Why I have stopped writing critical commentary blog pieces:

The world is destroying itself. The urban legend of Nero fiddling while Rome burns is a joyful threnody compared to our gray self-justifying ignorance.

To say that our present mode of life is 'non-sustainable' is a half-stitched rag over the reality.

The world is overpopulating. This is a primary cause of the destruction of the world. But we have religions which not only advocate, tacitly, unlimited population growth. We have religions that seem to make this their sole moral imperative.

Religions should be the answer. But everywhere we are holding the founders' feet to the fire, torturing them in the name of teachings that clearly deny the violence being either advocated or dealt in their names.

I love Jesus. I really do. Precisely because what he was advocating was an inclusive urban, suburban, rural religion of sustainability. He absolutely hated hypocrites. (Go read your Bible, Jack.) And the only people in churches who are not hypocrites are the one or two truly humble old ladies in the back pews. But I wouldn't check up on them too closely, either.

Automobiles are poisoning the world. Every ten gallons puts fifty pounds of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. If the world is to survive, we have to stop driving.

We have the archaeological and anthropological record. Cultures less 'developed', less mutually interdependent than ours have perished literally overnight. In a decade or less, every trace of them is gone, including any indication of survivors. But it can't happen to us.

We 'believe in the market'. But what the masters of the market have shown us once again is that they only believe in aristocracy and slavery. Perhaps I have to draw you a diagram to show you which is you.

The most profitable function in the culture for at least the last decade has been the systematic gutting of the economy. Beginning with the arbitrageurs and progressing through the various traders and instruments, what the funny money people have been doing is stealing the profits not only from the workers but also from the stockholders. And since what they are doing is such a golden ideal of the country, they are entitled to annual bonuses in multiples of a hundred million.

The United States is not a culture. It is not even a society. The only thing that holds us together is 'the market': greed and the consequent 'need to make a living', to sacrifice our lives to survival. This is a direct corollary of the basic imperialist government which we have twisted ourselves into. When veterans insist that since they risked their lives for our country, we have no right to protest, they show that they have a perfectly ignorant understanding of the corporate communism which they defended.

The list does not end. But I do.

It's time to write poetry.