A Green State of Mind

There is a tight intertwining of the phenomenon of the soldier with that of war. Currently, those who oppose the war have been accused of not supporting the troops, with an emphasis on the human life of these soldiers. However, as those who understand the lack of necessity of the Iraq war in particular and all war in general, there is a recognition that those who use the human life of the soldier in their pro-war argument do not see or refuse to see that war in itself is the closest threat to the lives of soldiers. The following can be considered as a polemic in order to break apart this close connection that obscures the real value of life and the destructive nature of war. It emphasizes that the main difference that is between the identity of the human and that of the soldier is the military structure. What follows will hopefully illuminate that the inherent threat to democracy that lies with militarism allows the tipping point where a beloved fellow human can turn into an instrument of destruction, a part of the mass of the military, and yet one can still see the human in the structuring of brutality through an argument for peace.

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President Bush and the Democratic-controlled House approved a deal last week that will provide $150 billion in tax rebates as an economic stimulus, essentially saying a recession can be avoided if people go out and buy something. Is that a good idea?

In a recent Internet video The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard examines the cycle of buying through extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal, and the negative effects on people and the environment.

The results?
— environmental degradation and substandard work and living conditions in producing countries
— 4 billion pounds of toxic materials released by US factories each year
— 4½ lbs of garbage a day per person produced in the US
— only 1% of goods purchased are used 6 months after purchase

Leonard recommends a sustainable and equitable solution, using green chemistry, zero waste, closed-loop production, renewable energy, local living economies and democratic decision making to counteract the negative effects of consumption.

So if encouraging people to go out and buy more stuff isn’t the right step to avoid a recession, what is? The Green Party platform promotes “community-based economics” that “value diversity and decentralization.” What would the Green Party do to fix the economy?

I welcome your comments below . . .

In the rhetoric of the war in Iraq and the War On Terror, one can see George W. Bush constantly address the issues of freedom and democracy. The truth of this rhetoric is that the president talks about promoting freedom in the abstract sense while ignoring or attempting to subvert freedom in the concrete sense. The result is a war based on lies that obviously has the goal of spreading U.S. hegemony alongside the postponing and limiting of civil liberties at home with the Patriot Act and other legislation. The repetition of the administration’s rhetoric inscribes itself into the surface of the harsh reality of an unjust war by mediating the meaning of this raw perception and reaction to the violence of war. National identity and patriotism are elevated as transcendent categories that appear as absolute truth, while the liberating potential of democracy is inverted into a method of containment exemplified by the two-party system. The Green Party, as a disruption of this static containment in the electoral arena, must also draw attention to the abstract nature of the rhetoric of freedom by clearly defining freedom as it actually exists. This means that in the public dialogue that the Greens must engage in, there must be a recognition of freedom that is always already surrounded by various structures of power, meaning, and production.

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