I saw this article, and while it’s just another in a long list of articles, it sort of set me off. Actually the “dead zone” they speak of is fairly routine, so I’m not sure why it’s newsworthy in a world that only looks up from its phone when someone gets murdered in a heinous way or a celebrity gets married.
But it led to this rant of mine today. Had to get it off my chest before I could do anything else. Enjoy.
This is the hidden cost for cheap corn, livestock and other agricultural products. Industrial farmers don’t have to pay this cost; big corporate farmers and wall street essentially get silent “welfare” from the American people to keep their costs low. Consumers and retailers enable this with a blind eye and deaf ear.
We sit at cocktail parties bemoaning government welfare for drugged-out-crack-whores, whilst corporate drug lords string us out on the heroin of cheap food that is killing us and our environment. We say “yes, please” and “thank you” and take it like good little sheep, hoping to make it home in time to cut the grass.
Wall street beautifies these organizations while their special interest groups line the pockets of our politicians. Meanwhile they vilify the very government regulations they’ve encouraged, empowered, through their actions. Politicians buy votes, encouraging these private sector enterprises to slowly kill the sheep that have put them into office.
Never underestimate the power of greed to supersede fundamental human need and decency, always under the banner of economic free markets (and oft under the very banner of god himself).
I have no interest in big government and even less appetite for big businesses that have rigged the system. Don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining. The easiest way to make government intrusion nonexistent, creating a government that borders on irrelevant beyond keeping order, is to start treating humanity with compassion and respect.
It is bigger than any one political “leader” or organization. And each of us bears responsibly as well. No one is without sin. It is the fault of how we’ve designed the system. Or rather the system needs to evolve, just as it did 200 years ago.
As citizens and consumers we need to wise up and start asking questions. There is a fundamental need to make those who tote the status quo to answer for their actions. We need to act. Everyone of us. Start thinking as a human being. Every person who goes without fresh water, or suffers social injustice, or is crushed under economic slavery should be marching and demanding answers and making changes to redirect our social, economic, and environmental course.
Our complacency is borne by the shoulders our children.
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Parting thought: The hypocrisy of the “system” is what irks me. These corporations bemoan government handouts and intrusion, but they welcome the handouts in the form of political favors and hidden costs they don’t have to pay. They bring the intrusion down upon themselves (in the form of taxes, regulations and oversight). The people who run many of these corporations must be some of the stupidest people in the history of the world.
nine apple trees 