By Devan Scott
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Americans don't care too much for beauty.
They'll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream.
They'll watch dead rats wash up on the beach.
Complain if they can't swim.
Remember the old wives’ tale about the boiling frog?
We probably should’ve realized it at just about the exact moment the Hummer H2 first took to the streets. 10 Miles to the gallon ought to have woken us up. That might have been the point when we should’ve collectively said “Whoa, wait a second.” Ah, well. 20/20 Hindsight, I suppose. Eight years and one spilled milkshake later, and we still haven’t realized it. The water’s boiling. We still deny it. The world keeps turning.Read More
What’s the price of willful ignorance and unsustainable consumption? The Gulf of Mexico, of course! What else? It had to go at some point, naturally. Those freeloaders on the gulf coast had it coming. And now they’re asking the American government for handouts. How dare they complain when a private corporation spills 281,000,000 gallons of oil all over them? Naturally, blaming the private corporation is right out; it was just a little slip-up, after all. The great invisible hand of the free market and unchecked capitalism will come to the aid of the poor little oil-stained people. Pity the socialists.
A great many trees fell this year on Burke Mountain. In their place will be houses. Not town houses, no. That would be barbaric. Like Eagle Mountain and the rest of Port Coquitlam, it will be filled with houses of extravagant size surrounded by ample lots. Only the best for those with wealth. This means more space, naturally. More roads, of course. More cars, definitely. Many of them extremely large SUVs, no doubt. Probably about 48% of them, in fact. Spared no expense. If you can afford it, of course. Why would we want those uncultured lower-middle class folks defiling our barren wasteland of ivory McMansions? Or trees, for that matter.
Meanwhile, the question rings through my mind: “What’s the deal, guys?”
The CEO of British Petroleum took the stand at his congressional hearing earlier this week. Here was the man at the head of the private corporation responsible for the raping of the Gulf of Mexico about to answer for his company’s negligence. His apology was not to be; in fact, the opposite was. The words “It is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown” were uttered. Pity British Petroleum.
Once an economic system, now a moral code. Do what’s best for you, and you’ll be doing what’s best for society. Here is a company that merely did what's right, what's prudent: cut corners on fuel valve safety; reduced costs. So what if it resulted in the greatest environmental disaster of our time; our ideals remain uncompromised. The moral code of the free market remains untainted.
It's like what my painter friend Donald said to me
“Stick a fork in their ass and turn ‘em over, they're done.”
-Lou Reed
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-D. Scott & W. Ross
-D. Scott & W. Ross
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1 comments:
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