In the age of Donald Trump, "garbage" has a distinctly new meaning -- or do I mean an all too old one in the United States of America? In the view of "our" president, garbage now means "Somali" or "immigrant" or simply anyone on the streets of Minneapolis who doesn't look nice and White. (And give him credit: at one point, he even managed to call Somali immigrants to this country "garbage" four times in seven seconds, which should be considered a record for anyone on more or less anything.) And don't forget that he threw Representative Ilhan Omar, who arrived in this country from a devastated Somalia at age 12, under the Trumpian garbage truck. ("We're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage.") And, of course, anyone trying to do anything about protecting us from climate change is certainly the definition of garbage in Trump's America.
Only recently, in fact, his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) went to work to wipe out the government's "endangerment finding," allowing fossil fuels to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. No more, it seems. As EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin put it, "We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more." So, give President Trump and crew full credit for preparing to turn the rest of us into so much" well, yes, garbage in a garbage country on a garbage planet.
But I should put a caveat on all of this. Maybe there's still a little hope. After all, once upon a time (in the 2024 election campaign), Donald Trump spoke of Venezuela's oil supplies in just that classic Trumpian fashion. "Their oil is garbage," he said. "It's horrible. The worst you can get. Tar. It's like tar." Now, of course, it's pure gold to him, but perhaps one day he'll remember what he once thought about it and even (though I wouldn't count on it for a second) change his mind. In that context, let TomDispatch regular Andrea Mazzarino consider American trash, the garbage of our world, and what to make of it all. So, hold your nose, and read away. Tom
The United States of Consumption
Our Trash and Our Lives, Here and Abroad
I learned one of my most valuable lessons about U.S. power in my first year as a Brown University doctoral student.It was in anthropology professor Catherine Lutz's seminar on empire and social movements. I'd sum up what I remember something like this: Americans consume one hell of a lot -- cars, clothes, food, toys, expensive private colleges (ahem"), and that's just to start. Since other countries like China, the United Kingdom, and Japan purchase substantial chunks of U.S. consumer debt, they have a vested interest in our economic stability. So, even though you and I probably feel less than empowered as we scramble to make mortgage, car, or credit-card payments, the fact that we collectively owe a bunch of money globally makes it less likely that a country like China will want to rock the boat -- and that includes literally rocking the boat (as with a torpedo).
In classes like that one at Brown, I came to understand that the military power we get from owing money is self-reinforcing. It helps keep our interest rates low and, in turn, our own military can buy more supplies (especially if Donald Trump's latest demand for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget goes through!). Our own debt somewhat ironically allows this country to continue to expand its reach, if not around the globe these days, at least in this hemisphere (whether you're thinking about Venezuela or Greenland). Often when I splurge on a fancy Starbucks latte or a new pair of shoes, I think about how even critics of U.S. military hegemony like me help prop up our empire when we do what Americans do best -- shop!
To put this crudely, we consume far beyond our means because our military keeps enough of us feeling secure, and we have such a large military because we consume far beyond our means.
American Trash and the Politics of Consumption
And boy, can we shop! As of August 2025, U.S. consumer debt ballooned to nearly $18 trillion and then continued to rise through the end of last year.
Here's one consequence of our consumptive habits: we Americans throw a lot of stuff out. Per capita, we each generate an average of close to two tons of solid waste annually, if you include industrial and construction waste (closer to one ton if you don't). Mind you, on average, that's roughly three times what most other countries consume and throw out -- much more than people even in countries with comparable per capita wealth.
Reminders of our waste are everywhere. Even in my state, Maryland, which funnels significant tax dollars into environmental conservation, you can see plastic bags and bottles tangled in the grass at the roadside, while the air in my wealthy county's capital city often smells like car exhaust or the dirty rainwater that collects at the bottom of your trash can. Schoolchildren like mine bring home weekly piles of one-sided worksheets, PTA event flyers, plastic prizes, and holiday party favors. Even the rich soil of our rural neighborhood contains layers of trash from centuries of agricultural, household, and military activity, all of which remind me of the ecological footprint we're leaving to our children and grandchildren.
To our credit, some of us try to be mindful of that. In recent years, three different public debates about how to fuel our consumptive habits (and where to put the byproducts) have taken place in my region. Residents continue to argue about where to dispose of the hundreds of thousands of tons of our county's waste (much of it uneaten food) that's currently incinerated near the scenic farmland where I live. Do we let it stay here, where it pollutes the land and water, not to mention the air, and disturbs our pastoral views? Or do we haul at least some of the residual ash to neighboring counties and states, to areas that tend to be poor majority-minority ones? While some local advocacy groups oppose the exporting (so to speak) of our trash, it continues to happen.
A related dispute has taken place in an adjacent county that's somewhat less wealthy but also majority White. That debate centers on the appropriate restrictions on a data center to be built there that will store information we access on the Internet and that's expected to span thousands of acres. How far away need it be from residents' homes and farms? Will people be forced to sell their land to build it?
While many of our concerns are understandable -- I'm not ready to move so that we can have a data center nearby -- it turns out that some worries animating such discussions are (to put it kindly) aesthetic in nature. Recently, a neighbor I'd never met called me to try to enlist our family in a debate about whether some newcomers, a rare Indian-American family around here, could construct a set of solar panels in a field along a main road, where feed crops like alfalfa can usually be seen blooming in the springtime.
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