Belly of the Whale

A Political-Global Rant on Negative Realities


The globe is heating up, hotter and hotter by the day.
The seas are rising.
The icecaps melting, islands shrinking.

Diseases spread; we name new disorders by the day and prescribe new treatments,
With little talk or thought as to the cause.
Our elderly take dozens of pills, struggling both to afford them and to organize them.

Our homes are breaking apart due to divorce and inattention.
People growing apart; people becoming bored, screwing a stranger for the thrill of the forbidden. Where else is there a possibility of excitement??

Men’s penises are shrinking, the sperm counts dropping, as much as 50% in the past four generations.
Soon, natural conception will start to decrease.

Our country is tearing apart, first fraying at the edges, and now ripping through at the seams.
Our government has been corrupted.
Our democracy aborted.
The media bought, and the propaganda believed.

We, the nation of consumers, are we consuming our own death?
We seem to be sipping the poison that we have ourselves brewed.
It is no mere metaphor.

Our diets of processed, denatured foods have weakened our bodies’ systems.
Our mass production and manufacturing have poisoned our environment, which then grows and nurtures the food we consume.
The same pollutants with which we fill the environment, we fill ourselves.
Many of these toxins resemble estrogen, and attach themselves to the male reproductive system, shrinking penis size and reducing sperm counts.
Others promote cancers and disease, such as the proliferation of asthma.

Our lack of diet consiousness has led our nation, headlong into obeisity, hypoglycemia, diabetes, even alcoholism (also related to protein-sugar imbalance.)

We are out of balance; we are off center.
We have been lulled into a laziness on all levels by opulence and excess, convenience and wealth.

The world, as we have long known it is coming to an end.
The foundation of our present capitalistic system, namely oil, will be depleted soon. The prices have already risen, will not fall again, but will rise continually.
How is our economy to adapt??
The American government will itself not recover from the neoconservative coup of the 2000 election.
It is now the siphon of the rich and powerful, sucking what wealth they can from the world while they have the armed forces to defend them.

China will rise, as will India. They are the hungry ones, as we were during the wars. They are still willing to work, willing to pay attention to what is going on, see it, listen and smell.
They still are willing to work for something better. We prefer the status-quo, which is a shame and itself crumbling. And we work damn hard for it.
Over the last thirty years the wealthy have increased in wealth many times over, while the average American has simply maintained—meanwhile the cost of living has risen around him.
What happened to the old American Ideal of the wage-earner and the stay-at-home-mom?
Forget feminism, it is no longer a fiscal posibility.

The planet’s systems are changing to the new climate, but can we change as well?
We have artificial insemination—so hopefully we won’t go extinct.
Can technology re-invent the wheel, the car wheel, the SUV wheel?

Soon, America will be a poor, or atleast averagely wealthy country again.
In many ways we already are. We buy our luxuries at an incredible price:
We work all the time.
We are unhealthy due to stress, dissatisfaction, no exercise, and terrible diet.
Our marriages are failing, our homes breaking.
Our country is splitting, our armies stretched thin with our children fighting for causes that they cannot discern.
Patriotism has become akin to faith in god invisible but fearful.
We have forgotten what it means to be alive.

Haven’t we all read the novels: Orwell’s 1984, Animal House, Fahrenheit 451, Huxley’s A Brave New World, Lowry’s The Giver??
Isn’t there an eerie reality behind all this fiction?
Can’t we draw the parallels, then jolt back, shocked at the face we find in the mirror—
It is our face, our world—not some fancy.
They have manifested. The authors, like oracles, divined the direction of the future.
It was then already clear. And yet, today, people can not see it just in front of their noses.

What of our children, for those of us who can still have children?
We are bringing them into a world polluted, with polluted fragile bodies themselves.
The world is divided along religious lines, the extremists on both side mirroring the other, blind to their similarities.
America’s youth are becoming a cult of video games, fast food, designer drugs, and porn.
They have no parents and no role models.
The likelihood of building a healthy life in America is fading.

FOR GOODNESS SAKE, TAKE A STAND.
If ever the time was now! It is NOW!
Forget saving the world and save yourself.

There are still bastions of health out there. I found one in Port Townsend.
People share a dialogue on health. They know what it means to eat good food.
They eat organic, vegetarian, and local. –this of course, may mean nothing to you.
They value community and ACT on it.
They disallow national chain stores.
They nurture community festivals, events and the farmer’s market.
The government still responds to and represents the people.
People ride their bikes. There are nature trails for exercise and solitude.

People share.
They don’t buy into the consumerism and greed of our pop culture.
We don’t care about nice cars here, but big vegetables.
People share land, share lawnmowers, washing machines, saunas.
Things become more affordable when shared, less money is required to live happily,
Less money less work, less work more time with family or friends or travel or whateverthehell makes you happy.
Isn’t this what we all are supposedly doing??

We have gotten lost.
By doing so we have endangered all of our race.
Global environmental problems are not a national matter.
Coca-Cola and McDonalds and western lifestyle have spread and encouraged every corner of the world.
We are not the only people who seek luxury after all, we simply are the ones who found it.
And we are therefore responsible for the results.
It is our government staining the sand with blood.
It is our consumption of fossil fuels which is depleting the wells.
It is our fertilizers and pesticides which are toxifying our foods.
And on and on.


It is over for us. Invest in China.
Find a more innocent place. That is, if you understand. Most of us don’t.
Most of us are hobbits, disbelievers: “It couldn’t happen to us, only ‘the other guy’”
That is a cult of ignorance. We always are the “other guy” as much as we are ourselves.
OUR government is becoming fascist.
OUR economy is in trouble.
OUR bodies are sick…………………on and on.

How will you take it?
How do we proceed?

I am taking, for me, a convenient course of action: Exile.
I refuse to pay money to a government getting rich by war, deceit, and pollution.
I can’t support something I don’t believe in.
Being a sailor, it is not a difficult decision, so I won’t make a point of it. It was much more becoming of Thoreau when he went to jail for a bit for his “Civil Disobedience”.
I am not so fortunate, or unfortunate.
But, all the same, I remain true to my ethics and that is the important thing.

I do not buy bad food.
I eat local.
I support local businesses. I don’t create excessive waste. I use a minimum of fossil fuels.
I have no car. I sail, row, walk, or bike. (I have a diesel engine and a dinghy outboard, but us neither unless necessary.)

I consume air and food.
I can serve and participate in a community through teaching and sharing.
I am coming closer to a balance.
As for now, I am still dependant of American dollars in an American bank.
I don’t know if I shall ever break free—or whether I should.
I am an American. I always will be.
But right now I oppose my government and I lament our collective inability to effect change.
In this, I am disheartened and disillusioned.