The Government: Protector of the People or the Destroyer of Souls?

The environment is an essential part of life. It is inescapable. It constantly surrounds us whether we like it or not. It controls what we do every day. We spend time outside when it’s bright and warm outside but are forced to stay indoors when it’s cold and rainy. More importantly, the environment in which one lives in plays a vital role in crafting one’s identity. And this is where is the irony begins. 

Now, as many of you have already heard, the environment is “fragile.” However, our government doesn’t apparently think so. We sometimes call our environment “mother nature” but end up treating it like an absolute, barren wasteland. Now you must be wondering the government has done in order to make such an assertion. Well, allow me to reveal the blunders of the government. As Terry Tempest Williams illustrates, the “’American nuclear tragedy’” was an indisputable instance of where the government put “[p]ublic health … secondary to national security.” When viewed through a historical lens, it becomes even more evident of how the government has trashed our fragile surroundings. 

Take the atomic bomb testing from the Cold War for example.  Without the consent of the people, the government forced a multitude of atomic bombs among the residents of Utah. Not only did this annihilate the desert landscape, but it also brought a spreading, insurmountable exposure of lethal radiation only to introduce a “Clan of One-breasted Women” with a considerable Mormon ancestry of breast cancer. How can a government “by the people and for the people” that “strives” the “protect” its people permit such an absurdity?