Forty Acres and a Mule

He loses a drinking bet,
friends get to set his
prosthetic leg on fire.

Forty acres and a mule, a policy put in place in 1865 to award land to freed slaves and allow them to get a start in a new life. Apparently this policy didn’t last very long. It does serve as a kind of example for other more important and longer lasting Agrarian Reform movements. Such movements have been fairly common in the last two or three decades in Africa and South America. Usually they consist of taking lands from wealthy landowners who have far too much, breaking it up into smaller parcels, and awarding them to those who were previously peasants or sharecroppers. Obviously the landowners believe this to be completely unfair, whereas the peasants think the ownership of almost all of the land by a few people is completely unfair.

In the land of unreality where I now spend much of my time, having given up even trying to deal with the unpleasantness of our current irreality, I can imagine this happening right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Indeed, I fancy it ought to happen. It is no secret that corporate farms have pretty much taken over agriculture in the U.S., and also no secret this is not good for the land for numerous reasons, not the least of which have to do with the massive use of fertilizers, pesticides, genetic modification, and what-have-you. There is now a movement on the part of some to turn to organic farming and also to turn more toward using crops grown closer to home (the 100 mile diet, transportation costs, fresher, better food, etc.). I suppose the “Slow Food” movement is indirectly related here somehow as well.

Now, as we are also experiencing massive unemployment, along with the reallocation of wealth more and more to the already obscenely wealthy and these huge predatory corporations, why should we not engage in an agrarian reform movement here at home. We could call it “X acres and a tractor,” and calculate the number of acres that can be adequately farmed by one family with a tractor, and have done with it. This would provide many jobs, security for many families, fresher and more organic foods, and a much healthier food supply and life style in general. Perhaps we could even run the tractors on solar or wind power. I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous. But what a great idea! Maybe it would even help to get us off junk foods and reduce obesity. We could get rid of the gigantic holding lots, pig and chicken farms that are so terribly polluting and unpleasant, and stop injecting our meat with undesirable chemicals. But wait a minute, we already did this, in the early 20th century, or at least something like this. Why did we give it up? Greed and capitalism I suppose. Some argue that corporate farming is the only way to provide food for large cities, and perhaps it is. But Paris and London, Rome and Berlin, Leningrad and Budapest all made it to a pretty fair size without corporate farming. Cities, like farms, should be regulated in size as well. Most of our huge metropolitan areas now consist mostly of slums providing little or nothing for the masses of unemployed people who used to be working on the farms. They are no more than holding areas where the poor, miserable, sickly, and unemployed go to die. Besides, the need for large urban areas, what with modern technology and communication, is pretty much gone.

Put in simpler, blunter terms, human beings do not have to live as they have chosen to live. A far more sane, healthier, more natural and happier life would be entirely possible. We have chosen to turn our backs on it in favor of fouling our own nest as fast as possible. We have lost our respect for nature, have failed to manage our affairs, have offended all other species, and continue blindly onward to our own eventual extinction. There is a fatal flaw in our species, best summed up as GREED.

I don’t know what to make of Republicans. Either they are incredibly stupid or incredibly dishonest, perhaps both. On the one hand they want to preserve and even improve tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and on the other hand they want to reduce the deficit. You might think these are incompatible goals, but not for Republican believers in magic. They resolve this obvious contradiction by simply proclaiming that tax cuts don’t affect the economy. They appear to suffer from a collective Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder which makes them repeat tax cuts at every opportunity. If they can win elections at this point in time by insisting on more tax cuts we will know that Goebbels was right all along.

LKBIQ:

“There is no use trying; one can't believe impossible things." (Alice)

"I dare say you haven't had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” -Queen
TILT:
All male mules and most female mules are infertile.