Capitalism Forced Me to Move House

As I wrote about before, a person chose to use her economic power and privilege to displace six people from their homes; as a result, I was forced to move. I’m fine, but I would like to take a minute to consider freedom, a virtue American politicians love to pretend to care about, and what that word means: freedom for who? Freedom to do what? Since my parents chose to move my siblings and I from a lovely little town in the Scottish Borders to a tiny sulfur-scented cesspit in west Texas, I’ve heard over and over again “I bet you’re glad to live in a free country now!”[1] As I looked at the desert around me, dangerous and nigh-impossible to traverse without a car, breathed in the fragrance of rotten eggs from the drilling for oil, saw school-mates wearing the same hole-riddled shirts day after day, and reflected on how reluctant my parents were to take me to the dentist or the doctor lately, it was all I could do to avoid spraining a muscle as my eyes rolled violently into the back of…