Retrograde America
Drill, Baby, Drill; Bomb, Baby, Bomb
My daily routine includes checking headlines and stories from a range of sources. I get morning updates from the New York Times and the Boston Globe, among other legacy media outlets, but I also read sites like Antiwar.com and other alternative sources. Two headlines today struck me as distinctly retrograde—reminders of the early 1980s, signs of regress rather than progress in America.
The first appeared on Antiwar.com: a story about flights of B-52 and B-1 bombers near the coast of Venezuela, designed to intimidate that country’s government. The B-52, of course, first flew in the 1950s as a nuclear bomber aimed at the Soviet Union. The B-1, developed in the 1970s, was intended to penetrate Soviet airspace during a nuclear conflict. Now, both of these vintage Cold War bombers are being used like spiked baseball bats swung by thugs near your head. The message is unmistakable—cooperate or get whacked.
I never imagined that America’s strategic nuclear bombers—the high-tech pride and joy of Strategic Air Command (SAC), fielded to deter or, if necessary, wage nuclear war against a superpower that no longer exists—would one day be used as crude instruments of intimidation against a small Latin American country that has no defense against them.
The second headline came from the New York Times: the Trump administration had approved oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The headline read:
The administration says it will allow oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest tracts of pristine wilderness left in the country.
Surprise! I’m old enough to remember President Jimmy Carter’s call to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and to embrace renewable energy sources. Ronald Reagan, of course, tossed that vision aside—along with the solar panels Carter had installed on the White House roof—as America went all-in again on fossil fuels in the 1980s.
And here we are, decades later: drill, baby, drill, even in the most pristine and fragile of places; bomb, baby, bomb (or at least threaten to) against nations like Venezuela that refuse full obedience to capitalist and corporate imperatives.
I want my future back. But it seems the future is simply more of the past—more drilling, more bombing.
Bill, as a counterpoint, I want my past back too. I grow angrier by the day as I see now the entire East Wing of the White House being torn down - to be replaced by a self-aggrandizing temple of greed to take its place, where the elites can gather a couple of times of year. It belongs to the American people, not to Trump - who continually demonstrates his low-brow aesthetic of excess and garishness. Trump likely doesn't know the history of the East Wing - or cares.
You can't stop the dismal Tide-- indifferent, chaotic Universe that it is you must embrace it. I wanted a future like 2001 space travel, science, real progress solving disease, hunger not just greed and the pursuit of money & solely hedonistic material things. Its all lead to our so called modern world & Trump. Theres no easy answers other than to live bravely in these dismal times... Gotta love the old SAC Patch my Neighbor noticed mine on my Flt. Jacket. He was an Aircraft Mechanic on BUFFS B-52's. (can't believe they're still around. I have no doubt they may still be used @ 100 yrs. old.) when he was in. He didn't know he lived by a SAC Ex Sky-Cop! Motto:"Peace (was) Is our Profession"