to forgive even people who deliberately commit wrongs. Yet our “justice” system refuses to forgive even people who are merely declared negligent, even if unwittingly. Why does America pick and choose which Christian principles it’s going to abide by?

Then there’s eminent domain. Once reserved as a tool for improving the common good, it has now metastasized into a tool for corporations to acquire valuable real estate on the cheap. Not surprisingly, these corporations just happen to be politically well connected. Once again, “Justice goes to the highest bidder.”

I think all Americans understand, deep in their hearts, that unless one has a lot of money, the justice system is simply not going to serve them, whether as a plaintiff or a defendant. If that’s not proof of the system’s inherent injustice, I don’t know what is.

How can people not feel fear when their “justice” system is so capricious and so corrupted by money?

The ultimate injustice is when the government tells us that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for violating the law. It’s the best excuse! Nobody in the government is familiar with one-tenth of the laws on the books, so how can mere citizens be expected to be aware of all the laws?

I think all laws need to have a sunset clause so that they expire ten years after being enacted. In fact, that would be an excellent constitutional amendment. If a law is worthwhile, it will be easily renewed by the legislature. The effort involved in having to renew laws will ensure that very few laws, other than the most essential ones, will remain on the books. Such a whittling down of the laws, as well as the government power that ensues from enforcing the laws, will make America a much freer place.

We should seek to serve on a jury and judge both the defendant and the law. I admit that I have assiduously avoided jury duty my whole life because I’ve almost always been self employed and jury duty would have severely impacted my income. The last time I opted out of jury duty it was because it was scheduled right in the middle of my previously planned two month trip out of town. But now that I have such a low cost of living and can better afford to take time off work, I think I will serve on a jury if I’m asked again. Although most people, myself included, dread jury duty, it’s about the only place where a mere citizen can have any influence on the “injustice system.”

Religion

Religion in America has become increasingly partisan, absolutist, and public. Not only has religion in America crossed the line separating church and state by involving itself in politics, but the government is now attempting to employ religion for its own purposes. Recently it was disclosed that the Department of Homeland Security was quietly working to recruit religious leaders to help the government control citizens in the event martial law is imposed here. And the military is riddled with proselytizers promoting religion within its ranks, as well as influencing America’s agendas in other lands.

Religion, particularly Christianity, has long used fear to control people. In the old days, the church instilled fear in people by telling them they would go to hell. Nowadays people don’t really believe in heaven and hell, so the church has resorted to making people fearful of other religions, particularly Islam. The church also tries to convince its members that their religion is under assault from all sides by people hostile to religion. The irony is that religious freedom has flourished in the United States because of the separation of church and state. Look at countries where there is an official state religion. They don’t have anywhere near the religious freedom we have here. So fears that religion is under assault are simply unsupported by reality. The reason religious people succumb to the fear mongering that their religion is under assault is that the government has largely resisted endorsing their particular religion. It is true that Christians comprise the majority of religious people here. And it is true that the government has mostly resisted adopting Christianity as a governing principle for everyone else. That is hardly persecution. Nevertheless, the fear of persecution persists.

Religion has also been active in promoting fears about homosexuality and abortion, even though these, like religion itself, ought to be personal matters that are nobody else’s business.

In a supposedly free country like the United States, people should be free to practice whatever religion they wish, or none at all. And that includes not having their government impose religious beliefs on them under the guise of public policy. Ironically, some atheists – I’m an atheist – are so zealous in their desire to purge religion from society that they behave like religious fanatics. Atheism becomes, in effect, their religion. I find such people nonconstructive and intolerant.

Religious people need to recognize how much religion has flourished in this country and reject the notion that religion is under assault. It is not. Atheists must grant religious people the right to their own beliefs. We must recognize that other people are really no different from us. Do American Christians wake up each morning with a burning desire to conquer Islamic countries just because they practice a different religion? If not, then why do they believe that Islamic people have a single-minded desire to impose Islam on them? In all likelihood, people in Islamic countries wake up each morning, go to work, come home and have dinner with their families, worry about their children, worry about putting food on the table, and worry about paying the bills, just like their American counterparts.

Conclusion

I’ve cited a lengthy list of explanations for why Americans might be fearful. Some emanate from the government, some from corporations, and some from “society.” But what are governments, corporations, and society? They are us. And the reason they have become sources of fear is that we who serve in governments, corporations, and society are losing our humanity.

We’re forgetting what it means to be human, to have empathy, compassion, to care. We’re elevating money and power above life. We’re neglecting to see and appreciate the beauty of our world and its life forms. We’re no longer seeing each other as human, but as “the other,” a threat. We’re focusing on our differences rather than our more numerous similarities. Human beings living in a society that has lost its humanity cannot possibly feel truly secure.

Attacking another country, such as Iran, which has done us no harm, ought to be unconscionable. Yet it is openly discussed by the leading presidential candidates and is apparently acceptable to a majority of Americans. We cavalierly discuss the unjustified murder of men, women, and children – ordinary people who are just like ourselves. How would we like having a 30,000 pound bomb fall in the middle of our neighborhood while our children are playing outside? This is what we’re talking about visiting upon Iran. Why are so few Americans horrified by this prospect? What kind of people can be so cold hearted as to not be moved by such a prospect?

It’s up to each of us individuals to look for ways to restore our dwindling humanity. Look for opportunities to improve our society. For example, twice in the past week I’ve gone over to my neighbor’s house to help him with his computer. I really don’t enjoy helping people with their computers, but I did so because I like my neighbor and I recognize that helping him will strengthen the social fabric of our little community. Although I did not help him with the expectation of getting anything in return, in fact, I do get something in return: a more pleasant community in which to live.

It’s understandable that Americans, more harried than ever by their day to day struggle to survive, feel overwhelmed by their finances, by immigration, by environmental degradation, by the threat of terrorism. When one is overwhelmed with a particular emotion – depression, sadness, fear – it’s difficult to sit down and analyze why one is feeling that emotion, particularly if one is short on time. However, it’s extremely useful to do just that, to enumerate all the reasons why one feels depressed, sad, or fearful. Often times, this exercise will reveal that just a single factor is mostly responsible for the emotion one is feeling. At the very least, enumerating the causes of one’s emotion allows one to articulate, compartmentalize, examine, and constructively mitigate each cause.

Some of the factors I cited above frighten me, in particular, ever more oppressive government power. Just knowing what, specifically, frightens me is actually soothing, even if there’s little I can do to mitigate that fear. I don’t feel an inarticulable, debilitating fear; I know exactly what frightens me.

