The Plunderers

The road to our demise has been long. It isn't at all unpatriotic to admit that Americans have always been plunderers. Everybody used to plunder, given the chance. We, however, were plunderers with principles. 

We weren't imperial. We plundered fair and square. Never mind that a continent of natural resources had been handed to us--by fate, manifestly--to be exploited once the aborigines were out of the way. 

But our plundering has won out over our principles. And, worse yet, we're plundering our principles. We often failed to live up to them but at least the principles were intact in a parallel world. Not any longer.

I'm not even sure this is bad. The Civil Rights Movement, an ethical smackdown, was the big show. No more upholding the pretense of democracy and equal protection. Either we would live up to our ideals or not. 

Answer that as a "no," for now. It's a shock to many of us that we failed so readily. There is no real threat. There is no mortal danger. Quite the opposite. We are unchallenged. And we are the danger to ourselves.

What kind of lunatic still believes the hype? We are harvesting resources as we always have--into extinction. Whales, petroleum, labor.... Onward goes the plundering. But we are owning it now as we never have.

Fuck the rest of the world. Fuck the environment. Fuck poorer Americans, for that matter. We will get ours. Get out of the fucking way. Those are our principles. Or, rather, they are primal drives posing as such.