Walking on a path alongside a creek the other day, I came across an old car battery that had been dumped there. Although I realized someone had taken special care and made a deliberate effort to discard a battery this far from civilization, I nevertheless carefully picked it up and put it in the garbage bag I always take when hiking, to legally dispose of it later.

Now don’t get me wrong: the only reason I pick up trash is because it usually clashes with the landscape, not to save the earth … like our conservative brothers and sisters (and aunts, grandfathers, and in-laws …), I ain’t no friend of the earth, no sir!

Like them, I miss the days when government stayed out of our lives and we had the god-given freedom to dump whatever wherever, like used engine oil and coolant in the rivers and lakes along with old tires, televisions and used mattresses … so convenient and so much in sync with industry!

So don’t confuse me for one of those tree-hugging, soil-kissing, limp-wristed eco-freaks who are always asking what they can do to help the earth … what for, haven’t they heard Jesus is coming?

As all good right-wingers know, or should if they were not bad apple moderates, Christians owe it to God to trash the planet as much and as fast as possible to ruin it for those who will be left behind, the non believers, the unrepentant sinners, the devil’s crop.

Anyway, it is patriotic to pollute. When they said “love your country” they meant the flag, darn it, not the land, unless it can generate a buck, unless every square inch can be cultivated or ranched on an industrial scale, drilled, mined, or bought and sold for profit.

Who has ever heard of needing or loving the earth resources for anything else than survival and wealth, of loving the trees, the sky, the mountains? What have we come to? OK, if you insist maybe a photographer or and artist can create a picture of this or that last wilderness for posterity before we blow it up for coal or uranium. Happy?

The earth is like a lemon, to be squeezed and discarded when used up, when the privileged amongst the human race will either find another juicy planet to colonize and squeeze, or else be saved by the second coming.

While we are at it, and since America, as reported recently by grassroots Republicans, is under assault from a global socialist conspiracy, let’s fight back and do away with all those terrible liberal policies that have weakened the nation far too long, such as the 40-hour work week and minimum wage, so the American workforce is no longer put in a position of disadvantage with illegal immigrant workers, and can properly compete for sweatshop positions and other opportunities, such as working in the fields picking strawberries without superfluous protection against pesticide sprays. Yes, sir!

As a matter of fact, let’s no longer be shy and stand for what’s right. Golly, let’s go back to true conservatism and undo all that was unfairly imposed on the unsuspecting public and on industry and business in the past 100 years by those overeducated liberal do-gooders, who should have stayed home eating quiche or drinking high tea.

Like the outcome of the Suffragette movement. now every decent follower of a middle-eastern patriarchal religion like Christianity knows God said woman must obey man, ain’t it? Yes, sir!

How about the silly labor law that prevents ambitious children from working and taking part in the American dream, let’s do away with this anti-business, anti-American law, we got mines to dig and coal to haul and petrol to refine!

Now if the Federal Bureau of Investigations had been allowed to do its job, instead of a Martin Luther King day we would have a Jim Crow day, and anti-segregation laws would have never been imposed on the majority population, why if you can’t even oppress, persecute, hate members of a minority group because of skin color, what are you supposed to hate them for, hair color?

And let’s bust unions, gut the clean air and clean water acts, make the Environmental Protection Agency a tool of industry, and lower all environmental protection standards so industry does not have to spend a penny retrofitting its outdated operations, or being made to no longer use the environment as a sewer for arsenic, lead, dioxins, and other poisons the taxpayer pays to clean up.

Oh, I forgot, the Bush Administration and Republican governors already did all that, good for them, that showed them all earth-worshipping eco-geeks what red-blooded America stands for.

Let’s finish the job and annihilate all protected species (especially the ones that look good hanging on the walls of a country estate), outlaw clean air and clean water all together so there is no more whining about such irrelevant matters, clear-cut, mine, drill and bulldoze all national parks and other wasted pristine lands, outlaw all non-chemical and non-GMO foods such as natural and organic products (any individual farmer who cannot compete with a multi-national corporation needs to be eliminated ASAP, I believe Darwin said so), cut off all social programs and close all medical facilities to those socialists who do not have private medical insurance (weaklings cannot expect to get a free ride on the shoulders of the strong and the mighty, that would be unnatural … let’s stick to the fundamentals of conservatism, shall we?).

And why hesitate to do the truly conservative thing and eliminate government completely? Except, of course, for the military, surveillance and intelligence gathering, torture chambers and corporate welfare. Anything else is unnecessary, why would America need a functioning infrastructure when it has the mightiest military in the world, permanent martial law, and the ability to control segments of the population peeved by environmental disasters such as Katrina?

Who are those commie fools who need the government to do everything for them, from the cradle to the grave, like replacing crumbling bridges and paving roads? What’s more important, having the military muscle to impose our will on the entire world or offering a decent education to our children?

It’s no contest, brain is overrated, everybody knows intellectuals are not to be trusted, and let’s be frank, thinking is unpatriotic, in a neo-conservative world of global and permanent war you either submit to conservative military-industrial complex leadership or you are with the enemy.

Raphael Montoliu lives in Lakeport.