Compromise, Hell!
by Wendell Berry
Published in the November/December
2004 issue of Orion magazine
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY—I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
WE ARE DESTROYING OUR COUNTRY—I mean our country itself, our land. This is a terrible thing to know, but it is not a reason for despair unless we decide to continue the destruction. If we decide to continue the destruction, that will not be because we have no other choice. This destruction is not necessary. It is not inevitable, except that by our submissiveness we make it so.
We Americans are not usually thought to be a submissive people, but of
course we are. Why else would we allow our country to be destroyed? Why else
would we be rewarding its destroyers? Why else would we all—by proxies we have
given to greedy corporations and corrupt politicians—be participating in its
destruction? Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we
allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in
fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us.
How do we submit? By not being radical enough. Or by not being thorough
enough, which is the same thing.
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