Averroës Nix
Sr. Member
Posts: 2,289
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« on: May 19, 2021, 03:40:39 PM » |
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The trouble with asking Americans to make significant changes is that everyone has faced the rhetoric of "doing more with less" for decades and recognizes it for the total BS that it is. It's always an excuse for the rich and powerful to demand more from everyone else while they continue engorging themselves.
There is no such thing as shared sacrifice for the American ruling class. Virtually any scheme to reduce consumption is engineered by people who will never bear the brunt of those policies, and people rightfully resent jet-setters who would deny them the quiet comfort of a home on a leafy street or the convenience of a personal vehicle with ample leg space.
There's this image of the metastasized consumer-truck, with an obese, sedentary driver, parked in a massive garage filled with clutter, and it is ridiculous and true and a national humiliation. But even most people who are disgusted by that image are scared of losing what is left of the American Dream. They will not eat the bugs. They will not live in the pod.
The people who make the decisions in this country have even less credibility than they did when Jimmy Carter delivered the Malaise Speech. This country would need a literal revolution to undergo the kind of spiritual renewal that Carter invokes, and that's not a prospect that reasonable people relish.
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