- 21 Nov 2017 03:33
#14864398
Yesterday, I read this article about Fort McMurray, Alberta, written by a journalist who lived there temporarily.
For those who've never heard of the place, Fort McMurray is a company town built on top of Alberta's currently-shelved Tar Sands production area, and is known in Canada as a good place to earn 100k with a high school diploma.
The author posits, in the article, that the town seems to have been created for people who want as little education as possible, and to maximize their consumption.
He lists some reasons for his conclusion: The town is full of pick-ups. Virtually everyone is obese. The family he stays with order pizza or fried chicken every night. Drug/alcohol abuse and casual prostitution are everywhere. There are more car dealerships than community organizations, libraries and schools put together.
This got me thinking: isn't this what the promise of America itself is? Learn as little as possible and then work in a polluting industry of some kind of gorge on Pizza and Fried Chicken? Drive a pimped out pickup to Walmart and feel the pride? Drink away the empty moments between sensory stimulation and consumption events?
Isn't "America" (the concept) just one giant Fort Mac? Have most Western people been trained to desire as little knowledge as possible with maximum consumption?
Fort McMurray today
For those who've never heard of the place, Fort McMurray is a company town built on top of Alberta's currently-shelved Tar Sands production area, and is known in Canada as a good place to earn 100k with a high school diploma.
The author posits, in the article, that the town seems to have been created for people who want as little education as possible, and to maximize their consumption.
He lists some reasons for his conclusion: The town is full of pick-ups. Virtually everyone is obese. The family he stays with order pizza or fried chicken every night. Drug/alcohol abuse and casual prostitution are everywhere. There are more car dealerships than community organizations, libraries and schools put together.
This got me thinking: isn't this what the promise of America itself is? Learn as little as possible and then work in a polluting industry of some kind of gorge on Pizza and Fried Chicken? Drive a pimped out pickup to Walmart and feel the pride? Drink away the empty moments between sensory stimulation and consumption events?
Isn't "America" (the concept) just one giant Fort Mac? Have most Western people been trained to desire as little knowledge as possible with maximum consumption?
Fort McMurray today
***
The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite.
The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.
— Julian Assange
The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite.
The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.
— Julian Assange