Resolved to live off the grid
I suppose this would be the place where I count up all the noteworthy events that occurred during the past year and list my resolutions for the new decade. But last night I watched a documentary about Howard Zinn, the radical historian, and it reminded me that what growing my own food here in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House, has done more than anything is opened my eyes to the grotesque beast our country’s agriculture has become.
If you’ve been following this blog, you may have noticed that I no longer spend much time cataloguing the atrocities committed by industrial agriculture and its government partners. We could talk about the destruction of family farms and rural communities, the pollution, the nutritionally inferior products, the breeding grounds for new diseases. But there are other blogs that do this so much better.
It’s not that I no longer pay attention. Oh, we are following the news alright. It’s been so bad this year that my wife and I have actually contemplated other countries where we might live. Watching the heath care “debate,” for instance, put us in an especially dark mood. How is it that we are the last civilized country to embrace a sensible health care system? Americans have been sold off to greedy insurance companies like so much cattle. Would any other country tolerate its citizens going bankrupt trying to pay medical bills?
And then there’s the public debt. People thought Ross Perot was a nut when he talked about a “great sucking sound” as jobs left the country for foreign ports. He turned out to be a prophet. Not only are the jobs gone, but the country is nearly bankrupt, in hock over its head to the Chinese. What wealth hasn’t left the country has been sucked up by corporate fat cats. The American economy looks like a dessicated husk, the American Dream a cruel hoax played to the beat of perpetual war. Yet we let it happen. I blame the death of labor unions.
As Howard Zinn would say, it’s long past time when Americans should have taken their country back. Congress doesn’t need reform so much as to be completely replaced, and all its special interest friends sent packing. But where is the outrage, you might ask. We sense a seething anger abroad in the country, looking for a target. Now comes the greatest threat of all, a climate crisis born of our polluting ways–a reckoning of accounts–that could turn life as we know it into a nightmare. Yet the politicians dither. Free enterprise has hit a brick wall.
My conclusion: It’s hardly possible to grow vegetables anymore without becoming a raging insurgent. Is civil disobedience the next best option? Our goal is to live as much off the grid as possible, to prepare for a future of big unknowns. I wonder how many other Americans are thinking the worst is yet to come. More than anything, we are resolved not to become victims of our country’s lack of moral leadership.
Happy New Year.
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
Ed, you’ve been inspirational in changing your world plant by plant. I’m sorry that you are in a gloom, although I share many of your views. I am not sure how you set about going off-grid in the middle of a capital city – and I look forward to reading about it, as I have no doubt that you’ll keep us posted.
I am going to see if I can find the film you’ve been watching – my first resolution for the new year
Very best wishes to you and your family for a productive, healthy, happy new year
Joanna
Joanna, I don’t feel this new decade is the beginning of things so much as the beginning of the end of many things, one of which just may be polite conversation about what ails the planet. I don’t think these are problems we can just watch go around every four-year election cycle anymore. It really has become a matter of life and death–certainly for the generation coming behind us. I consider growing my own food a small act of defiance. But the time has come, I believe, for much bolder acts of defiance, perhaps something more like the civil rights and anti-war demonstrations of the 60s.
I am afraid that the seething anger you sense is being organized and distorted by some scary people and resembles certain European countries in the 1930′s more than our country in the 1960′s. Unions have been so demonized in the press for the last 30 years that they would have a hard time being effective now. Besides, where are the workers for them to organize? Things might look hopeful when we hang out at farmers’ markets and Sierra Club meetings but that is a tiny, self-selected minority. Even in my very blue state I see plenty of NRA bumper stickers. Sorry to be so gloomy, but I think you started it.
The thing that really scares me about your country is the way that “they” have managed to get so many disadvantaged and/or poor people to really believe that socialised healthcare is evil. I’ve been reading around the blogs and the number of times I’ve read something along the lines of “I’ve worked hard all my life for minimum wage and there’s no way I want any commie health insurance” is frightening. “They” are obviously very clever.