So these are just my thoughts, not necessarily backed up by references but pretty much just pure emotion of the moment I'm in right now. I just feel like I need to get this out.
If I had a collective hand to slap the American public with, I would do so right now. After said slap I would get in their face and tell them to wake up and act like adults. Seriously people! What is up with this fatalistic view of reality we have come to develop in the last few years?! I don't know if it's because of the recession or the war or what it is but it has got to stop. This oil spill is just the icing on top of the cake, I guess. I hear more people bemoaning the end of the world because of this thing than I think I've ever heard.
Do we just lack perspective? Is that the problem? Are we all just so bad at history that we're unable to look at anything beyond the time frame of right now, this second? I think that might be the case but surely some of us are able to take the collective experiences & education of our lives and develop a rational thought about the situation. The Gulf of Mexico (GOM in interweb slang) is a big place. A HUGE place. It's no Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, but it's pretty doggone massive. The oil spill is big. It's huge. It's currently out of control. However, the GOM has seen something like this before. In the 70's. IXTOC I. Look it up. I suggest Wikipedia, though I'm sure there are better sites out there also. IXTOC I was bad. Real bad. It took a LONG time to stop. The Mexican government didn't pay many claims related to the spill. They didn't do near what BP is doing and is going to do to clean it up. However, the GOM survived. She recovered. She didn't die. In fact, I'll propose a really novel thought. We can't kill her! (Yes, she's a girl, same as a ship is a girl. Cause I said so.) How arrogant as human beings do we have to be to believe that we can possibly destroy a part of God's creation as big as the GOM?! Do we even understand what we are saying in a statement like that? (More on my thoughts on the environmental side of this later, if I have time)
I refuse to let this ruin my life, same as I refuse to let the recession dominate my thought processes. After a certain point, this will only be as bad as we make it in our reality. What I mean is, the economical & ecological effects of this will be, for the most part, measurable in terms of losses & costs. However, the emotional effects of this will be exactly what we make them. We're at a crossroads with this thing. We can choose to let it kill us or we can choose to use it to make us stronger and teach us a lesson. I personally choose the latter. I think the jury is still out on most people, but I'd say the vast majority will choose to sit at home and just cry about it, hoping somebody else fixes it so they don't have to feel guilty about buying gas from BP anymore. Let's face it, most people won't actually DO anything about it. It's the same as any other disaster. They'll sit at home, be angry, and hope somebody else fixes it so they don't have to get their hands dirty. Well America, now's another opportunity to get up off your lazy butt, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and be great. It's been a long time since we've been challenged to do that. For far too long now we've had leaders that have told us to just stay at home, they'll fix the problem, they'll make you comfortable. Well America, now you see where that has gotten you. You have a President who is so far detached from the situation that all he can do is give speeches about it saying the same thing over and over again. You have a regulatory agency that is so mired in red tape that they can't actually regulate anything. You have an oil company that's so pressured to produce products that they cut corners on safety so that you can live comfortably at home. So America, what's it gonna be? Put up or shut up? It's up to you, because like it or not, where we go from here is on our shoulders, not BP's. They just have to pay for it.
My apologies if that read a bit like a James Joyce novel. It was purely what came out of my head at the moment I typed it. I'm just tired of all the whining and crying. I'm about to have a baby girl. She'll give me all of that I need. I don't need to hear it from adults too.
