Letter from Slim Wolfe
Modern life – December 2002 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editor:
Will some doomsday weapon be slipped into an American port on a container ship? Seems as likely or as unlikely as any other paranoid scenario dreamed up in the name of patriotism this year. But according to news reports, the major importers are pleading poverty in the face of suggestions that about twenty hours labor per container for inspection might help the nation get a full night’s sleep.
As if they couldn’t just pass another little price-hike on to the consumer. I spend little enough on imports (not counting petrol) and I could sure cough up that bit of change. Beats the heck out of abridging civil liberties and spending a fortune on listening devices to fish for suspicious trigger-words on communications networks, and it’s a damned sight more practical than terrorizing the entire world with our weapons of mass destruction. But hey, we didn’t invent gluttony, we just perfected it, and who wants to be the only parent on the block who didn’t pile a mountain of imports under the holiday tree?
If we don’t want to have an endless succession of war veterans going berserk, we’d better start building a society in which domestic production is viable, and productive labor is rewarded more than marketing sleaze.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
