Nathan Jessup

"I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to. "

Why start with A Few Good Men? Because:

Freegans are scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism. They forage through supermarket trash and eat the slightly bruised produce or just-expired canned goods that are routinely thrown out, and negotiate gifts of surplus food from sympathetic stores and restaurants.

What's the connection? Stay with me, I'm getting there.

“If a person chooses to live an ethical lifestyle it’s not enough to be vegan, they need to absent themselves from capitalism,” said Adam Weissman, 29, who started freegan.info four years ago and is the movement’s de facto spokesman.

[...]

Many freegans are predictably young and far to the left politically, like Ms. Elia, the 17-year-old, who lives with her father in Manhattan. She said she became a freegan both for environmental reasons and because “I’m not down with capitalism.”

[...]

Mr. Gutierrez’s lifestyle, like Ms. Nelson’s, became gradually more constricted in the absence of a steady income. He lived in a Midtown loft until last year, when, he said, he got into a legal battle with his landlord over a rent increase — a relationship “ruined by greed,” he said. After that, he lived in his van for a while, then found an illegal squat in SoHo, which he shares with two others. Mr. Gutierrez had a middle-class upbringing in Dallas, and he said he initially found freeganism off-putting. But now he is steadfastly devoted to the way of life.

I can't believe that these assholes got this much coverage in the Times. Mr. Gutierrez is upset because his landlord raised the rent on his midtown loft? A 17 year-old girl living in Manhattan is "not down with capitalism"? The founder of the movement, who lives in NJ with his parents spews nonsense like "absent themselves from capitalism" They must conversate a lot about ways to absent themselves from capitalism - maybe they met in Gutierrez's loft, or maybe they meet at Nelson's place in Flatbush:

Ms. Nelson, who is 51, spent her 20s working in restaurants and living in communal houses, but by 2003 she was earning a six-figure salary as a communications director for Barnes & Noble. That year, while demonstrating against the Iraq war, she began to feel hypocritical, she said, explaining: “I thought, isn’t this safe? Here I am in my corporate job, going to protests every once in a while. And part of my job was to motivate the sales force to sell more stuff.” After a year of progressively scaling back — no more shopping at Eileen Fisher, no more commuting by means other than a bike — Ms. Nelson, who had a two-bedroom apartment with a mortgage in Greenwich Village, quit her job in 2005 to devote herself full-time to political activism and freeganism. She sold her apartment, put some money into savings, and bought a one-bedroom in Flatbush, Brooklyn, that she owns outright. “My whole point is not to be paying into corporate America, and I hated paying a big loan to a bank,” she said while fixing lunch in her kitchen one recent afternoon. The meal — potato and watercress soup and crackers and cheese — had been made entirely from refuse left outside various grocery stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

ARRRGH! They make me want to scream. What I see here is selfishness masquerading as virtue. Nelson has a mid-life crisis of conscience and determines that capitalism is bad. Then, in response, she takes all of her dirty money, buys herself a house (cash) and puts the rest in savings. Hey, if you are feeling so guilty about the corporate world, how about using some of your dirty money to, I don't know, HELP PEOPLE?! Jesus H. Christ, if these people were going off the grid and living off the land in Montana, or if they were donating this stuff to people in need they'd have a point. But all Nelson's done is retire at 51. Call a spade a goddamn spade.

I think what has me so furious is that there are legitimate concerns about capitalism and its impact on people and these concerns have gotten worse over the last 6 years with Team Bush in the White House. Feeling guilty about your Bose stereo in your (dad's) Manhattan apartment is not a legitimate concern. Having the means to keep a roof over your head and not doing so is not a legitimate concern. Focusing on shit like this only confuses the larger, serious issues.