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By Root 2339 0

other fascists took over North America, what would we all do? What would we all do if they implemented Mussolini’s definition of fascism: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power”? And what would we do if they then instituted laws allowing them to put a significant portion—say one-third—of all Jewish males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five into concentration camps? What if this occupied country called itself a democracy, but most everyone understood elections to be shams, with citizens allowed to choose between different wings of the same Fascist (or, following Mussolini, Corporate) party? What if anti-government activity was opposed by storm troopers and secret police? Would you fight back? If there already existed a resistance movement, would you join it? Substitute the word African-American for Jewish and ask yourself the same questions.

Now, would you resist if the fascists irradiated the countryside, poisoned food supplies, made rivers unfit for swimming (and so filthy you wouldn’t even dream of drinking from them anymore)? What if they did this because . . . Hell, I can’t finish that sentence because no matter how I try I can’t come up with a motivation good enough even for fascists to irradiate and toxify the landscape and water supplies. If fascists systematically deforested the continent, would you join an underground army of resistance, head to the forests, and from there to boardrooms and to the halls of the Reichstag to pick off the occupying deforesters and most especially those who give them their marching orders?

Okay, so maybe your sense of kin, and your sense of skin, doesn’t extend to the natural world. Maybe you don’t yet love the land where you live enough that you will fight for it. But what if the fascists toxify not only the landscape but the bodies of those you love? What if their actions put dioxin—one of the most toxic substances known—and dozens of other carcinogens into the flesh of your lover, children, mother, brother, sister, father? Would you then fight back? What if the fascists toxify your own body? Would you still cling to the illusion that their edicts carry more weight than that brought to bear by their secret and not-so-secret police? Would you work for this regime? Would you teach others its virtues? Or would you fight back? If you will not fight back when they toxify your own body (and toxify your mind with propaganda leading you to believe their edicts carry moral weight), when, precisely, will you fight back? Give me—and more importantly yourself—a specific threshold at which you will finally take a stand. If you can’t or won’t give that threshold, why not?

None of these questions are rhetorical. The questions are real. They are, at this point, some of the most important questions there are.

How much closer must the culture cut before you will bring it down?

Prior to World War II, annual worldwide use of pesticides ran right around zero. By now it’s 500 billion tons, increasing every year. Of course—ho hum—there are massive environmental problems associated with the fabrication and introduction into the environment of so many poisons. But I recently came across a study that might help shake the miasma from all but the already dead. Scientists compared children raised in an agricultural area in Mexico where chemical pesticides were used with those from nearby foothills where pesticides were not used (I’d like to say where pesticides were absent, but of course by now they’re everywhere, some places are just not quite so saturated). Both the physical and mental growth of children exposed to pesticides were grossly retarded.

I’ve seen drawings by children of both groups. Those by children exposed to pesticides are pathetic, and I mean that in its deepest sense of raising pathos, except among the fully enculturated, who probably won’t notice, or even noticing won’t feel, or even feeling won’t act.

Instead of the fully formed figures created by children four to six years old—stick figures with smiling