I realize that all Americans aren’t afraid of all the things I cited above, but I’ll bet all Americans are afraid of at least one of them. If we fail to analyze our fears and determine what, specifically, we are afraid of, then a generalized fear lurks in the back of our minds, unarticulated, and easily channeled for nefarious purposes. Clearly a significant percentage of Americans fall into this category, enough to lend support to the government’s efforts to exploit that fear. Americans are a thousand times as likely to die in a car crash (that happened just a month ago to someone I knew) as in a terrorist attack. Americans’ misplaced fear is simply irrational, perhaps the result of atrophied critical thinking skills, our dumbed down educational system, or our agenda-driven corporate-government media.

I suggested a number of times above that people would be better off living in rural communities than suburban or urban communities. Aside from improving our mental and physical well being, moving to a rural community has practical advantages, namely, a much lower cost of living. Young people living in expensive urban areas have few prospects for getting ahead. But rural areas are ripe with opportunity for enterprising young people with creative ideas and abundant energy.

There was a time when it made sense for Americans to migrate from rural areas to industrialized urban centers. Today, in light of our deindustrialization and declining standard of living, a reverse migration is appropriate, all the more so since peak oil will eventually render the current urban-suburban model unsustainable.

April 9, 2006 – A bright vision of a future based on freedom, harmony with each other and nature, and sustainable existence instead of grotesque overconsumption.

By Dave Eriqat

Preface

Awakening as the day’s first rays of sunlight brighten my bedroom, I dress hurriedly and run downstairs. Even though it’s a Saturday, I’m eager to get to “work.” Passing through the kitchen on my way to the back door, I notice that my wife, Anna, has already made some coffee. Pouring myself a cup, I take it with me as I head out the back door on my way to my workshop. My workshop is where I work. I’ve been self employed as a furniture maker for a couple of years now, and presently I’m working on a fine dresser for my neighbor, Sam. As I cross the yard on the way to my workshop, I see Anna tending our garden. Our young son William is feeding our small flock of chickens and other animals, intermittently playing with our two beautiful dogs.

We’ve had so many tomatoes this year that we’ve been trading them to the neighbors for their surplus produce. It’s been absolutely marvelous to enjoy such a variety of fresh, organic produce in this abundant year. I still recall the tasteless, wax-like produce we used to buy in the commercial grocery stores years ago, thinking that was normal. I’d never shop in another grocery store for produce after tasting what I and my neighbors can produce.

In addition to tomatoes, our garden produces several dozen other types of fruits, vegetables, beans, and herbs. Besides corn that we acquire from local farmers, we feed our chickens food scraps that we would otherwise throw away. In return our chickens produce the best tasting eggs imaginable, their poop is a surprisingly good fertilizer, and they are effective pest controllers. In all, our plot of land produces about half our food. The other half comes from my talent as a furniture maker. The dresser I’m making for Sam will provide us with meat from his farm for several months.

I used to work in Manhattan as an accountant for a large firm, where I was paid a large salary. My wife and I owned a great condo, a nice car, and had all the trendiest gadgets. We dined in the finest restaurants, went to Broadway shows, and occasionally flew first class to Europe. We really thought we were “fulfilled.” One day, while reading about the “downshifting” trend in Europe, I realized just how unfulfilling our life really was. I also came to appreciate how little control we had over our lives. I was totally dependent on my employer to maintain our precarious existence. Without my high paying job, we’d promptly be forced to give up our nice condo, car, and luxurious living. I discussed these thoughts with my wife, but it took many months for the truth of my words to sink in to both of us. We weren’t “living” in any real sense; we were existing. Worse, we were not in control of our lives, but existed at the whim of the executives controlling my firm. After much talk, we sold our condo and car, moved to rural Kentucky, and bought an old house with some land. It was a major transition for us, especially since we didn’t know a soul there, but the lifestyle quickly grew on us. The most surreal thing about our new life was the absence of stress about finances, job security, noise, crime, etc. I daresay, we had unwittingly found paradise. While we never thought about having children when we lived in Manhattan, somehow, living in the country made childrearing seem like the most natural thing in the world, and it wasn’t long after we moved to that paradise that Anna became pregnant with our first child.

Today we largely support ourselves. We produce much of our own food. My talent is in great demand. I currently have orders for half a dozen pieces of furniture from my neighbors, all in exchange for products of their labor. I no longer have any fear about my job security.

Moreover, we’ve shunned much of the materialism we once regarded as essential to living. We don’t subscribe to cable television; our television is used only for watching movies on DVDs which we share amongst our community. We got rid of our fancy car and bought an old pickup truck, but we rarely even drive that because pretty much everything we need is near enough that we can use our bicycles. We have no technological gadgets, not even a mobile phone. We have a computer and a dialup Internet connection, which we use for e-mail and reading news online. Our life is much simpler than it was, but we are happier. Looking back, it’s surprising how much stress came from having to acquire and maintain all those gadgets we thought were so vital. Besides working, we spend a lot of time talking to each other, visiting with our friendly neighbors, playing cards with them, and reading books that we also share amongst our community. Even our limited dependence on our neighbors has reintroduced us to the concept of tolerance for others’ differences. Anna is now learning to knit sweaters from one of our neighbors, whom in New York we would have considered too odd to associate with. And now my brother, who is worried about his own job security, has decided to move here. We’re looking for a house for him now, and it will be wonderful to have him and his wife living near us.

Introduction

Responding to my essay titled The End of Civilization, some people suggested I should write about the solutions I referred to in passing. The foregoing fiction is meant to introduce readers of this essay to what I see as one solution to the many crises facing humanity and our planet. In a nutshell, my solution to what ails us and our planet is this: reject consumerism, globalization, corporatism, and government, and return to localized, productive, community-oriented, sustainable living. The purpose of this essay is not to condemn, criticize, or judge anyone, but to get people to open their minds to the possibility of a different way of living than what they’ve been taught to pursue. Although I frequently refer to the United States, much of what I have to say applies to the whole industrialized world.

Production Versus Consumption

The United States economy today largely revolves around consumption. Everywhere one turns in this country they are bombarded with messages telling them to consume, consume, consume. One can even see such advertising today on the risers of steps in subway stations! And we have responded as prodded, consuming to no end. But are we happy? I don’t think so. In fact, it seems that the people I’ve known to consume the most are the least happy. It’s as if their consumerism is a surrogate for happiness.

By contrast, enormous satisfaction comes from producing something, especially if the product embodies one’s own special talent or skill or is inspired by one’s own initiative. This, of course, is the opposite from conditions in the United States today. Listening to people talk about their jobs, it seems that most people in this country hate their jobs. Can you blame them? They are not actually producing anything of value, unless one considers working as a retail sales clerk, serving food in a restaurant, or riding telephones on a cube farm to have great value. In order to produce something of real value, one needs a skill, and possessing such a skill affords one a sense of self worth and job security. I’ll bet plumbers enjoy more job satisfaction than stock brokers.

