Leaving a Church of Free-Market Miracles

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



Leaving a Church of Free-Market Miracles

A significant part of the U.S. population is stuck in angry denial, unwilling to acknowledge scientific realities (like global warming), embracing fictions (like Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth), and refusing to acknowledge America’s diminished situation (like the crumbling infrastructure of roads and education). Rather than act sensibly, they cling to their diminished status and mock anyone who challenges the disastrous status quo, as Phil Rockstroh explains.

By Phil Rockstroh
May 17, 2011


Most of the men I grew up with in Alabama and Georgia deny the veracity of climate change.

They are unwilling to make the connection between their ownership (actually the bank’s) of SUVs and oversized pickup trucks and the super storms, tornados and massive floods that, now with alarming regularity, ravish the region.

Because their besieged sense of self is intermeshed with their motor vehicles, they hold fast to these symbols of the fading world they know.

In their imaginings, these gruesome, noxious (and obnoxious) machines represent power and mobility — exactly the aspects of their lives that have been diminished by the demands and degradations of oligarchic capitalism. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2011/05/17/leaving-a-church-of-free-market-miracles/