Orion > Thoughts on America

Take a map of the lower 48 and superimpose it on one of the Middle East. Place the Mississippi's mouth smack dab on where the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates enter the Persian Gulf. Orient the map so the Mississippi runs more or less between the two other rivers before they merge 100 miles north of the gulf.

North and to the left of the river mouth on the U.S. map are the formerly oil-rich states of Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. South is the Gulf of Mexico, with offshore oil rigs. Look under the U.S. map. To the left there see Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia - over three times larger than Texas - Bahrain and Qatar. Iran, 2½ times larger than Texas, runs a long ways north and east of the rivers.

Now imagine that some foreign power, like the former Soviet Union, were to position its battle fleet in the Gulf of Mexico and base planes close enough to fly over parts of Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and the offshore rigs every day. Never mind that they and their allies paid the going price for oil on the world market: How would we feel about that foreign military presence?

My Methodist mother had as one of her primary admonitions, "Put yourself in the shoes of the other person before you respond." My track record in this respect is not good. But for a country, when the stakes are as high on the international scene as they are now, it is long past time we put on the shoes of others. Iran wants us out of there. So does Iraq, and, I suspect, so do ordinary citizens in the "friendly" countries who do not directly benefit from Middle East oil. (The Saudi Arabian monarchy and a few other rich folks are the major beneficiaries.)

Most of that oil does go to Europe rather than to us. But Western economies are so closely tied that the United States would suffer greatly if the oil was not available to our European friends.

The symbolism of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks is obvious. Unfortunately, what lies under the symbolism is too easily ignored.We are Rich.We have Military Power.We are the Leading Empire.

Like all empires, we are resented. A certain amount of resentment, jealousy perhaps, is understandable. It seems, however, that there is an extraordinary hatred of us - which must cause us to ask, "Why?" And when we do, we are forced to answer when our patience for long and complex responses is shorter than before the attacks.

Quick and simple responses leave little room for the teachings of such moral philosophers as Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King. But if we don't dedicate our lives to understanding the fullness of reality, there will be more suffering. Not all of reality is ever at the surface, of course. Sometimes none of it is. Then it is difficult to be steadfast in our effort to get at the truth of our problem. But if we don't, the temptation to surrender to our primal instincts will win. Patience is a primary virtue.

What are the realities? Well, we know that if we were to shrink the population of the earth to a village of 100 people, only five of them would be Americans, but they would use many times their share of the village's wealth.We know that in the next 50 years the world is expected to add as many people as the population of 50 years ago. How long under these conditions can the present global inequities stand? Even if the perpetrators of the attack are hunted down and wiped out, how long will it be before other desperate and marginalized people's anger and hatred rise to lethal levels? Terrorists are made, not born. As long as we regard the resources of the world as ours at a minimal cost, there will be children born who, when adults, will willingly lay down their lives to bring us down in the name of social and economic justice.

If our imagination is limited simply to stomping out terrorists without examining how terrorists are made, we will experience a loss of liberty unequaled in U.S. history. Dedicating our lives to reality forces us to acknowledge that we have a choice: either accept the burden of defending the supply lines of a consumptive culture that is dependent on depletable sources, or begin the long journey toward decentralized, more local, more sustainable economies. If we opt to maintain the supply lines that feed our appetites, then we must be prepared to admit that we are willing to trade for it our freedom.

Many of us on the rural margin see that there is more to this story than oil or the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Rural America suffers problems connected to the global picture. Economic decline in the countryside has been devastating. In the past five years farm subsidies have increased 300 percent. Seventy-five percent of those federal subsidies go to corporate farms, and 72 percent of agricultural production is now controlled by the wealthiest 8 percent of those farms. The primary beneficiaries are suppliers, the agribusiness companies who, in 2000, spent $58 million on campaign contributions. Of the nation's fifty counties with the lowest per capita income, only one is metropolitan. It is increasingly unhealthful to live in rural America. Only half the watersheds in the lower 48 have unpolluted water. Our rural areas are strewn with pesticides and toxic levels of nitrogen fertilizers. We too, like the poor countries of the Middle East, are marginalized. We are more likely to buy flags than burn them only because we are still members of the American family.

