Don't Change Anything

Naomi Klein on Sarah Palin and Capitalism-as-Usual:

Palin was the last clear expression of capitalism-as-usual before
everything went south. That’s quite helpful because she showed us—in that
plainspoken, down-homey way of hers—the trajectory the U.S. economy was on
before its current meltdown. The core of her message was this: Those
environmentalists, those liberals, those do-gooders are all wrong. You don’t
have to change anything. You don’t have to rethink anything. Keep driving your
gas-guzzling car, keep going to Wal-Mart and shop all you want. The reason for
that is a magical place called Alaska. Just come up here and take all you want.
“Americans,” she said at the Republican National Convention, “we need to produce
more of our own oil and gas. Take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of
Alaska, we’ve got lots of both.”

And the crowd at the convention responded by chanting and chanting:
“Drill, baby, drill.”

Watching that scene on television, with that weird
creepy mixture of sex and oil and jingoism, I remember thinking: “Wow, the RNC
has turned into a rally in favor of screwing Planet Earth.” Literally.