"America Is Its Own Worst Enemy"

On September 28 I attended a hearing on proposed federal regulation of coal industry practices here in Kentucky.  I received my number--can't remember what it was--took a seat in a large conference room at the Seelbach in downtown Louisville, and waited for my turn, rehearsing my speech to the EPA panel at the head of the room while one speaker after another went up to the mic and spoke their mind.  I was impressed by most of the speakers.  Mainly I admired the courage of the citizens from rural E. Kentucky who are directly and adversely affected by the toxic pollution that coal industry practices leave behind for people who's lives are already difficult enough.  A big challenge in public and professional communication is the courage, the character to speak out in the first place.

As it turned out, the evening had a plot twist in store for me.  Just as I had gotten all of my eloquent and passionate points arranged in my head, the speaker who went right before me changed the mood of the whole hearing.  He was a businessman, an advocate of big coal, opposed to federal regulation of Kentucky's coal industry.

Everything this person said and represented made my blood boil.  He read off a piece of paper, which meant he had no grasp of the truth--he could not speak from the heart because he knew if he did he would say something else.  That's why people read statements off a piece of paper.  Either you know what you're talking about and you know you're being honest or you don't and you're not.  He was an older man, who no doubt had read off a piece of paper like this for many years, lining his pockets. There's nothing wrong with getting older--I'm doing it myself--but this man represented everything bad about being old: set in his ways, mired in a cognitive rut that looks at the world and human society in rigid, unchanging ways, all about himself and his interests, completely closed off to the fact this is a new century, a new millenium, full of babies and children who will grow up and live in the awful mess people like him have left behind, a man totally uncaring about a future he will not be a part of.  There is not even a single cell in this man that wants to explore, learn, or discover.  In the words of Bob Dylan, this man is "busy dyin'."

Everything this person said was a re-hash of sound-bites and cliches from the Reagan era--an era that still has a vice-grip on American economic practice and thinking, hence the economic meltdown in which we are still mired . . . and may be mired until the end of time, as long as the values that put big-coal come first and America last continue to prevail.  His statement to the EPA panel was Reaganomics 101: you can't regulate industry too much or industry will suffer and profits will dwindle.  Industry provides jobs, and families have to have jobs.  Too much regulation (read: any regulation) stifles productivity and hurts industry profit which in turn means no jobs.

But the thing this man said that sent me from mere eye-rolling disgust to blood-boiling fury was that federal regulation of Kentucky's coal industry on top of the state regulation it's already under "would amount to regulatory overkill."

Overkill?  OVERKILL?!!!

You've been in a room where for two hours one mother after another gets in front of the panel and reports that her children have brain tumors or other serious, deadly health problems because of the toxins released by big coal, and you're going to use a term like "overkill" for a metaphor?  If you think regulatory "overkill" is a problem, how would you like to wake up with a tumor wrapped around your bleeding brain?

So when it was my turn to take the podium, I was shaken with anger, watching this man troll out of the auditorium, not about to stick around and hear anyone respond.  There I stood.  Should I just go with what I'd rehearsed in my head?  I couldn't do that.  For one, I was so emotionally shaken-up I couldn't quite remember the tidy rhetorcial arrangement of points I was going to make.  More important, I myself could not speak from the heart and tell the truth if I didn't say something in response to this vapid, sociopathic mantra I've heard too many times.  I took a deep breath, looked up at the panel, their eyes fixed on me, then turned to the doorway where the man was walking out, and spoke.

"Give me a break," were my first words, directed at the previous speaker.  I felt good that I said that even though there was no resounding applause from the audience and the faces of the panelists remained locked in solemn institutional objectivity.  As far as they were concerned, I was another number, and my three minutes to speak were already underway.  I did my best to recollect what I'd rehearsed.  Then my opening line came back to me.

"America is its own worst enemy."

That was, and still is, the gist of my point--and since I made it at the hearing, it rings truer in my heart every sad day that passes.  Any nation that blows up its own mountains, poisons its own rivers, permeates its communities with toxic waste, and dooms its future generations to disease and ruin is a nation at war with itself.  That is the grave danger of any nation jacked up on the frenzy of war: once the passion for war sets in, there is no way to stop out, and if there is no way to stop it, there is now way to live with purpose in the absence of an enemy.  Once this happens there is no turning back--war becomes chronic, the need for enemies becomes habituated, and the most readily available enemy is always the people next door, thy own neighbor.

A country always at war is a country that has become its own worst enemy.

Last week my podcast colleague and I railed in dumbfounded rage against the decision of the Obion Co., TN fire department to sit there and watch a man's home burn to the ground with three family pets inside because the man failed to pay a $75 fee for fire protection.  When you stand there and watch someone's house burn down, that is an act of war.  And that is not just that man's house burning down--that was America.  That was an American target left in smouldering ruin.  Nothing like this incident of hate-mongering insanity illustrates how mainstream Americans say they love their country but hate Americans.  They love 'America' as an ideological abstraction that conveniently stands for whatever their self interests are at the moment, but as soon as America has a face, they hate it, and they are literally at war with that face.  If you love your country, you love your fellow countrymen.  All of them.  You don't have to agree with them, invite them to your Christmas party, or let your kids play with theirs.  But if you hate the guts of everybody you think is not like you are or who does something you disagree with such hostility that you pridefully watch their house burn to the ground when the means to put out the fire are readily-available, you have declared America your enemy.  And in doing so, whether you realize it or not, you have become your own worst enemy.

In the 21st century, America's greatest enemy is not terrorism, it's not illegal immigrants, it's America itself.  This enemy represents the gravest threat because there is no protection from it.  When you become your own worst enemy, there is no one to trust, no refuge to take, because the territory that was once yours is now your enemy's.  When the means of protection--like a local fire department--turn on the people they ought to be protecting, there is no way to fight back.  Becoming your own worst enemy is at once suicide and surrender.

When you remove the tops of mountains with explosives, you are literally using weapons of mass destruction to erase your own country.  You cannot have "America" without its land, its people, its culture, its families, its children, its future.  Mountain top removal and the poisoning of America's waterways is a destruction of everything earthly and human that make America what it is.

There is no hope for a collection of people who insist on putting anything--especially out-right antagonism and indifference toward each other--ahead of their own collective well being.  I read just today that a retired teacher from Obion Co., TN said she was glad the local authorities let this man's house burn to the ground since she feels people "must suffer the consequences of their actions."  That says it all.  Her fellow American suffering is the most important thing of all, not saving his home, his pets, or the area from a dangerous threat.  What do we call someone we want to suffer, someone who's home we want to see burn to the ground?  The enemy.  This was a domestic version of shock and awe.  This man and his home have no worth or value to anyone beyond a $75 monetary payment.  Thus, he is worthless.  No, he is less than worthless, for he is worthy of punishment in the form of endorsed destruction of his home. 

In America the only thing that unites us is our collective desire to see one another suffer.  The tireless need to punish other Americans comes first, before anything caring, sensible, or civilized.  Why should the priority of an entire nation be on punishing itself?  Why should the immeasurable suffering of Americans be the measure of our unity and prosperity?

How can you fight back when you're destroying yourself from the inside out, your mountains leveled, your land and water poisoned, your homes burned to the ground--the topography of a defeated enemy?