The clearest fact of life in the era now ending is segregation.
Not racial segregation, although that still exists. I’m talking more of social segregation, religious segregation, economic segregation, media segregation, and political segregation.
We have modeled the cul de sac attitude in how we live, and now live lives completely separate from one another.
- When you drive to work, by yourself, you don’t deal with other people except on your own terms, at a gas station or in a store getting coffee. And you can choose to shop near your neighborhood, among people just like you.
- The Internet does not help. It’s easy on this medium to only look at things which validate you, and to flame anyone who questions your assumptions.
No two places illustrate this segregation better than Arizona and Alaska.
Neither could not exist without federal subsidies. Arizona would have no water without federal dams, and Alaska could not expand its civilization absent federal highways. (The picture is of a traffic jam on top of the Hoover Dam, on the Arizona-Nevada border.)
But on the ground, the people in those states have long bought into the lie that they are totally self-reliant, independent, that they are solely responsible for their own prosperity. And when you don’t see the Mexican immigrants who pick your food or build your houses, and you don’t see the petrodollars that subsidize your WalMart lifestyle, it’s an easy lie to buy.
These are extreme versions of what we have become. We don’t see one another. We don’t see what made our lives possible. We credit nothing but our own efforts. Easy, then, to dream a dream where we can have it all, fly across the state in our private plane from palatial mansion to palatial mansion, take the whole state for ourselves, declaring it independent and holding all those riches as our personal property. To hell with anyone else.
This disconnection from the world’s reality made the "shock and awe" of the Iraq War possible. We could turn the massacre of thousands into a TV show, "embed" some loyal reporters with our storm troopers, and paint a moving picture of freedom on the march.
But reality has a way of intruding. For every action there is a reaction. You may control the land but you can’t have the people. You may pay for that war, and more, by creating Confederate Money, but the scam will eventually be found out.
Our whole nation has become O.J. Simpson. Arrogant, entitled, we think
we can kill and rob with impunity, that everyone will love us anyway,
or that in the end we can claim "racism" and get away with it. That
trick can’t work forever. You lose the goodwill of the World, your
words become non-credible, and eventually you are locked away in a
hole, forever, good riddance.
The rest of the World is ready to do this to America now. The rest of
the World is ready to toss away out dollars, call in their loans, and
treat us as the Argentines we act like.
So here’s the deal. You might be able to get out of that jail. But you
have to own up, you have to admit your mistakes, you have to end your
segregation and you have to change. The wealthy have to admit they’re
no better than the middle class, the middle class has to admit that our
attitudes about the built environment must change, and the poor have to
take responsibility for their own actions.
This can’t just be a deathbed conversion, or a short-term thing. It is
dawning on America that this change must be more than rhetorical. It
must be real and it must be met with action. Sacrifice. Unity.
Integration of our built environment with the planet, of our economy with the
world. Ending the isolation of our car-centric lives and listening to
one another, rather than just flaming.
The change just begins with this campaign. We will be measured by our
actions, not our votes or our words. We will be judged for our past
actions, and we must judge ourselves, admit mistakes, then start the
hard work of putting things right again.
The torch has been passed to a new generation, and this is their
charge. To save the planet, to live in harmony with the world, to go
humbly forward, to listen to one another. To end the segregation that
has marked their upbringing, and their parents’ lives. To be true
idealists, people who live their ideals, and who ask themselves how do
I help rather than what is in it for me.
It’s an immense challenge. I will help as I can. I can’t go all that
way with you. But I can support you, and wish you Godspeed on your
journey of saving this world from the mess my generation and its segregation has made of it.
