My finest accomplishment–not that I’m burdened with choices in this department–is the creation of five-hundred cubic feet of topsoil, with the aid of billions of unidentified micro-organisms, and earthworms churning through the compost, and several rabbits who worked with uncommon dedication to contribute manure and maintain morale: Myrtle, who passed away of old age– Habermas, who was murdered by a pit bull that ripped the bottom from his cage– Sartre, who perished suddenly from unknown causes, and Derrida, who is uncommonly fond of dandelions. Five hundred cubic feet of topsoil from sheer waste, to enrich a garden, transform to food and flower orange peels, tea leaves, clippings, weeds, a bonsai Mount Fuji of compost power. The world needs all the compost it can get. Topsoil made us what we are, without it we simply don’t exist, which is an earnest modern way to say God did indeed make Adam out of clay.
Imagine a world transformed by compost, fertile, abundant, fecundant reckless green. Imagine cargo ships loaded with topsoil for every compost-craving corner of the world. Imagine nuclear submarines distributing topsoil! Military transport planes packed with topsoil! Precision missiles delivering topsoil exactly where most needed. Aircraft carriers piled high with topsoil! Bombers dropping two-ton bombs of topsoil! Preemptive strikes of topsoil, weapons of mass destruction buried under thousands of feet of steaming compost! Imagine composters in every land, tending peaceful heaps, singing in a vast harmony of regeneration. Down slopes of compost comes the world’s salvation.
*From Hey Mr Green, Sierra
Magazine, May 25, 2010; reprinted for educational and informative purposes.
Part One: YESTERDAY’S STORM AND TOMORROW’S RAINBOW
There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music. – John Keats
Fifty years after President
Eisenhower launched a multi-trillion dollar arms race with the Soviet Union,
the Cheney-Bush Administration (in a version of “the boy who cried wolf”) saw
fit to shout the greatest and most dangerous lie in American history, claiming
that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and repeating – day after day, week
after week, in the post-9/11 rush to vengeance and preemptive war – “Mushroom
cloud! Mushroom cloud! Mushroom cloud!”
Thus did Cheney-Bush – and their
cabal of Gingrichian sycophants, aided by a cheering mainstream news media –
bring to fruition the nightmare envisioned in Bob Dylan’s 1963 tour de force, “Masters of War.” Dylan sings, and the lyrics still resonate:
You’ve thrown the worst fear / that can ever be hurled:
fear to bring children / into the world.
In the dawning of the year 2019, it
remains to be seen whether President Donald Trump will also escape punishment
for his narcissistic and multitudinous lies, for his continuation of American
militaristic violence, and for his Reagan-Cheney-Bush-like crimes – economic
and ecological – against the American people and the planet.
In what Gore Vidal called “The
United States of Amnesia,” the Orwellian ignoration of the citizen population
continues unabated. For example:
I go to the store and buy some
stamps. The clerk hands me a packet. Each stamp has an American flag on it. In the lower left hand corner of each stamp
is written “USA Forever” – a truly insidious slogan. Nothing lasts forever. Not a season; not a life; not an empire. George Carlin said: “That’s why they call it
the American dream. You have to be
asleep to believe it.”
In 1821, John
Quincy Adams warned that America should not go abroad “in search of monsters to
destroy,” for in doing so, “she might become the dictatress of the world, [but]
she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
In the late 1890s, Mark Twain
witnessed America’s imperial acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the
Philippines in the Spanish-American war.
Twain responded with an observation not taught in school: “America’s
flag should be a skull-and-crossbones.”
Then he added: “America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at
home.” Adams and Twain understood that
empire and democracy are mutually exclusive.
Lyndon Johnson said in 1964 that he
did not want “a wider war” in Vietnam, even as he was lying about events in the
Gulf of Tonkin and planning the invasion that President Kennedy refused to
launch. Richard Nixon said he would
bring The Vietnam War to an early end with “peace and honor,” yet disgraced
himself with a heartless disregard for peace and an utter lack of honor,
becoming the first American president to resign from office.
Due to the lies and depredations of
Johnson and Nixon, the American people grew increasingly suspicious of their
political leaders. That distrust deepened
into cynicism when President George W. Bush’s claim – that Iraq had “weapons of
mass destruction,” which he then used as a pretext for war – proved to be an
outrageous lie. And now, alas, Donald
Trump inhabits the White House, proving once again that a Nixonian neurotic and
Bush-whacking ideologue can become the most powerful and most dangerous man in
the world.
Yet all is not lost, not hopeless,
not without redemptive possibilities.
Despite the forces of obstruction, the American landscape is filled with
a multitude of brave, inquisitive, vocal, active, dedicated justice-seekers and
peacemakers. They recognize that they
are not alone, that solidarity is our only hope, and that their collective
voice indicates something like A Renaissance of The Renaissance. They – We! – know who Tom Paine was, and why
he wrote “Common Sense” and “The Rights of Man.”
We know that John and Robert
Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed for their courage of conscience; and
because we refuse to let their lives and deaths be in vain, we carry the torch
they lit for a sane and better world. We
dare, with John Lennon, to Imagine. We
know that there are millions around the world who feel the same, and who are
also doing their part to bequeath to a new generation the world of peace and
beauty they deserve. Accordingly, we
shall not despair; we shall not relinquish hope; and we shall indeed do
whatever is necessary to restore America’s tarnished ideals to their once and
future glory, for the sake of all humanity, and for Mother Earth and all her
blessings.
Stefan Schindler
…………………….
Stefan Schindler is the co-founder of The National Registry
for Conscientious Objection; a Board Member of The Life Experience School and
Peace Abbey; and author of America’s
Indochina Holocaust: The History and Global Matrix of The Vietnam War. His forthcoming book is entitled Buddha’s Political Philosophy.
Way to go, guys! We have the best set of alternatives we’ve seen since the Occupy Movement was pounced on by the entrenched elite that feared democracy, feared truth, feared loss of control.
Today’s alternatives seem clear:
Are you going to side with the military-industrial complex against the young reformers or support what may be the best hope we’ve ever had for enacting gun reform?
Are you going to heed the lies, the distortions, the put-downs from the NRA and its toadies, or are you going to say No to the spread of deadly weapons of mass destruction that kill innocents daily?
Will you close your ears or listen to the new young leaders?
Leaders such as:
Emma Gonzalez, who is organizing voter registration drives, has raised millions for a march on Washington (March 24), and whose twitter account @Emma4Change has over 760k followers! Take that, NRA!
Whitney Bowen and Eleanor Nuechterlein, 16-year-old high school students from the DC area, who started Teens For Gun Reform (TGR) within two days of the Parkland shooting.
Cameron Kasky, cofounder of the student-led gun control advocacy group Never Again MSD (#NeverAgain).
Search on their names, read their stories, hear their voices, and join their cause, our cause. A good place to start is here and here and here.