The Conspiracy to Make Us Comfortable

Ummmm....

I don’t even care if you work on an oil rig. In some parts of the country, those are the only jobs that pay enough for you to feed your family. And I don’t blame workers for that. I blame their employers. I blame the industry that is choking us all, and the government that is letting them do it.

Okay, fine.  Industry forced us to buy cars, build roads, make everything out of plastic (check the guts of your computer you post to the internet on), and to accept all the comforts and benefits of the industrial world we live in.

Right?

It's not our fault we like cars, convenient transportation, big construction equipment that can do in one day what it would have taken manpower months to do, planes that can carry us to destinations in hours rather than days (have you tried to fly lately?  It's so popular every plane is a flying cattle car, no matter how early or late in the day you get on), air conditioning, stuff delivered to our door (or to the store nearby), and food flown in from South America so we don't have to wait for the season to eat fruits and vegetables.  But that's because the airline industry hoodwinked us, right?  And the government that builds airports so we can use them, highways so trucks can drive them, ports so ships can deliver things?

The bastards!

Don't get me started on plastics, or industrial farming that makes food cheap enough McDonald's is in business because of it.  Because all of this is forced on us, is done to us; we are just the hapless pawns whose only power is to resist the Corporation.   Seems we're powerful and weak at the same time; where have I heard this contradictory argument before?

If power plants are poisoning the planet, that still comes back to voters.  Will there be outrage at the ballot box because of the chemical plant fire on the Houston Ship Channel recently?  (I was just down there; they're still cleaning it up, and a lot of bad chemicals got into the waters there.)  And was that the fault of industry, or of the rest of us who want what industry produces, but don't want the side-effects and consequences of our desires.  Yes, better regulation would make for less pollution.  But better regulation still comes back to "We, the People."  We elect politicians who decide regulations are good (ah, yes, dem was de days!), but lately we've elected politicians who think regulation is bad.

I guess industry did that, too, huh?  Or was it Government, Agent Mulder?

There is no cabal.  There is no "Them."  There is only Us.  Except "us" is no more unitary than "industry" is, or "government," or "them."  Get over yourself and the simplicity of solutions.  Do the hard work, or shut up.  If Donald Trump provides any benefit to the nation, perhaps it will be to start us on root and branch ripping up our preference for conspiracy theories, all the better to make us less responsible for what we have done.

BTW, asking for a friend:  can I get my shampoo in a biodegradable paper bag?  Because evil industry is forcing me to buy it in a plastic squeeze bottle, the bastards!