Although people consume and consume, few, it seems, question whether their consumption is making them happier, or whether it might actually be making them unhappier. For example, you buy a mobile phone and it comes with an allotment of minutes each month and a two-year contract. Now, in order to get the maximum value out of your purchase, you feel pressure to use your full allotment of minutes, but at the same time you fear exceeding that allotment because you’ll get reamed. Later you decide you want to get a different mobile phone service, but too bad, you’re trapped in a two-year contract. Mobile phones are certainly convenient, but think back before we had them. We also didn’t have to worry about receiving phone calls at unappreciated times, getting work-related calls at home, remembering to pay another monthly bill, using up our allotted minutes, or being locked in a contract. Or take that latest trendy gadget you bought. Did it work perfectly, or did you pull your hair out trying to get it to work satisfactorily? And how did you feel when, right after you spent your hard-earned money on that gadget, a better model came out at a lower price? Six months later, was it sitting dormant on a shelf in a closet? Might you have been happier if you simply hadn’t bought it in the first place? Consider that if you had not bought that gadget, you might have experienced less stress and have more money in the bank or less debt on your credit card today.

Obviously, we need to consume some things, such as food, in order to survive. Clothes to wear are nice too. But needless consumption, either because we’re programmed by advertising to consume or because we’re searching in vain for something to make us happy, merely increases our debt and depletes our planet’s vital resources. If instead of indiscriminately consuming everything in sight, we consumed only what we really needed, and then produced ourselves that which we consumed, we’d be a lot happier and wealthier, and our planet would thank us for it.

Local Versus Global

I’m not suggesting that we should each manufacture everything we use. What I’m saying is that we should look to ourselves first; if we cannot provide what we need, then we should look to our neighbors; then our town; then we should reconsider if we really need the thing; finally, and only as a last resort, look outside our local community. Imports should be the exception, not the norm. Some people might argue that imports result in cheaper products. This is precisely the problem with our way of life. Because everything is too cheap we consume and consume. If things cost more, we’d consume only what we needed, and when we did consume locally produced products, it would benefit our families and neighbors, not faceless corporations in faraway lands.

Twice in the last year I’ve seen in local grocery stores garlic from China for sale! Think about that for a moment. This tiny bag of garlic, which is being sold for about one dollar, traveled more than five thousand miles from China to California. Does that make sense, especially when the town of Gilroy, California, just four hundred miles away, is a major producer of garlic? This is an example of what’s so terribly wrong with globalization. It may well be cheaper in the cold, hard accounting of dollars and cents to farm garlic in China and ship it all the way to California, but what about the precious oil consumed and extra pollution generated by shipping it? What about the jobs lost in the United States? Just because we don’t have a good way to quantify these costs doesn’t mean that their cost is zero, that we can simply ignore them. I think most people would intuitively agree that shipping garlic from China to California makes no sense. This story about garlic is a trivial example, but multiplied by thousands of other products being shipped and sold in fantastic volumes and the problem becomes considerably more serious.

Imagine, on the other hand, that you exchanged some tomatoes you grew in your yard for garlic that your next door neighbor grew in his yard. How much more efficient and sustainable is this hypothetical scenario, compared to the absurd real-life scenario described above?

One of the greatest tragedies of modern America is the decimation of its small town “Main Streets” through globalized competition. It used to be that a small business owner would set up a business in their local community, the employees of this business would be family members or neighbors, the profits would be reinvested in the local community. The prices might have been higher than those of globalized businesses, but a higher level of service would have been provided as well. Such businesses fostered community stability and created a decent standard of living for generation after generation. Many of the people who once owned their own small businesses in such small towns now work for the very globalized corporations that helped put them out of business. In our consumerist frenzy to find the lowest prices we have unwittingly put ourselves out of business, so to speak.

We could return to the days where we shopped in local stores, owned by our neighbors, and which sold locally manufactured goods. We can afford to pay higher prices to local merchants by shopping more judiciously, by recognizing that there is intangible value in dealing with someone we know, and by appreciating the benefits afforded to our communities by such local businesses: community stability, increased standard of living, educating our young about responsibility. It’s our choice.

Community Versus Selfish Isolation

For the last century our technological innovations have helped increasingly isolate us from one another. Automobiles have afforded each person a private protective cocoon, shielding them from having to learn to interact civilly with others, as one must do on public transit. Video and music players have permitted people to enjoy movies and music at home instead of having to be respectful of and courteous to others at the theater. Telephones and e-mail have made it possible for people to avoid face-to-face communication, or confrontation, as the case may be. I have to confess that I’m guilty of excessive reliance on some these modern technologies myself. I use e-mail extensively, and for years I have preferred to watch movies at home. In my defense, however, e-mail is more efficient for transmitting and receiving detailed information, such as work specifications, and my preference for watching movies at home is due to the exorbitant cost of movie tickets compared to the low price of DVDs, not to mention the barrage of advertisements I’m forced to suffer in the movie theater. I would, however, happily give up these technologies in exchange for being a member of a real community.

These technologies have insidiously undermined our sense of community, without which there can be no tolerance, empathy, sharing, or charity. Indeed, for the last century what we have seen in our society is a gradual erosion of these traits of civil society. Instead of making “community” our personal responsibility, we’ve “outsourced” it to the government, relying on government to establish and enforce our moral boundaries, negotiate and mediate our relationships, and provide support to those members of society who need help. But can government really do as good a job at these things as a genuine community comprised of compassionate and engaged people?

Communities come in may forms. Some are geographical – that’s what most people think of when they think of the word “community” – and some are abstract, such as the “gay community” (I’m still trying to figure out what this is, by the way, as well as what is this “gay agenda” I keep hearing about). But the essential characteristic of a community is that it’s a group of people who voluntarily choose to associate with one another and work together, whether as a town, a neighborhood, a multi-generational family, or a hippie commune. Human beings are social creatures. We should want to associate with each other, and we are more productive and strong when we work together. That so many of us, myself included, elect to isolate ourselves is a symptom of the toxic and unhealthy social environment that we live in today. I blame this toxicity on our lazily substituting government, corporations, and consumerism for actual community, which takes hard work and a willingness to compromise to maintain.

