Why Are Americans So Ignorant Of The Hell Their Greed Produces?
If you can look at this last photo and then toss away even a crumb from your plate, then it will only prove that Americans are too far gone into the vile sea of greed and ignorance and sloth to offer any hope of redemption. If you can look upon this image of hell on earth and not suddenly understand just how ghastly life is for the vast majority of this planet's youngest and most defenseless passengers, then I can only feel pity for the reality that America has dug itself into such a deep pit of filth and ego and gluttony and we will never be able to climb back out those stinking, slippery walls.
Read the caption under the photo. Look at the world that we have allowed, shit, the world that we ENCOURAGED to exist. If your heart doesn't break, if you don't lie awake at night in moral agony that America and Americans can ignore this nightmare that occurs every single day in tens of thousands of lives in hundreds of countries, then there is no possible hope for mankind.
I completely understand the photographer's actions. How can anyone sleep at night knowing the a child is dying so needlessly? How can we sit down in front of the TV with a bag of chips or some cookies knowing that we have done nothing to ease the pain that even one child endures? How can we make love to one another knowing that our children are dying from obesity while children everywhere are dying from such massive hunger and thirst? How can we write checks to save the whales or to adopt a wild horse or to save the redwoods when tiny, defenseless and heart broken, lonely children are dying every minute of every day? Have we become so hardened to the world's suffering that we will allow such misery to exist for a child but will ease it for some stupid damned Chihuahua?
What, in the name of whatever god you choose to worship, is wrong with you?
Americans believe that we "deserve" access to all of the planet's resources that will satisfy our every basic human need. Clean water, nutritious food, safety from the elements and from the aspects of nature that frighten us are simply expected to be delivered through the stores or the airwaves without end.
Americans firmly believe that our needs cannot really be satisfied unless we can also waste most of those resources. This comes from our complete inability to ever understand the reality of "enough".
We want our food "super-sized" but we throw away large portions of what we buy. We want our cars huge, fuel inefficient, poorly designed and heavy in order that we can feel "safe" from the other huge, fuel inefficient, poorly designed and heavy vehicles that clog the roads and spew filth into our air. We then sacrifice our own children and the children of the world to keep the cost of that fuel low.
We want our swimming pools full and our lawns green and our behemoth, ugly station wagons clean .
We want to pour pesticides and fertilizers onto our lawns and farms but we don't want to be reminded where all that toxic crap eventually flows to.
Americans just don't give a damn how wasteful and ignorant they are. They just want to get home from work or school so they can turn the TV on and sink into the fog of "entertainment" and "news" that never makes them feel uncomfortable. Americans don't want to see how the rest of the world lives and the misery and desperation that millions of human beings face every single day so that Americans can continue to wallow in wasteful materialism and ignorant over-consumption. If possible, and the corporate media makes it all quite possible, Americans simply don't want to be depressed or made to feel shame for their consumption of the world's wealth nor do they want any images placed before them that might make them lose a moment's worth of slumber. Hell, Americans just want the rest of the planet's passengers to either go away or shut up and let us enjoy our greed and stupidity in comfort.
When an American is thirsty, we can just go to the refrigerator for a cold beer or soda or just to the tap for water that we know is clean and healthy. Of course, we also let the tap run for a minute or so to make sure that the water is also cooler. We watch that water go spinning down the drain and I would bet that not one in a thousand Americans can tell you just where that wasted water flows to.
For too many of the rest of the world's inhabitants, water is more precious than gold. When they must endure a drought, you never see American corporate or military might being called on to provide that treasured substance by drilling wells or donating filtration systems or any other assistance. Americans believe that they have no responsibility to help these wretches. Instead, all Americans can muster sympathy for is their own greed and their constant demands for lower and lower taxes and the rest of the world's needy can go screw themselves.
Well, imagine, if you would, your child or your grandchildren or your brothers and sisters being forced to make the most horrendous choices in order to just stay alive for a couple more hours. Imagine the people you love having to make the unbelievably depressing decisions that the dying human beings below have been forced to make.
Americans firmly believe that our needs cannot really be satisfied unless we can also waste most of those resources. This comes from our complete inability to ever understand the reality of "enough".
We want our food "super-sized" but we throw away large portions of what we buy. We want our cars huge, fuel inefficient, poorly designed and heavy in order that we can feel "safe" from the other huge, fuel inefficient, poorly designed and heavy vehicles that clog the roads and spew filth into our air. We then sacrifice our own children and the children of the world to keep the cost of that fuel low.
We want our swimming pools full and our lawns green and our behemoth, ugly station wagons clean .
We want to pour pesticides and fertilizers onto our lawns and farms but we don't want to be reminded where all that toxic crap eventually flows to.
