Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Everything is wrong!


What a great album title, because good Lord it is true.

Aside from the disaster that we’ve turned our environment and our own government into, we still live in a world with such evils as human trafficking, genocide and animal testing. All things any advance society should have done away with decades ago.


I tried hard not to pay attention. Our security (both mentally and strategically) rest on mountains of denial. At any point, the very things that hold each of us up here in the “first” world could and likely will get yanked out from under us and it probably will not take a terrorist plot. Is it karma, or natural order? Who knows, but we have built a society that rules on the backs of the poor. This isn’t a manifesto, it is just a fact.


First off, right now in our face is a news story that is readily getting swept under the rug. The illegal immigrants that work all the jobs we’re too good to work are starting to stand up of themselves. They have too, because no one else is. In 20 years, we’ll probably live in a country were the majority of the citizens speak Spanish. Ask yourself what will become of that? I’ll tell you what; the new majority will be tried of being forced to work menial jobs for menial pay. As a country we’ve been abusing groups like Mexicans by allowing them into this country to work in substandard conditions for substandard pay. They are given no rights as citizens and yet the very foundation of our work force depends on their presence here.

As a white dude, I’m already appreciating the irony of all the former CEOs strapping on leaf blowers to work 16 hour days for minimum wage. In some ways I look forward to the day. Not because I want to see our nation go under, nor do I have “un-American” sentiment. It is just history repeating itself and this nation became what it is today with slave labor. While it has morphed into a society of serfdom, it still is hardly a land of equality.


This brings up another fine point. Is anyone paying attention to Asia? In my lifetime, I expect China will become the next super power. If nothing else, the sheer number of citizens in China all but guarantee they’ll always have a ready and viable army. The United States and Western Europe has long enjoyed the cheap and limitless goods coming out of China. Imagine how little a company must pay for something as simple as a $1.50 toothbrush if it is worth their time and money to ship it all the way from Asia and they still make a profit. Eventually Asians will get tired of making cheap products for us. When that happens, we can only hope it doesn’t coincide with our own homegrown cheap workforce taking a stand.

Aside from all of this, places like China are increasingly using more oil. So those of us here in the first world are no longer going to be the biggest buyer for Middle East oil reserves. Eventually the region will either find a political or financial reason to cut us off. In all likelihood it will come when we’re already down on our luck. I guess when it is all said and done; denial might be the very fabric that holds the whole mess together. I doubt the Romans sat around and wondered when the whole thing would go down the privy.

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