Should we choose to return to a genuine community-oriented way of life, I think we’d all be a lot happier. In order for this to work, however, we also need to be willing to be more tolerant of each other, especially those of us who are the most different; it’s easy to tolerate those who are like you. Not only does diversity make life, particularly our social life, more interesting, but an outgrowth of tolerance is peace and harmony, something we desperately need today.

People Versus Government and Corporations

Governments and corporations seek only to dominate, control, and exploit people. Governments do it for power, while corporations do it for profit. Either because of forethought or spontaneous discovery, governments and corporations have for a century-and-a-half been wed in a symbiotic relationship that serves the principal goals of each, at the expense of people and the environment. It could be said that governments and corporations are the antithesis of life.

Today the governments of several of the world’s most industrialized countries are running amok, terrorizing their citizens, trampling their rights, seemingly desperate in their pursuit of power. As our own tolerance for each other has diminished, government has happily assumed the role of brutal enforcer in our “zero tolerance” society.

Similarly, corporations are engaged in a free-for-all exploitation of the planet and its people, aided and abetted by governments, for the profit of a few corporate executives and wealthy shareholders, and most seriously, without any regard to the future of our world. The problem with corporations today is that they no longer seem to have any restraint. The attitude seems to be not just that “greed is good,” but that if they aren’t as rapacious as they can possibly be, then one of their competitors will be. It’s almost as if corporations are in a war with one another to see which can be the more exploitative.

What can we do about this state of affairs? I really don’t know. Governments and corporations hold all the cards today. For now, though, we still own our own minds. The first step in restoring the preeminence of life over government and corporations is to recognize how much they control us. As I alluded in the preface above, when we buy into the “American Dream,” we actually become subservient to the government and corporations. We don’t need a fancy house, a fancy car, or a mobile phone with a built-in camera and Internet access to be happy. Sometimes, less is actually more.

Once we recognize that we’re being programmed to behave in ways that benefit governments and corporations, to the detriment of our very selves, and honestly address the question of what would truly make us happy, maybe then we can start taking steps in the right direction. Timothy Leary once said, “turn on, tune in, drop out.” This maxim is amazingly relevant today, and is the first step toward a healthier tomorrow.

Even if you are not willing to “drop out,” or live “off the grid,” simply examining how much governments and corporations control your daily existence will be instructive. For example, how much time do you spend in any given day complying with government rules or dealing with corporations? Just yesterday I spent about three hours preparing my income taxes, on top of the ten hours I had previously invested in that task. I also had to obtain a loan from a corporation to pay my income taxes to the government (Alas, I poorly managed my finances last year). And, in the past week I’ve had to pay bills to six different corporations. In light of all that utterly unproductive effort, I ought to be asking myself if what I’m getting in return is worth the effort.

It would be nice if we could “opt-out” of supporting the government through paying taxes. Unfortunately, the government is probably not going to go along with that idea. But we can look for legal ways to reduce our taxes. For example, by living a simpler lifestyle and augmenting our income by growing our own food, we can take a job that pays less and thereby pay less tax, while increasing our independence and sense of self-efficacy. Bartering with your neighbors is a good way to avoid taxes too, as there are no practical means for the government to tax bartering. Sharing things with your neighbors, besides fostering a sense of community, reduces spending and hence, sales taxes.

“Participation” in the political process through voting is a facade. Not only are some elections in the United States blatantly rigged today, but it really doesn’t matter who you elect to office anyway. Once in office, a politician is beholden to those who pay his or her campaign bills, which are primarily corporations and their lobbyists, and they are always working behind the scenes, pushing their agendas, not just on election day. Thus, regardless of what platform a candidate runs on, once in office, their platform quietly shifts to that which best serves their corporate sponsors. It’s a waste of time to vote. People who vote are consoling themselves with a false sense of participation, when in fact, their votes are irrelevant. If you want to participate in the political process, then give money to organizations that will lobby continuously on your behalf. Recognizing this reality of American politics, I stopped voting a decade-and-a-half ago and have since given money to organizations, such as Greenpeace, the NRDC, the NRA and the ACLU, to lobby on my behalf. Not playing the government’s election game is wonderfully liberating. Perhaps if enough people stopped “participating” in the political system, the mere lack of participants would send the loudest message of all.

I used to ridicule home schooling as quackery or paranoid anti-government posturing. Today I’m an ardent fan of home schooling. Besides the now obvious failure of public schools to actually educate students – the United States is nearly last among industrialized countries – it’s clear to me now that public schools are increasingly used as a vehicle for inculcating in young minds conformity, as well as devotion and obedience to the state. If I were to have children, I would absolutely school them at home. In fact, collective home schooling of several neighborhood children would be a great example of a community working together. As an interesting aside, governments seem to be waking up to the threat posed by free-thinking graduates of home schools, and are now starting to impose oppressive regulations on home schoolers, apparently with the hope of driving them out of “business.”

As for rejecting corporate influence from your life, it’s easy: simply don’t give them your money. Before spending money, ask yourself if you really need the thing or service you’re contemplating buying. When you do spend your money, spend it at local businesses as much as possible. In cases where you are forced to give your money to corporations – such as by laws requiring you to buy automobile insurance – then find a way to minimize the amount of money you give them. Buy a cheap car for which you can skip the comprehensive and collision coverage.

Sustainable Versus Unsustainable

Throughout time and place, indigenous people have usually developed the wisdom to live in harmony with their world. Most likely this wisdom ensued from their observation over a long period of time that communities that failed to live within their means perished. Our world today is much bigger than the confining worlds that indigenous people lived in long ago. Thanks to globalization, today it’s possible to create the illusion of limitless bounty. If we live beyond our means in America, we can simply import more resources from elsewhere on the globe, and never mind the impact outside our borders. Out of sight, out of mind. We live here in blissful ignorance.

Few people are aware when they buy a neat technological gadget, that toxins from the factory in China that manufactured that gadget pollute the river that the local people get their drinking water from. Rural people in China are suffering more and more to fuel our consumptive way of life. Yet because we don’t see these costs, we don’t realize that our way of life is not sustainable. One of the benefits of a localized economy, versus a globalized economy, is that it’s far easier for people to do a cost-benefit analysis of their systems of production.

Of course, in so many ways our exploitation of our environment is unsustainable. We are obviously overly dependent on fossil fuels, which are rapidly being depleted and which produce a lot of pollution. We can reduce our consumption of fossil fuels by traveling and transporting less, which implies more localized living, working, and production. Consuming fewer manufactured goods also reduces consumption of fossil fuels. Our oceans are dying from pollution, but mainly from overfishing. Fishing methods, such as rapaciously destructive bottom trawling and the use of indiscriminately lethal drift nets are killing the oceans. While such efficient fishing methods may make a corporate accountant’s heart jump with joy, how long will it be before the oceans are devoid of life? People have to eat, but they need to do so in a way that can be sustained. We burn down Amazon rain forests to make way for cattle ranches so that fast food restaurants can manufacture cheap, toxic burgers. What if we obtained beef from a local farmer instead and ground it ourselves to make burgers? Would that not be cheaper overall, more healthful, and more sustainable? Would that not benefit our local community? Would that not have a less adverse impact on our planet?

