BA HUMBUG!

BA HUMBUG!

An unoffensive and evasive euphemism for a serious moral indictment. While hearing Tiny Tim’s famous words, “God bless us all” over and over again, we deserve anything but a blessing (as Americans, or as global citizens). Just step back and look at the world. It’s absolutely stunning that we can exchange Christmas cards, gifts, and “good cheer” while aiding and abetting the suffering virtually everywhere else on the planet (including here at home). Our holidays depend on sweat shops, ecological desecration, suffering and torture of so many other living things that it boggles the mind.

The rich are so rich now that they’re sponsoring their own space programs. Meanwhile, Yemen and Ethiopia are suffering the worst starvation crises the world has ever witnessed (as we speak), and people are freezing to death and starving in the streets of America. Also, as we exchange our Hallmark cards and smiles we congratulate ourselves for being a “generous, caring, forgiving, and compassionate” people. Literally speaking, it makes me want to puke.

We congratulate ourselves for being environmentally responsive to global warming and ecological devastation, while only 9 % of our plastics actually get recycled, the Brazilian rain forest (the “one” source that supplies 1/5 of the planet’s oxygen) is being burned down, and we’re burning more fossil fuel than ever before.

While the government squanders billions on political “favors” and private deals, the richest among us (celebs, politicians) have the gall to solicit Americans on fixed incomes for donations to causes that interest only them (e.g., “Please save Hollywood’s film archives”). It’s also up to us to keep food banks and veteran clinics open, and tribal and minority communities from going under. We have to hold bake sales just to keep public libraries open. Students are paying off debts that shouldn’t even exist, and we fear sickness (not because of the sickness itself) but because of the cost of healthcare – while also knowing we’re the ONLY industrialized nation left in the world (including most of the 3^rd world) without universal healthcare.

Our only real healthcare plan is this:: “Don’t get sick.” Avoid hospitals and doctors for as long as you possibly can! Otherwise, if you’re not rich, you’re doomed. Insurance companies will not cover you fully (not even close to “fully”), even while we pay for full coverage.

We call ourselves compassionate while unspeakable animal abuse is ongoing in “factories” (out of sight, out of mind) just so we can have our morning bacon and Christmas turkeys. While the rich ignore the bloody slaughter of baby fur seals just to satisfy their vanity, to be “fashionable” and “look cool.” We buy puppies and kittens as Christmas gifts, like stuffed toys, without ever giving a thought to the fact that they grow up. They need food, shelter, and love long after Christmas. Animal shelters are inundated by January and February when the surprises and novelties wear off. Pets are tossed away like Kleenex.

We could go on and on describing our ritual hypocrisy. But what we’re most infamous for, really, is our ability to turn our heads and ignore those horrible truths, then to even deny their existence. Then for rationalizing it all when denial no longer works.– “There’s only so much we can do.” “We don’t even know what the truth is.” “I give at the office.” “Charity organizations take care of all that,” and on and on.

What is significant here isn’t if something or someone else “takes care of all that,” but the attitude we share while forced to confront it. It is as if our own thriving depends on the minimizing of everything that isn’t thriving. Someone needs to stoke the fires while the privileged stay warm, but the stokers are conveniently out of sight. The warmth feels like something that’s “free” and effortless, so we might as well enjoy it. It’s called complacency.

What that creates is a hardened countenance (or “soul”), one adept at selecting who/what will suffer today, and who/what will not. It “seasons us” for witnessing the worst of our own behavior. We watch, we gasp, we look away, we take a moment to get our heads around it; then we move to the next video – “infants dying today?” hmmm. Then we choose, or we don’t choose, and we get distracted by something else. It is an indoctrination unique to the rules of social Darwinism, what someone also once called a “vulgarian” culture.

We cut down trees for Christmas shamelessly – and for what?? Don’t we kill enough trees? Somehow many think that the ritual of tree harvesting and decorating started in Biblical times. But it only started between 600 to 400 years ago, as a mostly pagan ritual (bringing the “yule” spirit inside with wreathes, laurels, and mistletoe). The first tree was brought inside by Prince Albert, and the first “commercial” tree wasn’t sold until 1861 in America. But we ignore the history and treat it like a sacred institution.

Do we not feel just a twinge of guilt when the spirit of “conspicuous consumption” is what really drives us during the holiday? Then to litter our alleys with “tree graveyards” in January? That in this “throw away” culture we could actually plant trees instead? That we could bring the “yule spirit” inside with just branches? That we could improvise with the traditional Christmas “star?” That in fact making the holiday safer, cleaner, cheaper, easier to clean up, environmentally-friendly (and without fire-hazards) is actually a good idea?

Personally, I cannot think of a more responsible and rewarding Christmas (and enlightening for children) than to plant a tree on Christmas Eve. If we want to “give thanks,” this is truly how to do it. But just suggesting the idea is like asking a mule to stop an old habit.

The fact that there are already tree shortages (even of artificial trees) should be a clue as to a harbinger of Christmases to come. And on a much larger scale, the fact is that (without the Brazilian rain forest) we need trees more than ever to produce oxygen. Scientists are saying that “with every fifth breath we take, we can thank the rain forest.” That fact alone should alarm us. But it doesn’t.

What needs to happen – as of “right now” – is a total re-prioritizing of our needs as a species. Drastic and immediate measures need to happen, and we need to fire the politicians that stand in the way of that – paid off to defend fossil fuel and wars that victimize refugees (while making those leaders rich and powerful). As long as we remain divided on this point, the longer we remain the most hypocritical generation of all – just because the stakes have never been higher.

A responsible Christmas (and New Year) would be to stop the “slash & burn” in Brazil immediately, to intervene massivly in Yemen and Ethiopia (and everywhere children are starving), We are the “most powerful nation on earth” (an old cliché, but true). And if we are, we can push our way into the affairs of the most corrupt nations engaged in civil wars, no differently than in how we plant military bases anywhere/anytime we want. We do the latter virtually everyday. We could do the former just once for the sake of survival.

A responsible New Year would be to build massive water desalination plants, to impound and expropriate “oil” pipelines for the distribution of water into the nation’s heartland. It would also mean to update and revitalize the whole plastic recycling industry, so that 9% (recycled) becomes 90%. This time of year it would also mean to plant trees and rewrite our Christmas cards in ways that mention children without food or water. The Hallmark company would need to wake up.

A responsible Christmas/New Year would also mean closing down animal factories and return animals to real (organic) farms where they would be raised humanely. To end the entire fur industry. To stop Monsanto and genetically-modified foods. To eliminate student debt, make college tuition free, give veterans the full benefits (and jobs) they deserve, to start up universal healthcare, and put insurance companies in their rightful place. – All of this could be achieved in a remarkably short period of time – not years.

Whenever you’re told “oh, but that would take a long time, it’s a very slow process,” you’re talking to a defender of the status quo. Just think back when America entered World War II. Our entire peacetime economy was transformed into a full-time war economy within just “six months.” Factories stopped making cars, washing machines, and toasters, and started making planes, guns, and tanks. Why” Because we knew our very survival was at stake. No one fooled around, no time to waste. We just did it. – Survival is the operative term here, once again, but this time for us all as a species. It doesn’t get any bigger than that.

Things not simply to ponder this season, but to act on – immediately. If we do, then we’ll deserve Tiny Tim’s blessing. If we don’t, then we still need visits from the three ghosts visiting Scrooge in the night – to remind us of the past, present, and future.

Merry Christmas – and ba humbug!

(c) 2021 Richard Hiatt