The Corn-Fed Empire

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>At 09:23 PM 10/08/2002 -0400, chris wrote:
>
>>Now that is some serious rhetorical overkill!
>
>with respect to:
>
>>Americans will never be slim and wholesome unless they manage to pull off a
>>feat beyond a mere "regime change" here: the overthrow of the capitalist
>>world empire
>
>It totally cracked me up when I read it. It reminded me of this Trotskyist
>paper (that I used to sell door-to-door twenty years ago), which concluded
>EVERY article it ever printed with the above paragraph. Of course, fat
>wasn't always the problem....but whatever the problem was, "it would never
>be resolved until capitalism was overthrown." I objected again and again
>against this formulaic writing -- not to mention the rest of the formulaic
>writing which infected the paper -- but was simply dismissed as a bourgie.
>
>Joanna

That is unfair, as I have never argued that no problem could be 
possibly solved unless and until capitalism is overthrown.

Before the poor third of American workers could exercise more and eat 
healthier, there would have to be (1) radical changes in social 
geography (where people can live, where people can work, where people 
can shop, where people can study, etc., as well as how people can 
move among them); (2) radical changes in US agriculture; and (3) a 
good deal of increases in free time.  (1), (2), & (3) are unlikely to 
come about without the end to the corn-fed empire.