Imagine young members of an advanced celestial race on a future school field trip, with their cosmic craft zipping near Earth, now devoid of all activity. The intergalactic vehicle slows from warp speed and hovers above the former United States. An instructor tells the class that a vibrant society once existed there.
But the dominant inhabitants adopted the very opposite of their professed Christian values, ultimately allowing unfettered vulture capitalism to completely corrode the Golden Rule of their avowed Savior.
Public well-being and the common good were forsaken as America became the profiteering killing floor for plutocratic parasites thriving on working people’s lifeblood. The resulting mega rich set themselves apart in gated communities. The very poor slept in appliance cartons.
The oligarchs also ignored science and the doomsday impact of ceaselessly pumping carbon into a sky that could no longer tolerate perpetual fossil-fuel pollution without rebelling. The planet consequently super-heated and became a giant graveyard.
With this harrowing lesson indelibly learned, the craft speeds off and vanishes, leaving, of course, no human eye-witnesses behind . . .
Is this an outcome we’ll actually accept, or will we take salvational steps while there’s still fleeting time to do so?
* * *
When glow-in-the-dark watches first emerged, women workers who received pennies for dabbing their dials with radium paint would commonly lick the brushes they used, to keep them sharp. They poisoned themselves to a sometimes fatal extent, having received no warnings from their bosses.
Following the Trinity atomic bomb test in New Mexico, radioactivity drifted so far that the Kodak company, which used packaging made with corn husks from Indiana, found that its film boxes were fogging their contents.
In the 1950s, the supposedly safe pesticide DDT was sprayed everywhere, including in the sleeping loft of my grandfather’s lakeside cabin. Years later it was banned.
Did DDT cause my chronic respiratory illness while a child, or was it the constant smoke from my parents’ cigarette habit? Probably both.
Keep all this in mind while reading obituaries for those who’ve died after “a courageous battle with cancer,” plus every account of proposed new mines, pipelines, etc., impacting our environment.
Don’t unquestioningly accept the “harmless” claims of interests that gain great profit by cavalierly putting us at serious risk.
* * *
Let’s use a baseball analogy to address our country’s current status. Imagine we’re playing a team called Societal Collapse, whose relief pitcher has a wicked arm. We’re trailing, with a couple guys on base, but it’s our last chance at bat.
His first throw is a perfect curve, relating to our failure to comprehend that lavishing the wealthy few while impoverishing working-class families is exactly what Karl Marx said would trigger capitalism’s demise. Strike one!
Then he hurls a tricky slider, dealing with the proliferating massacres that the gun industry/NRA guarantees by self-servingly hyping the 2nd Amendment as it stokes black-helicopter hysteria in a nation brimming with firearms. Strike two!
Now it’s a blistering fast ball, emblematic of fossil-fuel carbon that’s definitely causing deadly climate change, unleashing unprecedented weather disasters that have grown frighteningly common everywhere.
Will we win the game (save ourselves) by hitting an over-the-fence homer to solve our problems?
Or will the umpire call, “Strike three, you’re out! ”—with everything that implies for our severely jeopardized civilization?
Dennis Rahkonen of Superior, Wisconsin, has been writing progressive commentary with a Heartland perspective for various outlets since the ’60s.
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Will we strike out on human survival?
Posted on December 10, 2015 by Dennis Rahkonen
Imagine young members of an advanced celestial race on a future school field trip, with their cosmic craft zipping near Earth, now devoid of all activity. The intergalactic vehicle slows from warp speed and hovers above the former United States. An instructor tells the class that a vibrant society once existed there.
But the dominant inhabitants adopted the very opposite of their professed Christian values, ultimately allowing unfettered vulture capitalism to completely corrode the Golden Rule of their avowed Savior.
Public well-being and the common good were forsaken as America became the profiteering killing floor for plutocratic parasites thriving on working people’s lifeblood. The resulting mega rich set themselves apart in gated communities. The very poor slept in appliance cartons.
The oligarchs also ignored science and the doomsday impact of ceaselessly pumping carbon into a sky that could no longer tolerate perpetual fossil-fuel pollution without rebelling. The planet consequently super-heated and became a giant graveyard.
With this harrowing lesson indelibly learned, the craft speeds off and vanishes, leaving, of course, no human eye-witnesses behind . . .
Is this an outcome we’ll actually accept, or will we take salvational steps while there’s still fleeting time to do so?
* * *
When glow-in-the-dark watches first emerged, women workers who received pennies for dabbing their dials with radium paint would commonly lick the brushes they used, to keep them sharp. They poisoned themselves to a sometimes fatal extent, having received no warnings from their bosses.
Following the Trinity atomic bomb test in New Mexico, radioactivity drifted so far that the Kodak company, which used packaging made with corn husks from Indiana, found that its film boxes were fogging their contents.
In the 1950s, the supposedly safe pesticide DDT was sprayed everywhere, including in the sleeping loft of my grandfather’s lakeside cabin. Years later it was banned.
Did DDT cause my chronic respiratory illness while a child, or was it the constant smoke from my parents’ cigarette habit? Probably both.
Keep all this in mind while reading obituaries for those who’ve died after “a courageous battle with cancer,” plus every account of proposed new mines, pipelines, etc., impacting our environment.
Don’t unquestioningly accept the “harmless” claims of interests that gain great profit by cavalierly putting us at serious risk.
* * *
Let’s use a baseball analogy to address our country’s current status. Imagine we’re playing a team called Societal Collapse, whose relief pitcher has a wicked arm. We’re trailing, with a couple guys on base, but it’s our last chance at bat.
His first throw is a perfect curve, relating to our failure to comprehend that lavishing the wealthy few while impoverishing working-class families is exactly what Karl Marx said would trigger capitalism’s demise. Strike one!
Then he hurls a tricky slider, dealing with the proliferating massacres that the gun industry/NRA guarantees by self-servingly hyping the 2nd Amendment as it stokes black-helicopter hysteria in a nation brimming with firearms. Strike two!
Now it’s a blistering fast ball, emblematic of fossil-fuel carbon that’s definitely causing deadly climate change, unleashing unprecedented weather disasters that have grown frighteningly common everywhere.
Will we win the game (save ourselves) by hitting an over-the-fence homer to solve our problems?
Or will the umpire call, “Strike three, you’re out! ”—with everything that implies for our severely jeopardized civilization?
Dennis Rahkonen of Superior, Wisconsin, has been writing progressive commentary with a Heartland perspective for various outlets since the ’60s.