Michael Ventura: We Have Been Colonized by the Oligarchy
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Snyder is a stark town – stark in its dullness. Nothing stands out. But look for a local joint in which to sit for a time, read, eat a late lunch, and one thing suddenly, grimly, does stand out: There is no "local" here. Not hardly.
Searching for an eatery that might serve a passable meal, as I drove around I saw only Whataburger, Chicken Express, Dairy Queen, Subway, Long John Silver's, McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Sonic, Taco Bell – and other chains, nothing but chains: Walmart, of course, and Dollar General, Allsup's, O'Reilly Auto Parts, Aaron's, Ace Hardware. You see them everywhere; we're used to that, but in Snyder, it's almost all you see.
There are local nail salons, doughnut shops, tattoo parlors, and I did finally find a locally owned eatery that I will not dishonor by naming. I walked in. It didn't smell right. I stayed anyway. The featured dessert, about which my waitress gushed: fried cheesecake.
Sitting at that booth, looking out that window, I got hit with the force of a revelation: This is not a small city in a free country. This place is a colony.
Here is what happens in a colony: An occupying power sucks the colony's resources dry for purposes that give no benefit to the colony. The colony's self-government is, for all intents and purposes, appointed by the occupiers; its dissenting voices are marginalized (or worse); the constabulary serves the colonizers; the peoples' taxes are siphoned off one way or another by the colonizing power; and the colonizers write the laws. Every choice presented to the people is false – six of one, half a dozen of the other. Everything the people do commercially – how they make money and how they spend it – benefits the colonizers, represented here by the massive chain stores and acres of oil rigs swooshing up practically all Snyder's money into a financial system that has nothing to do with these people – a financial system run by and for manipulators, whom even The New York Times now calls oligarchs.
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So much for Snyder – pathetic, instructive Snyder, a town so small and stark that it shrieks out how now, in this USA, Oligarchy is all there is.
It's obvious that Snyder is a colony. It's not so obvious in larger oligarchic colonies like Austin, New York City, Los Angeles, or Lubbock, Texas.
In large oligarchic colonies, there are many locally owned establishments. This creates an illusion of autonomy. But, in relation to the whole, the locally owned can rarely muster economic and political power. Cannot, for instance, control overall development, real estate, rentals, and boondoggles; cannot stand effectively for or against local or federal government projects; cannot match political super-PAC monies; and all locally owned entities are subject to speculative finance-industry whims utterly beyond their control.
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Let's face it, most of you will go placidly along, mouthing any dodge that relieves you of responsibility for your role in history. (I don't mean to be nasty, but true is true.) For the few of you, the problem is how to address this. I don't know the second step, but I know the first: Speak of it as what it is. Goddamnit, speak of it. Speak of it as what it is. It is Oligarchy.
As for the go-alongs: Console yourself all you like and all you can stand. "But Austin has so many pleasant food venues." "But there's oh so much to do in New York." Whistle in your darkness all you please. We have been colonized.
http://www.austinchronicle.com/columns/2014-06-13/letters-at-3am-snyder-r-us/
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