Drill and Spill

So, it’s been several weeks since the BP oil rig blowout and subsequent disastrous oil leak. I live in one of the Gulf Coast States. We got hit with Katrina and Rita. Now this. I live midstate where the oil won’t exactly be in my backyard. I thought that this disaster would finally get the people of my state to agree that there should be stringent regulation on large corporations that not only have a blatant disregard for the environment but for our economy and our lives. Oil companies, coal companies, food processors, electric companies, Wall Street, tobacco companies, etc. They still think that protecting “endangered Big Business” is the only way to go. They argue that companies are regulated too much. They forget that society must have rules or it will not be sustainable. Corporate greed will kill democracy and can do so only with the help and complicity of its citizens. What kind of mindset wants to protect the very entity that is harming the air we breathe and the food we eat? Is it the Stockholm Syndrome? Is it stupidity? I have no clue. Warnings about the possibility of this oil drilling disaster and nuclear plant meltdowns like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have been around for over 40 years. The warnings are now fact. So many of our citizens have been acting like children, putting their hands over their ears and singing so that they won’t have to hear the bad stuff. We may go the way of the dinosaurs and that might not be a bad thing. The dinosaurs weren’t responsible for their extinction but we WILL be responsible for ours.

Crisis Overload

Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to eclipse Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989, terrorist car bomb found in NYC just before it explodes, second week of tornadoes and flooding in OK, MS, AR, TN, AL, Arizona passes onerous illegal immigration law which may be unconstitutional and is definitely inhuman, jobless economic recovery from worst recession since the Great Depression announced, Toyota (the benchmark of auto excellence) in the hot seat for not responding to deadly unwanted acceleration defects, dormant volcano in Iceland erupts and stops air traffic in Europe for a week stranding thousands, and all this has happened within the last few months. My parents used to say “what is this world coming to?” I think they would be overwhelmed at “this world” today. I am overwhelmed! I don’t think I would be surprised if Aliens landed in the US. Actually, Aliens might be the coalescing diversion the world needs to stop a lot of our political, corporate, and religious stupidity from causing any more man made catastrophic events. When I was a kid I didn’t pay much attention to all the crap happening in the world. My world was centered around toys, books, friends, playing, and going to school. Duck and cover was as close as I came to the dangers of the time. (Duck and cover is what we were taught to do in case of an atomic or, by then, a nuclear bomb attack while I was living and going to school in Japan in the late 1950s.) The specter of annihilation from a Russian attack was real but after awhile we all just got used to it and enjoyed the break from our studies whenever the school executed a “Duck and Cover” drill. In 1964, when I was a senior in high school, a black comedy movie summed up the fear of the times…”Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”, starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott. Just trying to keep up with all the crises going on today makes my head hurt. I think I will read a book and turn off the TV and my computer, and play with my puppy, to take a rest from “CRISIS OVERLOAD’ for the day.