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Materialistic madness
DERRICK Z. JACKSON
Materialistic madness
By Derrick Z. Jackson | November 12, 2004
THE BIGGEST moral value of all was on display in a parking lot in Hershey, Pa. Five cars, four of them SUVs, were clustered together. All of them had the yellow ribbon magnet in support of our troops in Iraq. The ribbons glowed against the grayness of a drizzly fall day. Circled by fallen leaves, the hulks were an impenetrable metallic forest resting on asphalt soil.
This forest spoke as powerfully about our moral values as the debate over gay marriage and Iraq. Americans are still voting for denial. The SUV forest thickens. The real forest thins. America voted for the asphalt jungle.
That is the moral value that most threatens America. It is consuming itself with consumption. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue, even though Republican President Bush is a stunningly convenient symbol. This is the president who, when faced with telling Americans what their responsibilities were in the days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, went to Chicago's O'Hare Airport and urged Americans to fly to Disney World.
Three thousand Americans were killed by terrorists, we were about to send soldiers off to die, eventually by the hundreds, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and all a president could ask of civilians was to have a photo taken with Mickey Mouse. You cannot be more escapist than that. Had Democrat Al Gore been presented with the same Wall Street pressure to get commercial aircraft up in the air, there is a good chance that he would have done something just as Goofy.
The return of Bush to the White House and the failure of challenger John Kerry to offer a bold, clear alternative is the culmination of a half century in which the early 1960s presidential rhetoric of equality at home and ending poverty abroad faded into an escape from those challenges with Richard Nixon's "law and order" campaign in 1968. Pretty much ever since, Americans have sought out leaders who made them feel good about walling themselves off from those left behind or being global gluttons. (...)
Find this article: The Boston Globe - http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/12/valuing_the_unsustainable?mode=PF
Materialistic madness
By Derrick Z. Jackson | November 12, 2004
THE BIGGEST moral value of all was on display in a parking lot in Hershey, Pa. Five cars, four of them SUVs, were clustered together. All of them had the yellow ribbon magnet in support of our troops in Iraq. The ribbons glowed against the grayness of a drizzly fall day. Circled by fallen leaves, the hulks were an impenetrable metallic forest resting on asphalt soil.
This forest spoke as powerfully about our moral values as the debate over gay marriage and Iraq. Americans are still voting for denial. The SUV forest thickens. The real forest thins. America voted for the asphalt jungle.
That is the moral value that most threatens America. It is consuming itself with consumption. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue, even though Republican President Bush is a stunningly convenient symbol. This is the president who, when faced with telling Americans what their responsibilities were in the days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, went to Chicago's O'Hare Airport and urged Americans to fly to Disney World.
Three thousand Americans were killed by terrorists, we were about to send soldiers off to die, eventually by the hundreds, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and all a president could ask of civilians was to have a photo taken with Mickey Mouse. You cannot be more escapist than that. Had Democrat Al Gore been presented with the same Wall Street pressure to get commercial aircraft up in the air, there is a good chance that he would have done something just as Goofy.
The return of Bush to the White House and the failure of challenger John Kerry to offer a bold, clear alternative is the culmination of a half century in which the early 1960s presidential rhetoric of equality at home and ending poverty abroad faded into an escape from those challenges with Richard Nixon's "law and order" campaign in 1968. Pretty much ever since, Americans have sought out leaders who made them feel good about walling themselves off from those left behind or being global gluttons. (...)
Find this article: The Boston Globe - http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/12/valuing_the_unsustainable?mode=PF
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