Trust Me There's Progress Here (Xanadu [formerly known as The American Dream] pt 17)

What can you expect, I only get time to work at like 10:00 at night. I only have an hour or so before my knees finally give out and I fall asleep standing up. Tonight I started at 10:45 and finished up around 12:15. I'm spent. I'm falling asleep typing this.



I think the title of this is going to change back to "Xanadu." It's just better and more poetic. Besides, people in the press still refer to the infamous magnanimous-mega-mall-to-be as Xanadu. American Dream just doesn't seem to fit. It doesn't stick in one's memory.

I've been thinking about Derrick Jensen's 2006 book Endgame and his 20 Premises and I realized that the Xanadu affair is a perfect example of #20:

Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.

It was a foregone conclusion that Kubla Christie was going to get the NJ Legislature to rubber stamp his exemption for tax breaks for Triple Five. No one doubted that. Most of the Legislature is far too gutless to even suggest that they let the project die, even though it's an environmental catastrophe on a long list of environmental catastrophes in the Meadowlands.

It's hard enough keeping my house comfortable in 90-degree heat. I can't imagine the amount of energy that's needed to keep a ski slope frozen in those conditions. The whole thing is just one big energy black hole, plus a massive generator of solid waste, nonpoint source pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

One might say that the area is already so bad that adding this thing really won't make a difference. Again, I refer you to the 20 Premises.

It has to stop somewhere.