Everywhere I go, Liberals are griping about the President, carrying water for the GOP again. Liberals want Obama to “FIX” the BP spill. He should have “taken over”, he should have “done more”.
Oil Spill Tragedy
Oh, the Right loves our misinformed friends who never pause before picking up the knife to stab their own agenda in the back, but will be the first to moan when we don’t get (fill in the blank with special interest) passed. “Kerry was a coward! “ “Daschle is a tax fraud! “ Obama is just like Bush!” We carry that water, my friends. And we keep on telling ourselves we’re different from the Fox viewers who spew out the mass media spoon-fed talking points of the Republican agenda. And we are. But for how long at this rate? Beware the lazy intellectualism of the pseudo elite liberal, because it’s much more cool to reproach scornfully from above than it is to tell the nerdy truth. The nerdy truth is this sucks and there is no way to fix it now.
The truth is so ugly and yes, it does point in one direction – and that’s not childish, it’s accurate. People always want to believe if they cut things down the middle, they’ll find the “truth”, but anyone who’s faced malevolence on this earth knows better. There is a truth, and it’s nowhere in the middle sometimes. Sometimes there really is a bad guy. Defeatism and cynicism invite us to give up and cut it down the middle. It takes guts to examine the facts one by one and determine what happened here. The enormity of the greed and power that paved the way for the Deepwater Horizon spill is mind-blowing and incomprehensible at times. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Evil had been to America and left its stain across our land. In fact, I can’t say I don’t believe that.
The problem is people do not want to face the magnitude of this disaster or the inevitable ecosystem damage. They are frustrated and they want “change”. They see big oil lying to us and they’re outraged. Again. The people in Louisiana are getting screwed again.
Americans are tired of this crap, and here to help us blame someone is the Right.
Everywhere you turn, a Righty is smugly saying “the BP spill is a stain on the Obama administration” and a Liberal or Libertarian is agreeing, “oh, yes, love the guy, but he should have been out there….” (yes, Bill Maher, I am talking to you– I love you, but sometimes you say dumb things….)
No one is correcting them.
And that suits the Right wing just fine, because you know, if anyone corrected them, then they’d keep on tracing that thread until it landed square in Dick Cheney’s lap and that would not be good this fall.
The AP reported:
“”The government should have stepped in and not just taken BP’s word,” declared Wayne Stone of Marathon, Fla., an avid diver who worries about the spill’s effect on the ecosystem.
The government is overseeing the cleanup and response, but the official responsible for the oversight said he understands the discontent.
“If anybody is frustrated with this response, I would tell them their symptoms are normal, because I’m frustrated, too,” said Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen. “Nobody likes to have a feeling that you can’t do something about a very big problem.”
As simple as it may seem, the law prevents the government from just taking over, Allen said. After the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, Congress dictated that oil companies be responsible for dealing with major accidents — including paying for all cleanup — with oversight by federal agencies.”
The meme that Obama isn’t doing enough or didn’t respond quickly was debunked on this website by Jason Easley. In fact, Obama showed how to lead in his quick response. So people, bitch about the law, bitch about the power of oil, bitch about things that are accurate — bitch about how government sucks and nothing ever seems to gets done — but do not keep complaining about Obama not “fixing ” this. Leave inaccuracies and hopeful memes of Obama’s Katrina for the Right. Obama can’t take over the clean up unless he changes the law via an emergency order.
A pause while we imagine what would happen to Obama if he dared to step in to interfere with “private business” via executive or emergency order. How fast would the Right initiate impeachment proceeding, claiming he has “nationalized” the oil companies and was a dictator? I wouldn’t count on getting a blink in, and furthermore, our own Todd Curl makes a few other points today about just what could be at risk for Obama here. But, even if the law didn’t prevent Obama from taking over, he still couldn’t fix it.
He can’t FIX it. NO ONE can fix it. It is another disaster that would have not happened if we had had regulations and oversight. Complaining about the process of the clean up is part of the denial process of grief. We are still pretending that something can be done to fix this. We cant so badly to believe in this.
Wanting Obama to fix this now is like still believing in the tooth fairy. He can’t fix it. Have you ever had to face something that you could not change? The inevitability of something you wanted to deny? Death, illness, a destructive force in another human being that was so ugly you wished you had never seen it? That’s what’s going on here. We’re grieving the loss of life — human, animal, marine, and plant — and we want to point the finger; We want someone to make it better.
It’s over. It can’t be fixed. The death and destruction will go on for years.
The only thing we can do is stop carrying water for the Right, by blaming our own President for things Bush and Cheney did. The only thing we can do is fight for oversight and regulations, which are Democratic values. So, write your congress people and demand oversight. Demand justice for the MMS ass for gas scandal. Demand accountability from the Dept of Interior and the oil companies. Demand that oil companies have to pay economic damages to the people harmed by this spill, to wildlife rescue and to the people in general for the environmental damage. That’s what we can do.
We can’t reverse this, we can’t fix it, and we can’t take the oil out of the Gulf. All we can do is be willing to learn what lead up to this and vow to never forget it. Yes, big oil has major money in our government and yes, this means they have a much louder voice than you and I. Yes, all administrations play this game.
But only one took this to new heights of criminal activity. This was the consequence of massive deregulation and deliberate lack of oversight, courtesy of the Dick and W club. Just like what they did to Wall street, Enron, and the mortgage market. And the Republicans are still arguing the same extremist positions that lead to those disasters and they still don’t think BP should have to pay for the economic damage, because after all, we don’t want to “HURT business”. So when your friends tell you “Both sides do it” and “they’re all the same”, ask yourself who is pushing to hold BP accountable financially and who isn’t. They may all suck, but they are not all the same and it’s a matter of degree at times. Just don’t help them destroy this country by buying into false memes.
Remember this people. Remember it.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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