I had to get this stuff out before I could put a more positive spin on punk rock sensibility.
Instead of griping about the problems fix them by cutting off your contributions to the Fascist Machine’s only power. Money.
Visit my new blog This Thing Might Be Cool. for a more up to date, more positive perspective.
Thanks for visiting. Here’s a picture of a hippopotamus dancing a polka.
You know what might be cool? Not apologizing to the worst evironmental criminal in American history for reparations for his actions.
Outside of the atrocious environmental impact this will have, there’s a heart-wrenching commentary on ethics in his statement.
Barton stated:
“I am ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation could be subj-ju subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. A $20 billion dollar shakedown.”
I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that an entire coastal ecosystem could be wiped out by the end of the summer. I think that destroying the livelihoods of thousands of citizens in a region STILL stuck recovering from Katrina is a tragedy of the first proportion.
I think it is a tragedy that expecting a company to have basic ethics can be construed by any person in power as a tragedy. When the “big banks” took close to $1,000,000,000,000.00 (That’s what 1 trillion looks like written out.) take money that could have paid down the deficit, educated children, or saved lives with body armor for soldiers or foreign aid out of our pockets nobody said boo. We expect a company to pay 2% of that for being solely responsible for <em>the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history</em>. If corporate greed can make me personally responsible for $35,000 of national debt, I’m fine with BP owing me $700 for causing long lasting, horrific damage to the planet I live on. To consider a company being forced to own up to its actions a tragedy is to consider a child being punished for abusing an animal a tragedy. To consider ethics a tragedy is to be everything that makes my skin crawl when I think about the corporate obesity epidemic in this country.
With all the love I can muster for Joe Barton,
juxtaculture.
Woody Guthrie watched the beginning of the industrial revolution. He saw a need to preserve the cowboy songs of the past, and fight the encroachment of mass production. I’m a wannabe Woody Guthrie.
I feel compelled to write. It’s the only reason I’m doing this. Our mainstream culture is presently sitting under the shadow of a monolith of corporate lust. We’ve got too big to fail banks, too big to fix oil spills, and all of the other stuff Woody was trying to warn us about. Lately, I care less and less about the greed and more and more about the sameness. An endless-sea-of-mayonnaise plainness that seems to be rising and swallowing the little shreds of quirk and real culture we have left.
So I’m going to blog about all the things that stand against the rising of the mayonnaise tide. There are people that are trying to keep the world weird. You don’t have to buy everything from one giant block of concrete with 500 parking spots off of the local highway. You don’t have to make BP, AIG, and every other acrimonious acronym on the planet richer. You can give your support to people like you that you should like.
LET’S VOTE FOR WEIRD!
robotzombie
