Of developers, Navajo religion, and anger

I haven't published anything on this blog in over a month. But this world makes me angrier all the time.

I'm in Durango, Colorado. I've been in the area long enough to see how the rapacious greed of developers and mindless consumerism of coastal elites is destroying this beautiful part of the world. In Durango, a youth hostel has been bulldozed for condos. Up the road, a campsite has been replaced with vacation homes.

Worst of all, Red McCombs -- owner of some sports franchise, I forget which -- is planning to develop a huge vacation village in San Juan National Forest, very near Wolf Creek Ski Area. Wolf Creek has never had a village and is currently accessible only by a 30-minute car drive. The development will replace its family and low-budget crowd with people staying in McMansions that inhabit a couple weeks a year.

Actually, that's not the worst. The worst is looking at the real estate offices all over Durango. Good luck finding anything for less than $300,000. As local residents confirm, locals can no longer afford their own town. Californians make a heap selling their own homes and then buy here, driving prices up and/or invading the wilderness. The once-pristine valley north of Durango is now lined with upscale developments.

The point: What kind of a country do we live in when the right of so many people to enjoy nature can be trampled on so one rich developer can make money? Put another way: What kind of country are we when rich people's desire to have a vacation home in the mountains is allowed to trump the rights of local people to live where they work?

You really think Christ would side with the developers in this case? When did Christ EVER side with the rich?

And it is so rich -- so incredibly rich -- that the Republicans talk about "class warfare" or the "politics of envy." The wealthy (who the Republicans represent) are the ones that launched this war! Not content with their suburbs, they pour their money into inner cities, gentrifying them and pushing minorities out. They push the kayakers and mountain bikers off the rivers and out of the mountains -- after all, they paid for this piece of private property! Any place that's beautiful, they take -- the middle class and poor people who live there be damned. This "class warfare" began with an invasion -- the forceful taking of the rich of the few beautiful things that belonged to the poor or the community as a whole.

If that's the American way, then our country is morally bankrupt. We deserve the wrath of God.

Sure, the rich folks spend money and create jobs -- jobs waiting tables, clerking at motels, and scooping ice cream. The rich people's money buys them servants. Servants who don't even get to live on the grounds.

Man, I want to will the good for these developers. I know I should. But right now I have a hard time not hoping that there is a special place in hell for such people.

While down here, I've read a lot about the religions of the Navajo and Pueblo peoples. Seems they believe in a harmony between each person, nature, and all living things.

I think that's a Christian belief, too. I know that greed is a Christian sin. And I know that Jesus loved the poor. Because of this, I can only say that our nation grows more un-Christian by the day, no matter what our evangelical president says.