If we grew produce in backyard gardens instead of importing it from abroad, it would obviously be far more efficient energy-wise because we would not have to ship that produce all over the world, nor even make trips in the car to buy it. What’s more, grown without pesticides, such produce would be more healthful. It would be tastier and probably more nutritious, as well. By recycling organic waste in a compost pile and combining it with waste from small animals, such as chickens, we can create a perpetually sustainable ecosystem in our own backyards. Replicating this model over the entire planet would substantially improve our harmony with our world, and go a long way toward making our existence sustainable.

Summary

I hope the foregoing essay has slightly stimulated the imagination of some readers. Obviously, my point of view is biased by my negative view of government and corporations. I didn’t always harbor such negative biases, but over time I have seen the light.

Do I practice what I preach? Well, I’m working on it. Being a product of the very world I inveigh against, it’s hard for me to simply change overnight, but I am working on it. I am self employed as a craftsman of sorts: I make a comfortable living at home as a computer programmer writing software for a local company that manufactures air pollution monitoring equipment. I do own a house in rural Kentucky and I plan to set up a backyard garden and try to become as self sufficient as possible. I’m always looking for ways to minimize my impact on the environment (see Environmentalism 101 for my tips). I do minimize my association with government and corporations to the extent possible. I do try to shop at local businesses instead of stores belonging to globalized corporations. I do have a mobile phone, but it has no camera or Internet access, it’s a prepaid phone which I bought for emergencies, I hardly ever use it, and I would not miss it if I got rid of it. And I do shun consumerism, except for my fondness for DVDs, but as I said, I could live without even those.

What about people in far off places, such as Africa? What can be done to help them survive? I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. Perhaps if we just quit meddling in the affairs of such people and magnanimously assisted them when they asked for assistance, they could figure out their own solutions.

March 11, 2006 – A dark vision of the ultimate destiny to which our overconsumptive, overpopulated, overcompetitive, overaggressive way of life is leading us.

By Dave Eriqat

Introduction

I had a mild epiphany the other day: it’s not President Bush who’s living in a fantasy world, it’s most of his critics who are. I’m no apologist for Bush – I neither like nor dislike him. He’s no more significant to me than a fly buzzing around outside my window. So permit me to explain my reasoning.

People look at Bush’s invasion of Iraq and see a miserable failure. But a failure to do what? Democratize Iraq? Eliminate Iraq’s WMD arsenal? Reduce global terrorism? If those were, in fact, the reasons for invading Iraq, then the invasion would have to be classified as a failure. But what if the real reason was to secure Iraq’s oil supplies, perhaps not for immediate use, and perhaps not even for use by the United States? Then the invasion of Iraq would have to be judged a success, a “mission accomplished,” so to speak.

Or take Bush’s seemingly irresponsible handling of the domestic economy. How can any sane person fail to understand that cutting revenue while increasing spending will produce deficits, and that those deficits cannot increase in perpetuity? Sooner or later that accumulated debt has got to have consequences. Bush appears to be acting as if there were no tomorrow. But what if there really were no tomorrow, financially speaking? In that case, the reckless economic policies of today would not only be irrelevant, but might actually be shrewd. I mean, if one knows that he is not going to have to pay back his debts tomorrow, then why not borrow money like crazy today? In fact, if civilization is coming to an end, then why not use all that borrowed money to stock up on guns and vital resources, such as oil?

Now, I’m just one person. And I’ve been closely studying economic, environmental, and energy issues for only a few years. And I’m no expert. Yet I’ve come to the conclusion – and I don’t want to be a “Chicken Little” here – that civilization as we have known it for the last century is doomed. Our wasteful manner of living – heck, the sheer size of our human population – is unsustainable. Everywhere you look you can see signs of strain on the Earth, from spreading pollution of the air, water, and land, to disappearance of life in the seas, to depletion of natural resources. Something’s got to give. Things simply cannot continue as they have.

If I can see this, I would guess the United States Government, what with its thousands of full time experts, probably can too. Now, if you are the government (and I don’t mean Tom “I am the federal government” DeLay), and your experts tell you that civilization as we know it is doomed, what do you do? Well, for starters, you do not tell your population of sheeple. That would precipitate panic and result in premature doom, which would consume the government along with everything else. Above all, government seeks to survive, so you would maintain the facade of normalcy for the benefit of your population while you use what time you have left to prepare, as quietly as possible, for the inescapable future.

What will matter in this future? Commodities, principally energy, food, and water. Everything else is secondary. Money is far down the list in importance.

So how would you, the government, prepare for a future world in which commodities are king? By securing today as many of those commodities as possible. Hence, the U.S. government’s binge of military base building throughout the commodity-rich regions of the world. What would you not worry about? Money. The only concern you might have for money is to prevent its premature demise. Hence, the smoke and mirrors used to paint a pretty but false portrait of the economy. Some will argue that the government needs more than just energy, food, and water to survive. True, but by controlling the bulk of the world’s key commodities, everything else can be procured, including human labor and loyalty.

In preparing for the future demise of civilization you would also seek to increase the government’s power as much and as rapidly as possible. Why? To maintain control over those increasingly precious resources, and equally important, to control people – especially your own people – by force, if necessary. Viewed in this light, the government’s aggressive pursuit of power during the last five years makes perfect sense. Ironically, President Bush got it right when he reportedly referred to the now totally eviscerated United States Constitution as a “god damned piece of paper.” That’s really all it is anymore.

So what fantasy world are Bush’s critics living in? The fantasy world in which civilization can continue as it has in the past. That we can continue to improve the standard of living of everyone in the world if we just return to a more sharing and egalitarian way of life, like that which we enjoyed between World War II and the mid 1970s. This is a fantasy. The Earth has finite limits. We are finally starting to grasp that fact with respect to oil. But oil depletion is merely the first in a series of coming crises ensuing from the finite confines of our planet. The fundamental problem – and I’m not a Malthusian – is that there are simply too many people for the Earth to sustain. This is why fish are disappearing from the oceans, why the supply of oil is unable to keep up with demand, why the globe is being deforested, why animal and plant species are going extinct, why water wars are in the offing. Perhaps if people were wiser and more willing to share, and implicitly, less greedy, we could sustain the more than six billion people on Earth, but, alas, such idealism does not describe human beings.