What if President Bush were to give a speech like this?:

My fellow Americans, from this time forth we, as a people, will begin to measure our progress by how independent we become of an economy that exhausts resources and cannot be sustained. We will begin at once to reduce our dependence on oil. We need to move immediately toward a solar economy. I will soon introduce legislation to begin the mass production of solar collectors for both space heating and electricity. Private investment to erect wind machines to meet a large part of our electrical needs can be encouraged with savings from the military budget now used to keep foreign oil flowing. Lessening dependence on oil, natural gas and coal will reduce our contribution to global warming, and signal all industrial nations of our intent to turn this nation toward more local, solar economies.

Nuclear power is not an option. All of us know that we cannot repeal Murphy's Law with an act of Congress. A plant with a chance of one major accident in 10,000 years may sound like a low probability, but if we have 1,000 nuclear plants, then the probability is one every 10 years. We will begin to decommission nuclear power plants at once.

Because food is basic to all of life, we will begin to reverse all government policies that have encouraged depopulation of the countryside and eroded our food security. We will no longer gamble with our food safety and food production by putting our family farmers out of work.

I will direct the secretary of education to address promotion of sustainable agricultures and rural cultures through our schools' curricula. Chemistry and history have been taught separately in our classrooms, but now we see how they have converged on our landscape. We will make every effort to break down the alienating and damaging compartmentalization of knowledge. We will make every effort to validate questions in the classroom that go beyond the available answers.

We will draw more attention to our land and water, the source of our sustenance and health. If we don't get sustainability in agriculture first, it is not going to happen.

We will promote making food more home-grown and healthful for community by using our parking lots and streets for farmers markets, and by encouraging our public institutions to buy locally. We will implement policies that work against the loss of prime farmland, and begin at once to control urban sprawl and develop balanced approaches to growth. I look forward to when we can all frequent restaurants in which food is produced by local, sustainable family farms. Pastured livestock and locally raised vegetables could be available very quickly across our great land, and would end the era of the confinement feedlots. Only then will we have real food security.

Finally, we will require labeling that tells us who produced the food, and where and how. To implement this will require antitrust efforts in all sectors of food production, and at this I will ask the Department of Justice to be aggressive.

We are not going to stop anything all at once, but we are going to start a tendency and set mileposts to measure our progress. I know that you, my fellow Americans, will be with me in this long overdue movement toward increased national security.

Why is it that we cannot imagine George Bush - or any other president - making this speech? Why is it that we would have a hard time naming more than one or two members of our national media who would think such thoughts or convey them? And why is it that many of us - perhaps the majority of us - can imagine ourselves making such a speech?

The suicidal terrorists struck at the heart of our empire. If this is all we know or need to know, then the first response of the president and Congress is the rational one. Timothy McVeigh we could comprehend. But Oklahoma City, as tragic as it was, is not the place to begin the analysis. We should ask: Why are we so hated in the world? Why are we such a symbol of evil to so many? Why are so many secretly and not so secretly gratified to see America wounded? Given the amount of money we spend on the CIA and the Pentagon, we should ask:. Why are we so vulnerable to the simplest brutish actions? Why, when we walk out of a meeting in South Africa, are the crowds outside shouting bad things about us?

Our imagination has been too limited. From now on it must be no more so than that of a terrorist. Biological warfare will be easy, be it the introduction of anthrax into a giant feedlot of cattle, the spreading of rust spores across wheat fields, or such horrors as an airplane or bomb destroying a nuclear power plant in the Midwest and creating a Chernobyl-type diffusion of radioactive materials over cropland, towns and cities.

When social conditions become extremely unsettling, fundamentalist language increasingly is used to justify animal impulses. Fundamentalism takes over where thought leaves off. Christian fundamentalists, Muslim fundamentalists, technological fundamentalists and drug culture fundamentalists all have their texts to draw on and to justify their predatory postures. Their eyes are straight ahead, unlike herbivores, whose eyes are on the side and watchful for danger creeping up. Fundamentalists of any stripe have ways of telling you off, of getting even, of settling the score. They enjoy their anger. But any temporary victory is a building block for their eventual defeat.

We face the choice: Accept the burden of defending our supply lines, most of which come from the extractive economy, or begin a long journey toward decentralization. If we accept the former, the Sept. 11 attack has provided even more justification for the military-industrial complex to be funded. If we are willing to trade our freedom for security, the United States is certain to join the list of faded empires.

From the Margin by Wes Jackson

From the Margin
by Wes Jackson