It is cool to be Green on Earth Day, i.e. April 22, 2009.
This morning, as soon as I got off my Metro rail station in downtown San Francisco, California, a sales lady was giving away cans of free canned cat food in downtown San Francisco. Just a few footsteps away, a completely "zonked out" street bum was wallowing in a street corner.... drugged and overdozed with heroin in his veins.
No one seems to care and everyone is on the frenetic pace to go to work and make money. At Starbucks... the talk on EARTH DAY is how to curb using plaster bag, and calibrating one's carbon footprints to reduce human pollution.
In San Francisco, if you are not an animal (except human beings)lover, i.e. whether cat, dog, lion, or bear..... or you are not Green... or part of that bandwagon obsessed with reducing your carbon footprint on this earth, or ride a bike, or worship the Dalai Lama, or support same-sex marriage.... you are an exception, a despicable disgusting traitor to the uber-liberal tradition of "chi-chi" San Francisco.
One must be "Green" these days to be an American or you risk being lynched for being a damn traitor to the Cause of Al Gore.
It is no strange wonder that Former Vice-President turned "Global Warming" Czar Al Gore has relocated his home and landed in San Francisco, hyping and promoting his campaign against global warming and from where he left off after his Nobel Prize prize after producing that blockbuster earthling Green movie titled the "Inconvenient Truth."
All in all, it pays to be Green these days in the West, and especially in California.
It is cool to jump into that bandwagon. The advertisers are using buzz words. Even the travel industry is hyping eco-tourism and Green hotels... whatever the word means. Green just sounds so hip.
Even our governor, Mr. Hollywood, Arnold Scharzenegger, "Mr. Muscleman," "The Governator" is hooping it up as the Green governor of California. Arnold drives two hummers...muscle cars, one fueled by hydrogen and the other onhe fueled by renewable biofuels.
Isn't that wonderful ?
Never mind that the jobless in California has skyrockted to over 2 million in a state of 35 million inhabitants.
The unemployment rate is now a whopping 11.2%; and in Silicon Valley, it is an unprecedented 11%... the highest since 1964. These doube-digit unemployment rate does not even count nor factor in those unemployed who have stopped looking and fallen through the cracks. This is about blue-collar to white-collar, low-tech to high-tech workers... all distressed and jobless in tough economic times.
Joblessness has become so critical that the shock waves have swept the credit market and further depressed California's home foreclosure mess.
Californians are broke; and it shows in their state's fiscal mess... left to fester and rot. In the meantime, state legislators are talking up a storm by raising taxes and bridging the widening fiscal gap between revenues and expenditures wth more taxes and creative public accounting.
Who cares ? It is only "OPM," or ehhhh, so to speak "Other People's Money."
As I write this, for the first quarter of 2009, in the first three months of 2009 alone, there are more than 350,000 California homeowners who can't keep up with their mortgage payments and have received Notices of default in their home payments. Another 120 days and these default notices will be tracked and chalked into that distressed foreclosure mess, with banks taking over ownership from these distressed California homeowners.
Nationwide, there were for the first 3 months of 2009 more than 2 million Americans who have lost their homes because they can't afford to make house mortgage payments...... that's equivalent to one in two Singaporean inhabitants who have been rendered "homeless."
At this juncture, on this EARTH DAY, here is how I am musing about in this THIRD SPACE, i.e. Spatium Trientis.:
1. Americans need to get back to Earth, and really do the basic, earthly stuff... and reprioritize their goals. Come down to EARTH, for Pete's and Mary's sake, Dude.
As lofty and cool and hip on this EARTH DAY to think green, do green, reduce carbon footprints, go solar, stop using plastic bags, ride a bike, and grow organic vegetables..... fact remains that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe are breaking apart and have more earthling problems beyond all of this chic GREEN stuff.
How about coming back to EARTH, and talking and doing basics.
2. Fix the goddamn broken education system in the WEST.
When Johnny and Jane can't do the basic rudimentaries of reading, arithmetic and writing in simple English, there is a hugh colossal mess in the WEST.
As the world of globalization, the learning curve is steadily dumbing down and going further "dumbed down" in the Western system of education.
Johnny and Jane can't compete with their counterparts from India, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, and yes... China.
Read up on what Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist wrote about Americans and their sick educational system... dumbed down, and careening to more mediocrity and underachievemnt:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/opinion/22friedman.html?em
3. Accept that the WEST, led by Americans and the Brits, have a serious social pandemic of drugs, drug addiction, and alcohol abuse. The social consequences are staggering. It shows in the economic meltdown and its dire fallout.
Having observed the serious social consequences of drugs and drug abuse here in the WEST, it is a mess to which Western youth, all across the board, from the inner cities to the exburbs, are afflicted with..... it is a testament to the harsh reality that our schools in the WEST have become "combat zones" for violence, often releted or stemming from drugs and rampant drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and the social consequences of addiction.
White people in the WEST are in complete self-denial that alcohol and drugs are a epidemic in the WEST which has wracked the basic fundamental fabric of Western societies.
But the "PC" norm nowadays, it appears, is more slackening ... more marijuana. More beer. More "bong" parties, more booze.
Not only is "bonking" affecting our Great White Hope of last year's Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps, caught "bonking away" with a water pipe in an off-campus bong party in South Carolina.
If Michael Phelps is not free from the bong, guess where the rest of the white boys and girls are ?
Two days ago, American youths just went into a "marijuana" dope binge and happily engaged in 4-20. In campuses such as University of California Santa Cruz or University of Colorado in Denver, students and the campus "hangers-on" were openly doping and smoking marijuana, and defiantly pushed for "free marijuana," and "legalizing marijuana."
In California's state legislature, a legislator representing wacko San Francisco is openly pushing to legalize and tax marijuana as a source of state revenues to bridge California's widening fiscal shortfall. Tax marijuana sales to pay for social services... the promoters of legalizing marijuana are clamoring.
That's the WEST for you. Dumbling down and falling apart. Imploding from within from its own banality, vulgarity, and inanity.
Time for some tough talk on this EARTH DAY.
It is great to talk GREEN on EARTH DAY.
It is even more important to admonish the WEST to come down to EARTH and deal with the mess in their own backyard on this EARTH DAY.