The one thing that has enabled the human population to grow to the immense dimensions we see today is oil, the resource facing the greatest challenge from depletion. As the oil supply diminishes, in the absence of herculean efforts to use oil more efficiently and fairly, large numbers of human beings will die off. Before then, soaring prices for oil will probably destroy the economies of the countries most dependent on the stuff, if not the entire intricately linked world economy. This is what I mean by the end of civilization. Of course life will go on. But it won’t be anything like what we’ve been accustomed to. Life will be more like that of the Middle Ages, in which a few wealthy lords controlled all the resources and possessed all the power, and the rest of the people – the lucky ones, anyway – were veritable slaves under these lords. In many ways that state of affairs exists today, but it’s unseen by all but the most observant individuals. The future I’m talking about, though, is considerably more spartan than what the worker bees enjoy today.

I believe that what we’re witnessing today is the inception of a titanic and protracted competition for survival: between countries, between civilizations, between governments and their people. Moreover, I believe the Bush administration is the first to recognize this competitive future, which explains its fundamentally different – seemingly feckless – behavior compared to past administrations. Bush’s favored courtiers, which include corporations, are profiting today and will become the new nobility in the coming New Middle Ages.

Truth and Distractions

The governments of the world, and the U.S. Government in particular, don’t want their people to know the truth. Governments usually end up seeing themselves as entities distinct from their people, and usually end up competing against them. That is true of almost every government on Earth today, and is especially true of the U.S. Government. Keeping the truth from people helps a government achieve its goals, for if the people knew the truth they might demand that the government start actually serving them.

One way to keep the truth from people, aside from today’s favored approach of simply suppressing it, is to feed them a steady diet of compelling distractions.

Elections are one such distraction. Elections arouse peoples’ passions and keep them entertained for weeks or months. Elections even give people the illusion of participation, when, in fact, elections mean absolutely nothing in a country like the United States, which is run by money. Of course, elections are run by, and legitimized by governments.

Sex is another good distraction, both sex scandals and sex-related social issues. Look at how much mileage the media got out of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals. By comparison, sexual abuses by the government’s own schoolteachers outnumber those by the church, but we hear nary a word about them because they reflect negatively on the government, and the media cooperates in keeping this quiet. Sex between consenting adults, which ought to be nobody’s business except the participants’, also consumes our attention. Look at how much attention people pay to homosexuality. Why is that anybody else’s business? It’s not, obviously, but it’s a great distraction from important things, such as the government’s reverse-Robin Hood economic policies. The same with abortion. Abortion is a personal matter for the people involved. It’s none of society’s business. But government stokes the flames of debate about abortion and it consumes peoples’ attention. Sexually transmitted diseases – diseases in general – are also good distractions and have the added benefit of instilling fear in the population.

Crime is a perennial distraction. Even when the crime rate is falling, the government seems to hype the crime statistics, making it seem as if you’re putting your life at risk by merely setting foot outside your front door. Of course, “crime” breeds prisons, and prisons empower the government. Given the benefits of crime to the government, it comes as no surprise that the government creates crime by criminalizing harmless behavior such as using drugs or hiring a prostitute.

Religion is also a distraction. Domestically, the fashionable debate today revolves around the separation of church and state. There really ought not be any debate. The United States Constitution is unequivocal: the United States Government shall not recognize any particular religion. End of story. It does not say how states may address religion, but it does say that all powers not prohibited to the states belong to the states. In my opinion, then, if a state wants to recognize a religion, it may do so.

The “clash of civilizations” is perhaps the newest distraction, and a completely contrived one at that. The Muslim-Christian antipathy that exists today is both a religious and a cultural distraction. Decades ago, when we were affluent, we were taught to celebrate cultural diversity on our planet. Today that same diversity is touted as the explanation for the “clash of civilizations.” Granted, different cultures are, well, different. But that doesn’t mean that conflict must ensue, and for decades there was no conflict. Clearly, the flames of cultural conflict are being stoked. By whom? The governments of the world and the media. For example, just look at how European media companies and European governments colluded recently to provoke Muslims with those silly cartoons. Cultural conflict not only distracts the masses, but it provides governments with a credible justification to increase their power, for instance, to regulate headgear worn in schools and restrict immigration. Of course, “terrorism” is ancillary to this clash of civilizations and serves to intensify anxiety in the population. How many acts of terrorism are actually perpetrated by governments? It’s impossible to say, but it’s definitely more than zero, a lot more. So why does a government perpetrate an act of terrorism? To create a distraction, to increase its power, or both.

One thing all of these distractions have in common is collusion – intentional or incidental – between the government and the media. The government seems to be involved in all of these distractions to varying degrees, ranging from merely exaggerating the importance of some distractions to actively orchestrating others. And none of these distractions could successfully distract the public without the zealous participation of, and amplification by, the media. One might argue that the media is naturally drawn to report sensational news, as a moth is drawn to light, and most of these distractions qualify as sensational. But I don’t think it’s purely coincidental that the media relishes these stories when there is so much overlap between the agendas of the government and the corporations that comprise the “media.”

Both entities seek to dominate, exploit, and control the “little people.” And the little people, being xenophobic, uneducated, and fearful, are easily manipulated in a formulaic manner to help undermine their own welfare. Simply look at their support for Bush, a leader who has systematically attacked their standard of living, not to mention their liberties. All Bush had to do was push a few buttons labeled “religion,” “sex,” and “culture” to get them to react like Pavlovian dogs. And all this button pushing was, of course, happily assisted by the media.

Resource Competition

We humans like to think of ourselves as so much more sophisticated than “lower” animals. In affluent times and places we can afford to worry about silly things like what movies will win Oscar awards, whether our body looks good at the gym, or where we will take our next family vacation.

But our existence still depends on this fundamental equation: survival = food + water + shelter.

In leaner times, like those we’re heading into, the above equation becomes sharply apparent.

Food production today is highly dependent on oil. Oil powers our farm implements, oil and natural gas are ingredients in commercial pesticides and fertilizers, and oil transports food to market. Today food travels as far as 10,000 miles from where it’s produced to where it’s consumed, which would be impossible without oil. Oil vastly increases agricultural productivity. So it’s because of our largess of oil that the human population has been able to grow as large as it has. One might say that humans eat oil. We can, of course, produce food without oil – barring such evil manifestations as crops that are genetically engineered to require the use of petroleum-based pesticides – but without oil food production will be much lower.

