gold fever

I'm still flabbergasted by Rick Santorum's declaration at CPAC that "climate change is a leftist scientific conspiracy to destroy America."

One of the peculiarities of the white race's presence in this hemisphere is its overwhelmingly exploitive nature. The first permanent European toehold in this half of the world was established by an Italian who was looking for Japan. Nearly all who immediately followed him were afflicted with gold fever, and after the initial luck of Cortez and Francisco Pizzaro, this orgy of gold seeking has continued without letup down to the present.

The stock speculation bubble of the 1920's which led to the Great Depression, and the real-estate-and-derivatives frenzy of the double-zeros which caused the Lesser Depression, still ongoing, were a manifestation of this same exploitive hysteria.

And it's not done yet. As long as there are any resources to be plundered and the possibility of getting something for nothing, bankster brigands and capitalist buccaneers will be on it, employing ideologues like Little Ricky Santorum to demonize anyone who calls for a little sanity. It never seems to occur to such people that there are some who would prefer just to make a life here, without setting up a fort and buying the place with beads.

Maybe Senator Santorum is not worried about life here on earth, and he might possibly be planning a trip to heaven soon. I certainly hope so. However, some of us are planning to live here, and this is the only planet we've got.