Gulf Oil Distraction

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. That makes it all the more difficult for me to understand why our leaders continue to practice crisis management. We know what the result of doing nothing is and we have seen what is possible if we would just reflect the will of the people in action. For over forty years there has been a public outcry that continues to plead for responsible energy policies, pollution elimination strategy and more humane policies regarding our place on the world stage. Frequently there are protests, boycotts and direct actions to change the course of our government officials, their corporate keepers and the constabulary who are used as tools of their oppression. The problem is that the changes are never enough, and always too late to effect necessary change. When you grow up seeing the farce behind our involvement in Southeast Asia, the fallacious claims about how environmental ethics demand our collective return to caves, that the peace movement is being fomented by criminals or communists and the complete inaction demonstrated by our leaders on pollution and energy issues, it becomes hard to understand what the motivation is to cling to policies and procedures that have yet to solve a single one of these pressing problems. Amelioration of problems after they have occurred is not only less effective and more costly than solving them before they reach crisis proportions, but it shows that you don't care enough, and are not smart enough to reason out what might happen if nothing is done.
As long as our "leaders" refrain from taking action, the forces of greed, expediency and abuse will continue to flex their proverbial muscle. Until we demand that their cycle of power and control be broken, we will have to continue to live with the degraded environment, insane energy policy and "terror" from those who hate us for our "way of life", not to mention the real and present terror of not knowing what part of our infrastructure will catastrophically break down next. Our flagging educational system is failing our students, the air where many of us live is not fit to breathe, the water that many of us drink now contains dilute anti-depressants heart medication and "penis pills". The land in many areas has been so thoroughly sterilized that they are biologically dead. The health care debate has been framed so as to not even mention health, or care. If you believed the BS about how legalizing pot would fund more terror, what do you think our continued addiction to oil does? Just because people who have advocated change often looked like hippies and sounded like intellectuals is no reason to believe that they were not right. We should have all seen, by now, the images of Earth from space that led to the coining of the term Spaceship Earth. There is no "away", we need to find a path to peace. True security depends on making our way forward to a future in which our children are not burdened by childhood cancer, developmental disabilities, and reduced quality of life. The same things that angered me as a child have persisted and intensified. Our mindless destruction of the planet has grown exponentially. As emissions from vehicles have been reduced, we drive more cars more miles. As we take actions to reduce water pollution from point sources, we eliminate more native forest cover, drain wetlands and pave over rich farmland, spreading ever more toxins and persistent chemicals on the land.
How can we respect the system that allows these abuses to continue? How can we facilitate the change necessary to encourage sustainability? How can we ask others to bear the costs of our affluence? By seriously studying and understanding the nature of our shortsightedness, perhaps we can bring public opinion to bear on leaders to help create a more reasonable course forward. There are cars of the future in existence today. Cars that will not rust away, that can be fueled with renewable energy, and that will leave oil behind, but our government will not require them to be produced by publicly held, corpulent corporations feeding at the trough of current policy. Similarly, proven technology exists to make every new home a net energy production facility. Where are the regulations requiring that it be done? Why are there no taxes levied on the giant agricultural water pumpers who drain our aquifers or those who spew carcinogenic compounds on the earth? When something is the "right" thing to do, we should be able to agree that it should be done. As things stand, we introduce ambiguity into every topic, call up Fox "news", have them put their cameras on a gut-wrenching effect whose image cannot, in and of itself, tell us anything about the nature or scope of the problem, then they will find two "experts" on any subject imaginable to fight over the hows and whys of whatever the issue may be. In the end we are either stymied into inaction by the realization that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, or righteously indignant about how wrong-headed the opposition is.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but it is getting ever harder to fathom why we have sunk to this level of depravity. Is there anyone at the helm? If there is, they have to know that things are not working. Oh, wait, they must be working. The rich continue to get richer and every loyal Calvinist knows that the poor deserve everything they get as well as what they don't, and for the new age mind over matter folks, they certainly do not deserve the things they can't even dream of. Theories cannot, by definition, be proven. This conspiracy of thought seems very well proven to me and countless others who have been demanding real and meaningful change for generations.