Water is a resource we take for granted. We act as though there is no limit to the supplies of water, and that there are no repercussions to our profligate consumption of it. We’re building cities in places without adequate water supplies – Phoenix and Las Vegas come to mind – and we’re using up vast reservoirs of non-replenishable “fossil” water, such as the Ogallala Aquifer in the American Midwest. Just as we’re failing to plan for economic “rainy days,” we’re failing to regulate our water usage to prepare for a literal lack of rainy days. We seem to think that the replenishable water supply patterns will remain unchanged, an especially optimistic expectation if the Earth’s climate is truly in the midst of major change. But the water situation is even worse in some other places than in America. Water delivery is partly dependent on energy, just as food production is. It takes energy to pump water from the ground, to transport it to where it’s consumed, and even to treat it. Of course, food production is vitally dependent on water.

I hardly need mention the importance of oil except to say that for the first time in history, the demand curve is passing the supply curve. Moreover, the supply curve will soon be heading downward and we’ll find ourselves perpetually chasing this ever dwindling supply downhill. When demand merely exceeds supply the price of oil will increase. But when demand exceeds supply and the supply starts to diminish, then prices will really go up, enough to destroy economies or render impractical the transportation of food and water to some places. But the gap between supply and demand means more than just higher prices. It also means shortages. Those who can afford to buy oil will usually have their needs satisfied, albeit at higher cost. But those who cannot pay the price will do without. Occasionally, even those who can afford to buy oil will be forced to do without because from time to time there simply won’t be any oil to buy on the global market, at any price. Imagine going to your local gas station and seeing a sign out front reading “Sorry, no gas.” Imagine going to your local grocery store and seeing empty shelves because the trucks that deliver goods to the store had no diesel fuel. Imagine having to bundle up in two layers of sweaters inside your house because you have to make half your normal allotment of home heating oil last the entire winter. These hypothetical scenarios will become reality and will occur with increasing frequency as time goes on.

What’s going to happen when people have to vigorously compete for food, water, and energy in order to survive? I think it’s going to get vicious. My opinion of humanity holds that in the face of such adversity, it will be every man for himself. Countries will compete against countries. States will compete against states. Cities will compete against cities. Governments will even compete against their citizens. Civilization, in the sense of the word “civility,” will be no more. Perhaps genetically engineered terminator seeds, depleted uranium, and exotic diseases are secretly intended to reduce the human population to alleviate resource competition.

Clearly, the U.S. invasion of Iraq is one of the opening salvos in the coming resource wars. And the U.S.’s belligerence toward Iran is undoubtedly due to Iran’s possession of vast oil and natural gas resources. Bear in mind that a country need not seek control of vital resources with the intention of consuming them. The country that controls resources can use those resources either as a lever to compel other countries to behave a certain way, or to buy other resources or finished goods, such as weapons and integrated circuit chips.

The End of Money

The 1970s was the apotheosis of the “American Dream.” Wedged between the preceding decade of civil unrest and the subsequent decade of recessions, rapidly rising homelessness, and mass layoffs, the 1970s was a comparatively idyllic decade. It certainly had its problems – stagflation, for instance – but even while living during that time I felt it was a special decade. Life was good; people were happy, friendly, and mellow; TV shows and movies were cheerful; civil liberties were at their peak; government power was at its lowest ebb; the country was affluent and at its peak of industrial prowess. It’s not a coincidence that the tallest buildings in America were built during the 1970s. Those buildings were icons of American industry and power. Although the Vietnam War raged during the first half of the 1970s, it was in the process of winding down and came to an end by the middle of that decade. The cessation of the Vietnam War was as much a reflection of the peoples’ desire to “live and let live” as it was a military defeat. Military conscription also ended in that decade, and even the cold war cooled off because of détente.

Unfortunately, what we didn’t realize at the time was that we would never again have it so good. The 1970s represented a “tipping point,” to use the popular vernacular, for the American Dream. That was when globalization really started to take off and when the serious decline of American industry began, the steel and auto industries being among the first casualties. Interestingly, the 1970s was also the decade of peak oil production in the United States, after which point we became increasingly reliant on imported oil, which greased our downward slide. What I didn’t realize until writing this was how crucial a role President Nixon played in creating this tipping point. Nixon opened the door to trade with China, a major player in today’s globalized economy. Nixon disassociated the U.S. dollar from gold, facilitating the destruction of wealth through unrelenting devaluation of the dollar. Nixon launched the war on drugs, a precursor to today’s war on terror (or is it the war of terror, I can’t tell?). Both the drug war and war on/of terror consume wealth in order to serve the imperial ambitions of the U.S. Government, but contribute nothing to the country’s production of wealth.

The 1980s was a decade in which previously accumulated wealth was systematically extracted, mainly through the mechanism of “Merger Mania.” The 1980s was a decade of marked industrial and economic decline, which was masked to a large extent by releasing into the economy some of the wealth squeezed out of these mergers, as well as by the massive accumulation of debt. The transformations of the 1980s also introduced a new component: the injection of foreign wealth into the country. Many of the assets sold in the 1980s were purchased by foreigners, especially the Japanese, a trend which accelerated toward the latter half of the decade, highlighting America’s economic decline. The 1980s also marked the inception of the mythical “service economy” theory to justify the profitable exporting of American jobs. The economy is like a pyramid. Forming the foundation of this pyramid is the one true source of wealth: natural resources – the free wealth given to us by the Earth and the Sun. Mining for minerals and energy, agriculture, fishing, and forestry are the source of all other wealth. Above this foundation are industries that utilize its products. These second level industries consist primarily of manufacturers that take raw materials and produce something of greater value. Above the manufacturers are companies that serve them, including law firms, advertising agencies, shipping companies, airlines, hotels, restaurants, and even entertainment. As wealth moves up this pyramid a little wealth, constituting salaries and savings, is retained by each level in the pyramid. The myth of the service economy, the darling theory of the 1980s, is that a country could retain the top of the pyramid and outsource the base of it. During the last three decades we have transfered much of the base of this economic pyramid to countries such as China and India and indeed, initially, the money kept flowing to the top of the pyramid which remained in the United States. But after a while, a new top of the pyramid began to form in those countries where we had shipped the base of the pyramid. Witness today not only the exodus of high tech jobs to China and India, but that in those countries pure service companies, such as advertising agencies, are also starting to flourish.

The 1990s was a period of greatly accelerating globalization and economic decline for the United States, aided and abetted by such treaties as NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO. Again, this massive decline was masked by the illusion of wealth that persisted during the huge stock market bubble of the latter half of the 1990s. Like merger mania before it, the stock market bubble attracted a lot of foreign wealth. A bit more previously accumulated wealth was extracted from rising human productivity here in the United States during the 1990s.

