Gulf Coast Oil Disaster and the Politics of Sarah Palin and "Drill, Baby, Drill"

As millions of gallons of oil leaking from an exploded underwater BP drilling rig drift around the Gulf of Mexico deciding whether to make landfall on America, it is a good time to reflect on the disaster in progress and the disasters some people fail to imagine during the heat of political election cycles.

For years we've known that America is too dependent on oil as an energy source. To add to the equation, America is particularly dependent on sources of foreign oil. During each political cycle we listen to politicians wrangle over where American needs to drill for more oil, and how soon. Of course for 8 years we also had two former Texas oil men in office with Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. So not much was going to change during their tenure. Our oil policies and regulations were being written by members of the industry itself.

So the primary things that occurred during the Bush era were a war to protect our oil interests in the Middle East that also fueled the appetites of oil futures speculators who drove gas prices to near $4 a gallon before even Bush and his buddies got nervous about the temper of the American people. Companies like Exxon crowed about record profits while truck drivers just about turned in the keys because they could no longer afford to drive their rigs. And that's just about where we found America when the 2008 election came around. Oil became a political issue again with ignorant chants of "drill, baby, drill" driving the candidacy of characters like Vice Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin. But she and John McCain lost. So it is up to President Barack Obama to figure out what to do about America's dependency on foreign oil, wars and all.

Recently Obama had been considering granting more offshore drilling options as a bargaining chip in the global warming negotiations. This sort of political poker is commonplace in Washington and world politics. Mostly what it gets us is compromised, not compromise. With every bill that gets passed we find more pork and more grandfathered funding for projects that have nothing to do with the centerpiece legislation. All so politicians can go home and crow about how much money they've scored for their districts. Meanwhile government grows larger by the minute and the national debt creeps upward, ever upward.

Corporate money in Washington makes it all worse, because corporations are the hogs at the feeding trough of Washington. The sooner we admit that, and reign in favors being granted to every kind of lobbyist and the piggish corporate recipients behind corporate welfare, the sooner America can steer back toward democracy.

But first we're going to have to wade through a giant oil slick. We will be sullied. The people who a few weeks ago could think of nothing better for America to do than to drill for oil off its own shores have fallen silent, at least until the next political election, which is coming up soon. That is when the images of the Gulf Coast oil disaster will become fodder for political football.

The lessons we should be learning from the pending Gulf Coast disaster should be practical, not political. Millions of migrating birds may die. Precious wetlands already beset by poor management policies may now be clogged by mats of thick oil. Shellfish and sea life will suffer, along with the fishing industry. The oil slick may swing south on the Gulf Stream and then head north around Florida, just in time for the East Coast tourist season.

Beyond those who died in the oil rig tragedy, more people might die from the effects or pollution or other strange accidents. People are always dying in strange, dumb ways.

But the most zealous politicians and commentators won't care about any of that. They'll have their eye on the next election with corporate protection money newly jangling in their electoral pockets. Plenty of it will come from companies like BP and Shell and whoever else digs in the ocean floor to find oil. The big leak will be on everyone's lips. Conservatives will find some way to blame environmentalists for causing the disaster. Already Rush Limbaugh falsely speculated that "environmentalist whackos" caused the original damage to the rig.

You see how all this works? Ideologues play with our future and ridicule our intellect while collecting fat checks for sounding smart and funny. That's what Rush Limbaugh does, but he's not running for election. That's what Sarah Palin does, and she is running for election while pretending she isn't. But what can she possibly tells us that the facts don't?

The facts tell us that the oil company contractor managing the rig for British Petroleum did not install certain protective devices, and that tapping that oil reserve at those depths was a highly risky proposition in the first place. The companies placing the rig took certain precautions and only tapped the undersea reserve at its very edge. They rightly feared the stored pressure of the reserve would be so great the offshore rig could not handle it. And they were right. And people died. And oil is soiling the Gulf. But will we still be suffering the chants of "drill, baby, drill" when Sarah Palin gets around to running for President? Probably. Because the facts don't really seem to matter in the world of people like Sarah Palin. They' so confident their ideology is truth they don't have to justify their opinions to anyone. That's the true nature of "going rogue." Sarah Palin is the ultimate expression of a certain political arrogance.

Meanwhile the ugly symbol of our petroleum-fueled appetites drifts toward shore in killing mats of black and orange crude. It's almost as if the bile of our current political process had come to life. Virtual reality suddenly jumped from Avatar 3-D to Real D, as in Devastation, Destruction and Death. Welcome to the age of hyper-reality TV, folks.

So this oil disaster on the Gulf Coast will serve as the stage for political theater as the election approaches. Probably Sarah Palin will borrow a line from Pat Robertson and say that this disaster was God's will or way of telling us that America should be drilling for oil not off the Gulf Coast but in the Arctic where Sarah just knows the drilling would have been safer. Because God told her so? Sarah will spin it in her folksy way to make it known that she "gets it" (wink wink) in the eyes of all those people who think God is a vindictive control freak who votes Republican. Or Tea Party. Or whatever.

News reports warn this oil spill could be worse than the Exxon Valdez incident in Alaska, which leaked 11,000,000 gallons of oil into the north seas. Those are the facts. They're saying it may take as many as 90 days to cap the flow, if they can cap it at all. The problem remains 5000 feet below the surface. The ocean crushes people at that depth. Drill, baby, drill.

We're witnessing a massive ruination of America's south seas. If Sarah Palin and her oily kin really want to demonstrate their commitment to offshore drilling, they should be forced to swim through the stuff to save the egrets, cormorants, herons and people who suffer when it finally reaches shore. Maybe then Sarah and company will appreciate that the slimy ways of power hungry politicians ultimately do have consequences.