After the Fall, What Next?

by paradox

Enough time has passed and we know enough since Deepwater Horizon blew up American energy policy and a lot of the Obama Administration 2010 agenda to take as calm and rational look at this complete environmental and political disaster as we can. That’s almost as difficult as capping that well from hell but the attempt shall be made, the stakes are too high for petty human limitations here.

I have been watching American politicians a long time—I distinctly remember the night Humphrey lost to Nixon, and I have excellent recall of the Carter Administration—and in all this time I have never seen an administration policy launch and political ploy so instantly, so vividly blow up in their faces, what a teeth-mangling political face splat for the books this is. It’s extremely difficult to feel compassion for the fools who implemented it, the Obama Administration walked right into this and richly deserve the daily hammer blow for it.

Harsh words, but the history of this disaster holds up the judgment very well. The setup for the Big Splat came when—as so often has been the case—the Obama Administration decided after the election win to insidiously couple with very powerful big business interests, to be willing partners in their mutual goals that so conveniently always leave out the interests of the little people and our earth. This time it was big oil and the energy companies, Obama appointed Ken Salazar and essentially gave his blessing to the rancid regressive policies of the worst President of all time, George Bush.

This is just the setup, at the time it happened and even now I can accept this on many practical political levels. Just what exactly should the expectation set be for the little people on what the Obama Administration can actually change? Healthcare reform had to be attempted, myriad financial reforms scream for attention, more stimulus on little people jobs must be performed again, foreign policy must be urgently managed for something different every quarter. To think Energy reform could somehow be pushed into that agenda is absurd, no Administration could ever do it. I virulently don’t like it but can truly accept the political rationale behind it.

Then—absolutely out of nowhere—Obama ran off a political cliff without a bungee cord. Alleged Mittens Romney healthcare had just been passed, gold-encrusted gavels had crashed down with heralding trumpets and Teaparty gnashing as Nancy Pelosi rallied the base for more liberal victories, but to keep the momentum going drill baby drill! came roaring into our lives like a terrible flashback to Sarah Palin vice presidential possibilities. From our own leadership!

It’s impossible to overstate the wrenching uproar this outrageous political move to embrace offshore drilling and triangulate the liberal environmental element of the Democratic Party instantly conflagrated, a viciously bitter betrayal—Al Gore is a member of our Party too---that was devastating to Democratic Party base morale.

Being on the shit end of triangulation—to be so infuriatingly equated with rapacious lawbreaking felon capitalists and their lying political followers in an outrageously false equivalency that sneers at you for not being mature enough to recognize people are tired of political fighting—is a lousy way to motivate voters who want nothing more to desperately support you, President Obama, and at least after this horrid disaster we can fairly trust he won’t do it again. To this day no one can really say where the disastrous impulse to emulate Sarah Palin in Spring 2010 came from, that’s easily worse than the triangulation, there was no rational political reason for it, none. Didn’t these guys have enough to do?

As we know all this has spectacularly blown up in Obama’s face. Little people legitimately asking what’s next? have a very grim prognosis for correct political resolution from this Executive.

The first massive paradigm shift would be a confrontational approach to big oil for regulation and environmental damage compensation, a totally new approach for the Obama team.

The second new massive alignment would be a coupling with the hordes of Americans yearning for Al Gore’s dream of a clean, sustaining atmosphere, a move that would instantly slot them with humans they’ve done nothing but marginalize and sneer at as environmental fringe, pawns to triangulate in hapless machinations of manipulation to nowhere.

There isn’t any escape this time, the oil keeps gushing day after day, on and on, a relentless catalyst for change. Not only for the earth, but in massively fundamental ways President Obama approaches politics and the little people. The onus of change is upon him, not us. Can he do it? We’re watching.