This 4th of July...

you can do few things better for yourself than to read this essay by Chris Hedges. In it he writes:

Native Americans’ resistance to the westward expansion of Europeans took two forms. One was violence. The other was accommodation. Neither worked. Their land was stolen, their communities were decimated, their women and children were gunned down and the environment was ravaged. There was no legal recourse. There was no justice. There never is for the oppressed. And as we face similar forces of predatory, unchecked corporate power intent on ruthless exploitation and stripping us of legal and physical protection, we must confront how we will respond.

The ideologues of rapacious capitalism, like members of a primitive cult, chant the false mantra that natural resources and expansion are infinite. They dismiss calls for equitable distribution as unnecessary. They say that all will soon share in the “expanding” wealth, which in fact is swiftly diminishing. And as the whole demented project unravels, the elites flee like roaches to their sanctuaries. At the very end, it all will come down like a house of cards.

I am somewhat perplexed at the apparently widespread blindness to the rapidly approaching catastrophe...is "Shop Until Everything Drops" the new national motto?

The legend of Cassandra is undeniably replete with truth as we look at the behavior of most humans and at the state of the planet.

I'm of a cohort that is likely to dead by the time the bulk of the impact of planetary desolation and despoliation crashes home. I fear terribly that death is going to look like a picnic compared to what is coming.

I'm fully in accord with Mr. Hedges when he writes:

And while I do not advocate violence, indeed will seek every way to avoid it, I have no intention of accommodating corporate power whether it hides behind the mask of Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. At the same time, I have to acknowledge that resistance may ultimately be in vain. Yet to resist is to say something about us as human beings. It keeps alive the possibility of hope, even as all empirical evidence points to inevitable destruction. It makes victory, however remote, possible. And it makes life a little more difficult for the ruling class, which satisfies the very human emotion of vengeance..

It may be in vein...but honoring what the 4th of July is supposed to mean...means making things as difficult as possible for those in charge. And it also means...even when resistance is futile...to continue to resist because it nourishes hope...because it means not abandoning ourselves or our fellow animals or our planet.