So We Chose To Be Like This?

So we save the jobs, cut the trees and extinguish the spotted owls

When the old growth is all cut and exported what jobs then remain

If we saved the trees and retrained a few lumberjacks right now

Maybe there would be some tourist jobs in the old growth along with the owls

So we spend a couple trillion to secure democracy and oil in the middle east

When the fields are tapped and sent to China what will Big Oil then provide us?

If we spent a quarter of that money to develop energy independence

Maybe we could abandon the Sheiks and Imams to the biting flies of their stinking desert

So we tithe without question a half a trillion every year to the god of war

Why then can’t we prevail against their homemade IEDs and crude truck bombs?

If we took three quarters of that budget for education, infrastructure, health and the old

Maybe we would actually be ready to meet any real challenger who might arise

So we go ahead and tap our arctic wilderness for a small petroleum reserve

When we consume all of what little there is today, it’s just gone forever

If we simply waited while technology got better at doing more with less

Possibly they could drill cleaner and safer sometime when we really need it

So we spend more every year on prisons for petty minority drug users and hookers

What value flows to society for the costs of their miserable upkeep

If we legalized and regulated, taxed and collected fees instead

we might even spend more on schools and put the pimps and pushers out of business

So we open up the forests to entrepreneurs and activities of any stripe

When it’s all built out, what then will we turn our holy bulldozer crusade against?

If we preserve what rightfully belongs to generations yet to come

Maybe they can tap potentials that we have never even dreamed of

So we conglomerate and merge and automate and globalize to the limit

When every worker toils for pennies, who then can afford the flood of goods?

If we lower the human population and use resources more efficiently

Maybe we won’t all have be reduced to a miserable common denominator

So we open a Wal*Mart close to everyone in this exceptionist land of ours

Local businesses are buried beneath their semis stuffed with imports

If we have to pay a little more than for their asian knockoffs and cheapened generics

Perhaps our towns will retain a bit of diversity and a few real jobs

So we ban sex education, contraception, abortion and preach solemnly of abstinence

Since our children learn so very little as it is, why would that ever work?

If we implanted contraceptives in all those first-time unwed mothers and irresponsible dads

Maybe we could end the multi-generational cycle of babies born on welfare

So we embrace religion in government and let them interpret our Father’s intent

Are we more righteous than those who rule thru the violent twisting of the Koran?

If we leave religion out of both government and foreign policy

Maybe we could live more peacefully with those we will truly never understand

So we made the jobs so bad that we wont take them but those despicable illegales will

How can we stop them breeding and staying and bringing in their friends and families?

If we make every job simply decent, then none would remain beneath us

Maybe we could retain our own standard of living, our language and our traditions

So we plunge bravely on under the aegis of faceless corporate supply side economics

Creating an angry, armed mob of outsourced techies and the proudly-ignorant poor

Perhaps formulaic slash and burn capitalism is not really the way to a free market utopia

Possibly there’s a steady-state economy in which overpaid sociopathic CEOs have no place

So they continue reducing issues to clever sound bites and catchy slogans

That way our political leaders on either side have no need of an educated population

If we send the spin doctors back to hyping products instead of selling the issues like dish soap

our brave leaders would have to learn to speak to us for themselves

so we wait until the price of oil makes it too expensive to drive to work

then they tell us it’s just a simple matter of consumer supply and our demand

they could see the supply was running low but demand just kept on increasing

but they never did a thing and now their powerful petro-donors reap a fortune

so we closed all the factories and outsourced all the engineering overseas

put the customer support in India and got all the latest numbers on computer

we invested only in the marketing and sales machines here at headquarters

but now the buyers realize our wondrous brand is simply more cheapass chinese shit

so we keep repeating that ours is The Finest Healthcare System In The World

but the admin costs, infant mortality and life expectancies don’t bear it out at all

though the money we spend tops everybody but we actually cure less but pay far more

and 50 million have the right to choose any ER they wish for their family healthcare

so we let em churn worthless home loans OKd just by greedy salesmen

and gave em cash back at closing to re-supply their credit cards

now we see they’re too big to fail so we must bail them out

once again the wisdom of unregulated free market solutions is revealed

so we react only when issues turn to crises but population keeps on increasing

muddling through with the quick and dirty, blind luck and the just for now

mortgaging the planet’s future behind winking smirks and infallible personal saviors

until it’s too expensive, widespread and complicated for us to do anything at all...