Americans just don't give a damn how wasteful and ignorant they are. They just want to get home from work or school so they can turn the TV on and sink into the fog of "entertainment" and "news" that never makes them feel uncomfortable. Americans don't want to see how the rest of the world lives and the misery and desperation that millions of human beings face every single day so that Americans can continue to wallow in wasteful materialism and ignorant over-consumption. If possible, and the corporate media makes it all quite possible, Americans simply don't want to be depressed or made to feel shame for their consumption of the world's wealth nor do they want any images placed before them that might make them lose a moment's worth of slumber. Hell, Americans just want the rest of the planet's passengers to either go away or shut up and let us enjoy our greed and stupidity in comfort.
When an American is thirsty, we can just go to the refrigerator for a cold beer or soda or just to the tap for water that we know is clean and healthy. Of course, we also let the tap run for a minute or so to make sure that the water is also cooler. We watch that water go spinning down the drain and I would bet that not one in a thousand Americans can tell you just where that wasted water flows to.
For too many of the rest of the world's inhabitants, water is more precious than gold. When they must endure a drought, you never see American corporate or military might being called on to provide that treasured substance by drilling wells or donating filtration systems or any other assistance. Americans believe that they have no responsibility to help these wretches. Instead, all Americans can muster sympathy for is their own greed and their constant demands for lower and lower taxes and the rest of the world's needy can go screw themselves.
Well, imagine, if you would, your child or your grandchildren or your brothers and sisters being forced to make the most horrendous choices in order to just stay alive for a couple more hours. Imagine the people you love having to make the unbelievably depressing decisions that the dying human beings below have been forced to make.
Go into your local fast food place. Take a quick peek into the trash receptacles they place around the dining area. Are most of them full? Can you see the remains of half-eaten burgers and orphaned French fries? Do you see overweight parents with their chubby little children ordering obscene amounts of fat and sugar?
Go to your local school. If they offer subsidized lunches, then go check out the trash cans there, too. Do you see the hundreds of pounds of uneaten food that is destined to be taken to the same dump as all of the old car batteries and sofas and paint cans and the other crap that our society casts off 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Have you noticed that, even though the kids throw away the vast majority of their meals at school, they're still mostly overweight, out of shape and already on their way to the massive coronary that their parents are just around the corner from? In fact, some of those kids are the poster children for the obesity epidemic in America. That food they threw away doesn't mean that they'll go hungry, of course, since all they'll have to do is walk out of the lunch room and buy themselves a sugar-filled Coke or Pepsi from the vending machines and maybe a candy bar or two in order to satisfy the unnatural and constant hunger that comes from the diabetes-inducing lifestyle.
Hell, look at the trash cans in your own home. How much wasted food will you find there? If you have a garbage disposal unit under your kitchen sink, how much edible food do you send into the sewers every single day of your life?
Want to bet that, first, we throw enough food away every day to sustain this little guy's needs and, second, we really don't want to know what he's eating in the photo?
Go to your local school. If they offer subsidized lunches, then go check out the trash cans there, too. Do you see the hundreds of pounds of uneaten food that is destined to be taken to the same dump as all of the old car batteries and sofas and paint cans and the other crap that our society casts off 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Have you noticed that, even though the kids throw away the vast majority of their meals at school, they're still mostly overweight, out of shape and already on their way to the massive coronary that their parents are just around the corner from? In fact, some of those kids are the poster children for the obesity epidemic in America. That food they threw away doesn't mean that they'll go hungry, of course, since all they'll have to do is walk out of the lunch room and buy themselves a sugar-filled Coke or Pepsi from the vending machines and maybe a candy bar or two in order to satisfy the unnatural and constant hunger that comes from the diabetes-inducing lifestyle.
Hell, look at the trash cans in your own home. How much wasted food will you find there? If you have a garbage disposal unit under your kitchen sink, how much edible food do you send into the sewers every single day of your life?
Want to bet that, first, we throw enough food away every day to sustain this little guy's needs and, second, we really don't want to know what he's eating in the photo?
Read the caption under the photo. Look at the world that we have allowed, shit, the world that we ENCOURAGED to exist. If your heart doesn't break, if you don't lie awake at night in moral agony that America and Americans can ignore this nightmare that occurs every single day in tens of thousands of lives in hundreds of countries, then there is no possible hope for mankind.
I completely understand the photographer's actions. How can anyone sleep at night knowing the a child is dying so needlessly? How can we sit down in front of the TV with a bag of chips or some cookies knowing that we have done nothing to ease the pain that even one child endures? How can we make love to one another knowing that our children are dying from obesity while children everywhere are dying from such massive hunger and thirst? How can we write checks to save the whales or to adopt a wild horse or to save the redwoods when tiny, defenseless and heart broken, lonely children are dying every minute of every day? Have we become so hardened to the world's suffering that we will allow such misery to exist for a child but will ease it for some stupid damned Chihuahua?
What, in the name of whatever god you choose to worship, is wrong with you?
