by Dave Bradley

I asked my daughter what we could get the grandson for Christmas this year since he will be but six months old at the time. Her response kind of surprised me. She said she wanted books to read to him, especially the Dr. Seuss book “The Lorax.” She thought it very important that he hear “The Lorax.” It was her favorite book as a child.

Most of you know “The Lorax.” The story of a creature that tries to stand up for the Truffula trees as the Once-ler mows them down with precision and without a care. The profits that the Once-ler is making from the product he makes out of Truffula trees – the thneed – blinds him to any problems or concerns. And so the Once-ler chops and chops and chops the trees in the relentless pursuit of money.  And of course in the end the trees are all gone as are the profits.

“The Lorax” is an obvious allegory about the environment. But recently I have been pondering how “The Lorax” could easily be looked at today as an allegory of how the conservative (geez, I hate that word to describe them) movement seems to have its eyes fixed on goals and will stop at nothing to achieve them.

Much like the Once-ler, the conservatives have assembled a machine-like precision in chopping, chopping, chopping away at what they perceive to cause all the ills in society. Things that smack in any way of a socialist state, such as the poor having access to decent medical care. Or things which stand in the way of private enterprise in its pursuit of ever larger profits such as regulations in the ways business can be conducted or rules on how much they must pay their employees.

I sit here and read the daily news and commentary and it is like there is this giant machine chopping a broad swath in the forest that makes up the environment of American life. Chopping here at wages, at availability of health care, at equality of races or of sexual preference. Chopping over there at social security and Medicare and Medicaid. Chopping around the corner at education and teacher’s pay and early education for preschoolers. And always chopping hard at business regulations that give snooks like you and me at least a chance of not getting fleeced when we make a financial transaction.

Out in front of all this chopping machinery is the oiling machine that lubes up the trees in the forest so they will fall easily when chopped. That is the job of Fox News and the current group of corporate info-tainment departments that make liberal ideas seem so distasteful that people cheer as the only laws protecting them are done away with. Just to see how well it works one only need look at the healthcare situation. Two years ago, people were screaming for a fix to a totally corrupt system. Now enough have been “oiled” that they are crying for a return to a corrupt system.

And those of us who choose to be the Loraxes in today’s America are overwhelmed trying to slow the machine’s relentless progress. As we face the machine at one turn, the speed is upped in another section.

This machine is fueled by bumper sticker slogans that a populace of non-critical thinkers are eating up like candies.  And much like the end of the Lorax, one day Americans will wake up in small hovels where three generations of a family reside together and they will look at each other wondering what happened. And with any luck, maybe one of the elders can relate what happened, because the answers will no longer be available in books.