While he was on a walk-about Down Under and apparently suffering from overexposure to ozone-hole related UV radiation sickness, Stiles asked me to write a piece for the his lovely Zephyr. The request came by e-mail and said, in part: "let's get down to biz...I keep threatening to print something of yers besides yer crazed letters. JUST DO IT...send me something……. that at least vaguely resembles a story about the changing landscape of America."

Crazed letters?

Alabama may seem a far flung spot on the map, removed from whatever life you’ve fashioned for yourself. But that kind of thinking is a romantic fantasy. Because, regardless of where you are, or what sort of sideshow you inhabit, Alabama is never further away than the nearest Wal-Mart, Burger King, or televised sit-com being zapped into your living room by the wonks at lovely Clear Channel.

If this sounds crazy, it is. Never before in America’s brief sordid history has the banality of our planned obsolescent culture been so ubiquitous. The denizens of Pocatello share the same cookie-cutter lifestyle as folks in Bugtussle, Alabama. Bars in Birmingham flash the same electronic pabulum as do the saloons in Syracuse (or Slovenia, for that matter). Americans are increasingly "on the same page." Not that they can read. Alabama’s illiteracy rate now stands near 25%. Hard to believe in these digital times, but true.

Alabama is a red state; but don’t say that to an Alabamian unless you want your lip busted for making accusations regarding communist tendencies. That Soviet-style communism imploded upon itself hasn’t registered here yet. But the vibes in Alabama aren’t much different from the "core values" being touted across the fruited plains –– that back-to-Disney wholesome jive we like to pretend we believe in while replaying Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction for the 33rd time.

Some of you are scratching your heads, saying, "Ethel, what’’s this joker babbling about? I thought the Zephyr was a rock-and-cartoon rag." And it is; but the deeper juju involves the stuff lurking along shoulders of the proverbial road, an insidious pathogen with the potential to morph America into yet another sad footnote in the annals of Homo erectus asphaltus. And that pathogen, ladies and gents, is the homogenization of the nation.

They say Truth is stranger than fiction, which is certainly the case where I live. Would your State dish out $129,615 (per job) as part of a package to lure a wood-products plant to your neighborhood? Probably. At least it’’s a part of the play in Alabama.

Here’s how one member of the brain trust explains it: "We're seeing places desperate for economic development so they're willing to provide incentives they think they need to compete -- kind of like an arms race," said Joe Sumners, director of the Economic Development Institute at Auburn University.*

Arms race? More like the old rat race, in the costume of jobs and economic prosperity. It’s every planner’s wet dream, unfolding in spades from sea to shining sea. Manifest Destiny in reverse: God’s mandate to go forth, multiply, and sow the seeds of our own demise, incrementally, one acre at a time.

I’ve jumped into biocentric quicksand without warning, leaving many of you wondering how we’’re seeking our own demise when, as Rush Limbaugh once barked, Americans are "fat, dumb, and happy."* Isn’t our economic prosperity (a $600 billion budget deficit is prosperity?) not to mention 90+ channels of cable TV, proof positive that the City on the Hill is not only flourishing, but is downright beatific? In a word: Hardly. Rather, our growth agenda is our own undoing. And it begins at the local level.

In a town like yours, professional planners are huddling in meetings, hashing out the future as they see it. (Or, and better put, as they see fit.) The end result, assuming there is an end to naturally occurring madness, is a synergistic vision of what the rest of your life should look like. Never mind that you weren’t at the table, shuffling maps, designing land-use plans, crunching computer models. No, planners are bureaucrats and know what’s best. Have faith, oh Yee hapless souls.

As Fate would have it, every planner is programmed to further accommodate bulk growth, both in terms of sheer hominid numbers and the infrastructure that supports said species. Trust me on this: I’’ve sent the bastards up close and know the bizarre thoughts that flash across their neurons; seen their visions of tomorrow in glaring techno-Power Point presentations; watched the drool fall from their lips while selling the merits of "green development" and "smart growth" initiatives. But the final result is inevitable: more people spreading across the landscape like fleas on a sweaty dog in Dixie.

And we all know what that means: pop-up strip centers; corporate Styrofoam fast food joints; a Wal-Mart Super Center peddling Chinese trinkets; Leroy’’s Auto Jamboree; shop-till-ya-drop malls; a Doc-in-a-Box on every corner; new schools, police recruits, hook-and-ladder fire and rescue teams; and an engineer behind every bush, shaking hands with the local squadron of developers, politicians, and other assorted scalawags.

Let’s be honest here and ponder one little question, just to clear the air: Is bulk growth a synonym for progress or not? Think about it and read on…….

Modern American life just doesn’t make sense. Why would a well-fed, secure, somewhat educated people, voluntarily allow their homeland to become a bizarre bazaar of banality? Why sell out one of Earth’s most complex aggregation of ecosystems for endless hours of watching verbally challenged sports bimbos? Why trade community for a babbling electronic screen full of strangers (the evening news)? Why give up personal freedom for a 15-mile-per-gallon narco habit that leads to war and rumors of war? Why turn ones decision-making over to a committee of politicians who wake up each morning wondering how thick the grease will be slathered on today?

Maybe I’m being too hard on my culture. Maybe silicon bosoms and tanning booth skin is the way to peace and happiness. Maybe what’s under the hood is more important than what’s in the skull. Maybe there’s simply no place left on the blue-green planet for bears, wolves, whales, redwood trees, and hummingbirds. Maybe pre-fab glass high-rises are more suitable to us primates than a quaint home with a garden and a couple of canine buddies. Maybe the "good ole daze" were just that, and are no longer useful to the corporate hegemony currently in control of most of our world. God, let’s hope not.

This isn’t a political diatribe. My interest in politics ranks somewhere south of my interest in toe jam, cockroaches, and paying taxes. Hell no, both parties (assuming there are two parties) are complicit in the dumbing-down of America, sitting idly by as we merrily waltz towards a future as whacked as anything featured in the Follywood movie Bladerunner.

For me, the bottom line transcends ideology, atavistic voodoo religions, or the Dow Jones average. Call me a green Libertarian. Call me a romantic patriot on a mission to protect what sanity remains in this mortal coil (on 2nd thought, don’’t call me). My message is a simple one, a cry from the vanishing wilderness, aimed at turning the worm before it turns on us. Here’s the payoff –– it’s not too late to reject the load of dung being rammed down our throats by the captains of industry and commerce.

You have power. Your cash is power. Reject crap and the air soon smells fresher. Abandon TV and you end up with free time. Isn’t that what it’’s all about? Isn’t free time what we’ve strived for these last 229 years of the American Dream? Or are we destined to be serfs to an increasingly meaningless consumer culture with the faint promise of a pie in the sky after our cosmic credit card maxes out and it’’s time to take that long escalator into the Great Beyond? The choice is yours.

Like an acupuncturist, I’’ve probably hit a nerve or two, so I’’ll bail while the getting’s good. (At least you’re not paying for this bullshit). But let me leave you with one of my favorite poems, words of wisdom from somebody who wandered the American wilds back when our country was the kind of place we should’ve fought to keep:

If you have time to chatter Read books If you have time to read Walk into mountain, desert and ocean If you have time to walk Sing Songs and dance If you have time to dance Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot

Nanao Sakaki

Footnotes:

1. "Incentives amount to $129,615 a job," Mobile Register, Karen Tolkkinen, 1-31-05

2. Fragment of a Rush Limbaugh show, late 1990’s. Quote from memory; use with caution.