Category Archives: Green

Your article The Careerists is so myopic and self-righteous that, after reading it this morning, I immediately canceled your feed into my news aggregator.  Pulitzer Prize winner or not, you are a pontificating naked mole rat, blind and raging against a world beyond your vision.

Here’s how you opened:

“The greatest crimes of human history are made possible by the most colorless human beings. They are the careerists. The bureaucrats. The cynics. They do the little chores that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death a reality. They collect and read the personal data gathered on tens of millions of us by the security and surveillance state. They keep the accounts of ExxonMobil, BP and Goldman Sachs. They build or pilot aerial drones. They work in corporate advertising and public relations. They issue the forms. They process the papers. They deny food stamps to some and unemployment benefits or medical coverage to others. They enforce the laws and the regulations. And they do not ask questions.  Good. Evil. These words do not mean anything to them. They are beyond morality.”

Although you are factually correct when you say that corporations and governments cannot function without middle men, paper pushers, rubber stampers, and bureaucrats, you are unable to see the truth for the facts.  Like the old newsman said, “Don’t let the truth interfere with a good story.”

But there’s an even better story in the truth than there is in your two-dimensional diatribe.  Try this one:

Once upon a time there was a man who couldn’t feed his family or keep the lights on.  He fantasized about being able to do that, about someday maybe being able to afford new clothes for the kids or a trip to the zoo or the beach.  He worked several jobs — one in an office, another stocking freight, and a third doing odd jobs.  Sometimes he begged God for forgiveness; because although he never did anything illegal or unethical, he had moments when he felt as though he might have done almost anything to feed his family.  Eventually his career took off, but he had to be a cold and calculating character in order to succeed.  He wasn’t rich, but he was able to get by.  He was even able to take a very modest vacation every now and then.  But every day he struggled with the guilt of being part of a culture that was unfeeling and ruled by corporations.  He had an earnest desire to save the world.  So he started doing what he could to change that.  He founded a martial art to promote courage, resolve, and determination.  He started writing seriously in the hopes that he could exit the corporate world and write full time.  He even put up a blog to explore and detail his efforts.  But unfortunately he had to keep his job, or else he would have to go back to the dark days of previous years, and his family would pay the price.

That’s my story.  I am not beyond morality, the words Good and Evil most definitely mean something to me, and I am far from ‘colorless.’

There are millions of men and women all over the world who are enslaved to corporations upon whom they depend for sustenance and who want to live differently but can’t.  They are trapped between a rock and hard place, and when push comes to shove, they make the hard choice.  They protect their families and carry the guilt.

Now that’s a real story.  Just think; if you had grasped the nuances beyond the facts, you could have told it.