in north america you vote with your wallet. every time you buy something you increase the demand for it and that yanks the supply chain and more of it gets produced. that is why in the early days of organic food, when they looked invariably like the worst produce for the highest price, i kept stubbornly buying them, one because i felt they were better for me, cosmetics aside, but also for an important second reason, that if i and others did not buy them they would never become more available and of better quality. this is why there is so much oil production in the world, because so many of us buy so much of it. that part of the democratic process i understand and approve (with reservations).
the part i disapprove unqualifiedly is how corporations and wealthy elites have continued another way to vote with their wallets. they buy political influence (notice i politely refrain from saying they buy politicians) and that method of asserting dominance over the majority of society has been reinforced by the worst supreme court majority in memory.
it is past time to get the money out of politics. there will be no improvement for the US or Canada or Mexico in anything, whether it is a fight over pipelines or oil and gas drilling or keeping large standing armies to defend oil fields and pipeline routes, which cost a fortune every year, and yes, use a lot of oil, or over the fight against global warming and the keeping on earth anywhere of nuclear weapons, or the obscene amounts of energy the industrialized world is consuming, over drug wars and stupid private prison systems who refer to inmates as clients, and on and on. all these problems can be traced back to money and the obscene influence it exerts over both public and private decisionmaking.
the god in america is not in its churches, excepting some private meetings, it is in the board rooms and back rooms — the god is greed.
