For years I've listened to progressives complain about the Bush administration...we've complained about Exxon, about Corporate power, about the disparity in wealth in the country and abroad, about social justice, the destruction of the environment, pollution, global warming....
It is always with a "they" or a "them" in which we direct our anger and moral outrage.
With this latest ecological disaster, everyone now wants to demonize British Petroleum, or Trans Ocean, or Halliburton.
I'll let you all in on a little secret. The problem isn't someone or somewhere else. The problem is right in front of you. In fact the problem is YOU!
This will be the most unpopular blog ever I am sure. But it is about time someone gave you some tough love.
It is You that awakens daily and consumes the world.
It is You that drives your SUV around town complaining about the cost of gas.
It is You that orders lobster and crab and tuna and insert exotic fish here that helps deplete our oceans.
It is You that consumes all this fast food that plagues America, increasing obesity, heart diseases, and global warming! Methane gas from cows, clear-cutting of the rain-forests....this is not they or them but YOU!
Is it You that uses plastic for everything.
It is You that loves your plasma tv sets, your internet, your smartphone, your Iphone and Ipad...
It is You that believes we can invent our way out of this crisis we are under. Reinvent a fly, a flea, a tick...I'd love to see it. There is more beauty in a worm than the Sistine chapel.
It is Your greed, your gluttonous lifestyle you American citizen who thinks you are a god that is killing the world.
It doesn't take an oil spill. You do it daily, have done it daily since you were conceived you destroyer of Nature.
More importantly it is you reading this now, sipping your Coca Cola, and wearing your Van 501s on your fancy laptop that does nothing. Sits Idle while the world around you crumbles.
It is you that refuses to change the world, refuses to change at all, couldn't imagine living life without all your privileges which come at the expense of everything sacred on Earth.
Save your moral indignation at British Petroleum.
You are the Corporate form, you blood vessel of the Corporate body. You eat and sleep under the graces of your Corporate employers, buy, sell, and trade with those Corporate goods...
You want someone to be mad at join me. Look in the mirror at what Mankind has become. See what you are and ask yourself if you aren't responsible for what happens to the Earth.
The future is not written. Even now we can reverse course. Start with yourself. And so will I.