Finally, the 2000s so far represent an era massively dependent on inflows of foreign wealth. With our previously accumulated wealth now exhausted and little means left for fundamental wealth production, about the only thing keeping the U.S. economy afloat these days is consumer spending and deficit spending by the government, both of which are financed by growing mountains of debt, which is owed to foreigners. The United States has largely been reduced to a nation of people that sell each other hamburgers, with foreigners paying the checks. Asset sales to foreigners continue as well, the failed Chinese bid for Unocal and the not-so-failed Dubai bid to run some of our seaports being prominent recent examples.

During the last thirty years in America two persistent trends are clear: the steady depletion of existing wealth and decline in the means to produce new wealth; and the steady rise of an imperial U.S. Government.

Today, the economic imbalances in the United States economy are so vast that I cannot see how they can be corrected gracefully. Even more astonishing to me is that people keep buying financial instruments like U.S. Treasury bills. Do these investors really believe they’re ever going to get their money back? The national debt is so large that paying it down is nearly impossible, especially since there is no political will to either increase taxes or reduce spending. Obviously, the U.S. Government knows it cannot pay down the national debt, which is why it covertly relies on dollar devaluation to reduce the value of the national debt.

It’s only a matter of time before the majority of investors in dollar-denominated financial instruments open their eyes and stop buying those assets. When that happens the dollar is doomed. The government’s only recourse when it cannot borrow money will be to print dollars, which will only accelerate the dollar’s demise, possibly even inducing hyperinflation along the way.

If oil prices skyrocket because of the global supply and demand relationship and harm the U.S. economy, that could accelerate the dollar’s demise as well. I personally don’t see how the dollar can avoid substantial devaluation, either slowly or rapidly. I hope the decline is gradual.

All of the world’s government-issued currencies are in similar straits. None are firmly backed by finite, physical resources, such as gold. Consequently, all currencies have the potential to suffer from devaluation, even more so since the economies of the world’s countries are so intricately linked together. If one currency abruptly collapses, especially an important one like the dollar, they could all come crashing down.

Additionally, faith in the world’s currencies depends in part on globalization. The willingness of an investor in Japan to buy American dollars depends in part on the investor’s expectation of a continuing economic relationship between Japan and America. But in an era where global trade is increasingly challenged by oil shortages, faith in other countries’ currencies will diminish too. Countries will increasingly prefer to conduct international trade using universal mediums like gold instead of currency.

If currencies such as the dollar become worthless, even local trade may be conducted using gold or other precious metals. Such trade may, in fact, have to be conducted in black markets, since financially distressed governments will probably seek to confiscate all gold and precious metals from their citizens.

The bottom line is that government-issued currency will be a thing of the past. So how will the government continue to exist?

Acquisition of Resources

Without money or credit, government can only continue to exist through force. The United States government is particularly well endowed in this regard and has demonstrated its willingness to use force to acquire resources, and not as a last resort either.

Iraq’s oil is the first such resource to be acquired by military force. Iran’s oil and natural gas may well be the next. In the long run, the energy-rich regions of central Asia will also attract the hungry gaze of the U.S. Empire. Of course, other powerful, populous, and hungry countries, such as China and India, will also have designs on these energy-rich regions, which will probably result in significant wars. Oil from the Middle East will probably become so valuable that countries will have to provide a military escort for every tanker carrying oil across the ocean.

Domestically, energy will be controlled by the government. It will satisfy its needs first, corporations will have their needs satisfied second, and the populace will be forced to ration whatever is left.

Food is also critical to the government, comprised, as it is, of people. So it’s logical to assume that the government will at some point take control of food production. As with energy, the government will satisfy its own food requirements first, and the populace will be left to ration whatever is left.

If water becomes a scarce or unreliable resource, then we can assume that the government will take control of that as well.

In a future where money has no value, the only way a government can retain people is by providing them with food, water, and shelter. In fact, in a future world where resource competition is the order of the day, people will probably covet a government job – as a bureaucrat, a laborer, or a soldier – simply because it will mean three square meals a day and a roof over their head.

Of course, government needs more than just food, water, and shelter. Government needs weapons, vehicles, computers, communications gear, and myriad other manufactured items. Some of these things are manufactured wholly in other countries, or depend in part on components from other countries. Without money the government cannot buy these things. But it can trade precious resources, such as oil, water, and food, for them. Some critical factories, such as domestic weapons plants, may be taken over wholesale by the government for security reasons.

Slave Labor

Government cannot operate on resources and material alone. It also needs labor. Some of that labor can be “purchased” in exchange for resources. But in order for the government to operate “profitably” it will have to employ slave labor, that is, labor it doesn’t have to pay so richly for.

We already have such a precedent. Many of the two million people already incarcerated in this country are veritable slave laborers. They “earn” anywhere from twenty-five cents to one dollar per hour, often working for major American corporations. But in some cases these poor prisoners are then charged room and board for being in prison, thus wiping out their minuscule income. In effect, since they are being forced to work without making any net income, they are slaves. It does not challenge the imagination to envision future slave laborers working in factories manufacturing everything from machine guns to computers, or working on farms to produce food, returning each night to sleep in their prison cells.

The United States military is currently exploring ways to utilize civilian prisoners to satisfy the military’s labor needs. It’s only a matter of time before they come up with a justification for doing so.

Once the framework for utilizing slave laborers – all nice and legal, of course – is established, it’s quite easy to increase the pool of potential laborers, if necessary. The government merely has to criminalize more behaviors. Caught driving your car on the “wrong” day? Three months in prison loading ammunition cartridges. Caught possessing gold coins? Six months in prison assembling computers. Caught saying “subversive” things over the telephone to your aunt? Five years on a prison farm – for the both of you – tending crops. Of course, prison sentences will likely be accompanied by asset forfeiture, that is, if you have anything the government wants. There is already a precedent today for asset forfeiture too, even for minor offenses such as hiring a prostitute or having a marijuana cigarette in your car. Heck, simply walking through an airport today with “too much” cash on your person might result in it being confiscated.

Conclusion

Although this essay has mainly been a description of the United States and its future, much of it is applicable to the world as a whole. Some other countries may well face worse times ahead because they lack the natural resources and/or military might that the United States possesses.

The goal of this essay is not to propose solutions to the many problems facing us, although there are solutions, but to explain the seemingly irrational behavior we see around the world. Viewing the world today in light of the foregoing essay, Bush’s actions are understandable, even though I don’t endorse them: the competitive pursuit of resources, the rolling back of civil liberties, the carefree handling of the economy.