we can solve it?

i just watched one of the most obtuse (though mercifully brief) activist videos i’ve ever seen at We Can Solve It. it starts with an astonishing pro-war image (normandy), then goes on to say “we didn’t wait for someone else to start civil rights.”

this is true. the country that invented lynching and the crime of DWB didn’t wait for “someone else” to start civil rights. what the fuck does that mean, anyway? bravo america, it didn’t take foreign troops storming the beaches of long island to get our schools desegregated?

the next astonishing allegory is that we didn’t wait for someone else to put a man on the moon. what a useful social achievement that one turned out to be — just think what life would be like today if we hadn’t gotten up there with our pathetic metaphor and our flag.

and we can’t wait, wecansolveit.org tells us, for someone else to solve the global climate crisis. would somebody please tell these people that we ARE the global climate crisis?

yesterday i went to bed, bath & beyond to buy a small storage locker. it was drizzling, and there stood the security guard, forcing long umbrella-shaped plastic bags upon every incoming shopper, said bags to be placed, condom-style, over the unseemly dripping appendages. the umbrellas were hardly even wet yet everybody (except me, earning a nasty look from the guard) took one of the bags and dutifully slid it up the shaft. there’s a garbage bin at the exit for throwing away the used ones, and it’s clear the bags aren’t being re-used. may as well be a bin full of brand-new oil, poured straight down the nearest drain.

but why even quibble about umbrella bags in a store brimming with excessive packaging, in a city brimming with similar stores, in a country brimming with store-filled cities? i shouldn’t be so hard on bb&b when just a mile away times square squanders a billion watts (guesstimate) a day on halogen neon incandescent throbbing brilliant blasting 24×7 illuminated ads that absolutely no one reads. i’m pissed off about umbrella bags when the store’s cafe puts a simple sandwich into a molded plastic sandwich container (after wrapping it in tinfoilized paper) then puts the container into a plastic bag that also contains a sealed plastic bag filled with plastic utensils, none of which are needed for sandwich-eating but which you get, according to the clerk, because of the micronapkin that is also tucked inside. yes, virginia, we even package napkins now.

yesterday was al gore’s birthday. Happy Birthday, President Al! i bet i wouldn’t be writing about umbrella bags and fortressized sandwiches this morning if we still had fair and free elections in this country, but we don’t. everything is rigged. and i’m afraid that we can’t solve it. very afraid.

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