I borrowed the following passage, paraphrased it, actually, from Punisher: The End, a comic book written by Garth Ennis featuring an aged Punisher wandering around a post-apocalyptic earth, dealing death to the businessmen and capitalists whose greed essentially brought Armageddon about.
"Once upon a time there was a bunch of evil fucks. Nobody knew it, because they were so good at keeping it quiet, but this particular bunch of evil fucks ran the world. And they made the world a cruel and terrible place. They ran the great industries that poisoned the air. They started wars for profit. The money they made could have fed and healed the population of the world twice over, but all they could think to do with it was hoard it. Eventually they came to believe there was nothing they couldn't do, so one day, eventually, they pushed the planet's luck too far."
And this summarizes the trajectory the world is on with its own destruction. Greed drives the large industries to plunder the world's resources, whether oil or mineral, to sate the desires of the very, very few at the expense of the needy many. Oil companies, arms manufacturers, car companies, to name a few, are among those who are really behind the last few wars, mainly because they stand to gain the most from them.
As a child of the seventies and eighties, I'm familiar to an extent with cold war paranoia, with the residual fear carried over from the fifties that the long standing detente between the then super powers the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. could escalate into a nuclear holocaust. I even saw a couple of movies and T.V. miniseries (told from the American point-of-view, to be sure) expounding on the idea of that paranoia. Most of George Romero's zombie movies (and their clones) of the 70s and early 80s seem to have a common nuclear holocaust story thread running through them. Of course, this rather contrived conflict fueled the need for an arms race, and had a whole industry thriving with the need to develop newer, more expensive weapons of mass destruction.
Today, in this post-glasnost environment, there doesn't seem to be as much concern over the world being engulfed in nuclear fire, but the sad thing is there are so many other things that can end mankind's existence, like global warming, for example. The funny thing is that because this genuine threat is not something that the major American capitalists can make money off of, they aren't using their puppets in the government to push any paranoia about it, leaving it instead to the activists.
And so the denizens of the first world (read: right-wing America) continue to drive around in their SUVs and to live like hedonists, mindless of the future, secure in the knowledge that Dubya is keeping them safe from terrorists by putting their soldiers in Iraq. After all, aside from terrorists, what is there to worry about?
I find it funny how people hail works like Dawn of the Dead as wonderful satire and turn movies like The Day After Tomorrow into blockbuster hits, but at the same time seem completely oblivious to what it is they're trying to say. It is as though they think the apocalypse is sometime away, and that there's nothing to worry about.
Americans seem hell-bent on driving their SUVs, even if their government has to colonize--excuse me, democratize--a whole freaking country for them to be able to continue to afford it. Granted, oil certainly isn't the only issue that drove the now floundering Bush administration to send troops to Iraq, but does his government seriously think people are stupid enough not to realize it's one of the MAJOR reasons?
The saddest part is that science and technology has caught up with us and we as a race now have all kinds of alternatives to finite resources like fossil fuels. Solar and wind power are ours to harness, and the technology for doing so efficiently can only continue to improve. Hybrid electric cars are proving to be eminently drivable, and the recent documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? just goes to show that at some point we can do away with internal combustion engines altogether.
Whenever the next war does come around, it's not likely to be fought over any ideology, but over control of the world's rapidly dwindling resources. Take a look at the last two wars that America entered, both under a George Bush. They can sentence Saddam Hussein to death a thousand times on television, but they still won't fool anyone with half a brain as to why they really started those wars.
We can stop those wars by tapping into resources that aren't scarce, that are available for everyone, so that there's no need to fight for anything. We just have to put our collective foot down against the evil fucks currently running the world.
I'd like to congratulate the American people for taking the first step towards taking some of the power away from the aforementioned evil fucks by voting their puppets out of power, but instead, all I have to say is: WHAT THE HELL TOOK YOU SO LONG?!?
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