Our "Way of Life"

One thing that keeps popping into my mind is how George Bush likes to say that he is about "protecting our way of life". As in,

"In truth, it is a struggle for civilization. We are fighting to maintain the way of life enjoyed by free nations."

I was listening to the radio recently and someone was talking about alternative actions that we should be doing. It's really about how our society is set up that is not sustainable - it seems anti-sustainable. It is so sad that so many of our resources are going into these ridiculous wars - mostly started by the Bush administration but supported by many Democrats as well.

The radio person made quite a case about how US power is fading - what with our oil reserves diminishing and our debts increasing. I rather suspect that the politicians and policy makers - whether they say so or not - think that they are plotting a course to regain/maintain our power through wars. To me - we lose power through wars - esp. these wars. Wars where we have come to be seen as an aggressive nation. If a country truly has power - there is no need for all of this bullying and fighting. (It's interesting to get the perspective of the far side of the world - see: Not a major planet ).

Iraq deaths put at 655,000+ in a new report released today. So we have to wonder how many people will die to "protect our way of life."

"Protecting our way of life" seems to be "protecting our ability to waste resources". A more thoughtful approach would be to use our resources more wisely - and make adaptations to our society so that more people could have a reasonably nice way of life. One that was not as dependent on using fossil fuels.

The amount of money that has been wasted on the wars ($500,000,000,000 +"The House approved a record $448 billion in defense spending for 2007") could have gone a long way toward creating more localized economies, alternative energy sources and more efficient systems of moving people and goods. There are a lot of people out there who have been working on these types of ideas - but these ideas are not discussed by most politicians. Meanwhile - the subsidizing of the ineffiecient energy sources makes it easier for us to stay dependent on them.

Mostly the news is about how afraid we should be about one thing or another - usually so-called terrorists. Democrats are afraid to appear "wimpy" - the fearsome insult thrown around by the Republicans as if this is a grade-school playground. I think that they should all be afraid to appear short-sighted - that in the long run they are not providing any solutions to what will be the problems of the near and distant future.