Photo: Ileana Johnson |
Animals,
love, life, family, relationships, marriages, appliances, trash, things recyclable,
valuables, and trash are thrown out or disposed of mostly on purpose with no
remorse and with a faster speed than you can say “I do.”
I sheepishly
admit that I was washing Styrofoam containers and plastic forks from McDonald’s
back in 1978. Why throw away perfectly reusable items, I thought, when I just
landed from the land of poverty, misery, and long lines for food? We had rusty
flatware on our table and chipped mismatched plates. My Grandpa used to wash
her plates in a little tub of hot water boiled on the gas stove. And sometimes
they still had dried food stuck to them from the previous meal. I tried to
scrape it off and wipe it with a towel when she was not watching. I could not
afford to be choosy or hurt her feelings.
My husband
at the time made fun of my miser side because he could not possibly understand
even though he visited my childhood home. No matter how many times he took me
to the grocery store to see the laden shelves of abundance, my miser inner self
could not comprehend so much food and I was certain, it would be gone the next
day.
To this day,
I wonder when we might have to be without food, water, and electricity, or
things that everyone takes for granted, like toilet paper and vitamins. So I
used to go from room to room and turn the lights off that my husband had left
on and I still do today. Why waste energy? What if we had to be in the dark
again like we were often under the socialist/communist regime that planned
enough for them while the rest of us had to struggle hungry, cold, and in the
dark after sunset?
I recycle
today every piece of paper, plastic, glass, and aluminum that crosses my
kitchen and my pantry. I even cut the plastic circles that hold bottles in
place for fear that some wild animal might get stuck in them if the plastic
winds up in a dumpster.
It pains me
greatly and I do not understand how someone can throw a live human being or puppy
tied in a garbage bag on the side of a deserted road, miles and miles away from
a city, and leaves them there like trash, to suffocate and die? Isn’t the way
we treat our helpless, animals, children, and old people, an indication of how civilized
our society is?
We discard
aborted fetuses, humans who are perfect and want to live because progressive
society views that as a “choice.” We dump the elderly in nursing homes and
seldom visit them. We depend on strangers to be good to them. We visit at
holidays out of sheer guilt. There’s an influx of visitors at the nursing home
around holidays, I suppose they don’t want to be left out of grandma or grandpa’s
will.
We dispose
of marriage quicker than we planned the lavish weddings – we get divorced at
the drop of a hat. Nobody tries hard to get along anymore; everyone seeks
instant gratification and personal happiness. If you ask, nobody is able to
give a cohesive definition of what that personal happiness is. But rest
assured, it revolves around the “me, myself, and I.”
The “selfish-me
generation” throws away everything that is old, including their country, their
citizenship, their culture, and their Constitution. Anything they do not
understand but has been drilled into their heads by socialist teachers as evil must
be discarded. If it is repeated enough times, it becomes their “social justice
and equality” playbook.
We discard
and abandon children to foster care like a used-up toy because we are too busy
or too unable to care for our own offspring.
We euthanize
those among us we do not wish to bother with anymore, and we abort the result
of loveless hookups because nobody wants to be inconvenienced by a human breathing
inside them.
We dump our
friends on a whim – they just don’t share the same politics and ideology of the
moment and are therefore no good. People we disagree with are suddenly
poisonous snakes.
Yet grown
Americans keep that one collegiate t-shirt from years ago, with holes
everywhere, or that ratty disintegrating blanket one used to drag around for
comfort as a toddler, or a favorite dog’s or cat’s toy. Those are holy objects
that cannot be thrown away.
We keep that
first car, often on cinder blocks, rusted out, and covered with weeds, spiders,
and cobwebs. Sometimes rabbits, coons, and the occasional rattlesnake make
their nests inside.
We keep that
old moldy dresser that belonged to great-grandma because it’s an antique and it
might be really valuable someday and fetch a big penny at auction.
We could feed
an entire small country daily with the amount of food thrown away in locked
dumpsters around the country, perhaps composted, incinerated, or buried later in
the landfill.
Beautiful
books of wisdom are recycled or buried all the time, in the drive to become a
paperless society and to save the trees and the planet from progressive
Armageddon. Who has time to read and learn something useful when there is the
Internet?
Electronics
are discarded as well, perhaps recycled and some buried in the city landfill.
Valuable metals, plastics, and glass tubes get buried with them as well.
We throwaway
a perfectly running TV that nobody wants in order to make room for a flat screen
and top of the line smart TV, so smart, it can report anything you do to the
mother ship.
And nobody
has landline rotary dial or key punch phones anymore. They worked even when
power went out. Those are dinosaurs, thrown away long time ago with the trash,
not even recycled. They are buried somewhere in the city dump. When the smart
grid goes out and it will eventually do, nobody will have a phone to
communicate and answer that 3 a.m. call.
This
disposable society mirrors the trashing of our culture in general, of our
borders, our language, and our national identity. “We
went through darkness so you can find the light." Why are you
extinguishing it?
No comments:
Post a Comment