Suicide Note

- Davis Fleetwood
I wanted to let you know that I am killing myself.  Quick, tell me, how are you going to stop me?

You don’t want to stop me? I understand, we hardly know each other, you and I. Whom I am to you? Just a talking head on your mobile device, or a few moments you steal with the headphones on, hiding in your office cubicle at work. If I kill myself, the world, after all, will continue to spin.
So forget me, I don’t matter, let me go, I’m as good as dead. I’ve got about 2 minutes left.

You hate me anyway, admit it.

Imagine your best friend. Your partner. Your child or parent has gotten themselves into a situation from which there seems to be no way out. No way out that is, but suicide?

How do you stop them? You love them.

When confronted with such an impossible task, it helps me to think in metaphor, wouldn’t you agree?

BP and the non-existent regulations from the U.S. government have colluded to create a slow motion environmental suicide in the Gulf of Mexico, itself a product of our suicidal consumer culture. And for what? To make the richest 1% in the world even richer? So that we can keep the economy afloat, the better to keep credit flowing just enough so that we can keep our kitchens and dens looking ready for the photo spread in Martha Stewart Living that will never come? Admit it, the way we live our lives is suicidal. Slow motion, no doubt, but suicidal. By killing the earth, we are ensuring that the human species faces the same fate.

Comfortable in your coffin yet?

And because I side with someone like Jimmy Carter, who warned us to put on a sweater, turn down the heat and turn off the lights that makes me what- in your eyes? Some kind of faggot? A Homosexual? A less than a real man? Congratulations American, you asked for it and you got it: a dick swinging cowboy in Ronald Reagan and an Imperialist American foreign policy that seems intent on the achieving the suicide of our species long before our environmentally negligent suicide finishes its work.

Some would say it is dangerous, suicidal even to wage a ground war in Afghanistan. And yet the war on terror continues, with end in sight. Total cost of the “war on terror” to date: One Trillion Dollars.

A recent Colum by Frida Berrigan (a Senior Program Associate at The New America Foundation’s Arms and Security Initiative) points out some sobering statistics:

What is a trillion? It is a big number for sure. The best explanation I have found for this mind-blowing figure is from children’s book author David Schwartz. “One million seconds comes out to be about 11½ days. A billion seconds is 32 years. And a trillion seconds is 32,000 years.”

What is a trillion dollars? What can you get for that much money?

Rethink Afghanistan — Robert Greenwald’s effort to help us understand the war on terror, its costs, and consequences — has a new Facebook application aimed at breaking down exactly how much we can get for one trillion dollars.

It is fun (in a qualified-world wide web-war on terror sort of way), and eye-opening.

During one round of the game, we were able to spend $999.5 billion to:

• Hire every worker in Afghanistan for one year at a total cost of $12 billion;
• Fund the cleanup of the Gulf oil spill (costs as of May 28th) at a total cost of $930 million;
• Build 4 million affordable housing units at a total cost of $516 billion;
• Provide health care for 4 million average people for one year at a total cost of $13.6 billion;
• Provide health care for 5 million children for one year at a total cost of $11.5 billion;
• Hire 5 million music/arts teachers for a year at a total cost of  $292.5 billion:
• Fund Head Start places for three million children for one year at a total cost of $21.9 billion;
• Generate renewable energy for 1 million residences for one year at a total cost of $969.3 million;
• Hire 2 million elementary school teachers for one year at a total cost of $122.2 billion;

And have $516.5 million left over (throw a really great party!)

And what are we spending this on?

War may be as common in human history as a cold. But in a post nuclear era, when we no longer wage war with pickaxes, the endgame is a little different. The endgame is escalation to nuclear engagement. The endgame is suicide.

So we are killing ourselves, as a species.

How are you going to stop it?

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A freelance writer, Davis Fleetwood has worked as a writer/ media consultant for Dennis Kucinich’s 2008 presidential campaign and served as a contributing editorial commentator for The Uptake. His videos have been seen by over 14 million viewers. He has been called (among many other things) “one of the most prominent voices in YouTube politics.” (-You Tube News & Politics chief, Steve Grove) He was a “Best of YouTube, 2007” nomination. His book DROPPIN’ KNOWLEDGE LIKE A CLUMSY LIBRARIAN, is now available from No Cure For That Press, and his first full length feature documentary, MANIFEST DESTINY’S CHILD, is due out on DVD this June.

THE HERMIT WITH DAVIS FLEETWOOD is a sometimes serious, sometimes satiric look at the top headlines, current events, and political trends. The show is Independently produced by a staff of one & runs on the fuel of your individual donations.

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