President Dooms Economy

"The Obama administration has approved the first deep-water drilling permit since BP's Deepwater Horizon oil-spill disaster last year. The permit allows Noble Energy Inc. to resume drilling a well in 6,500 feet of water about 70 miles off the coast of Louisiana." From a Daily Beast Email

Let me tell you why.

The recession was not merely Wall Street greed. It was a national greed for a way of life that is empty, drug-addicted and manifestly unhealthy to mind, body and spirit.

National Greed

For a while there, we all thought we could get rich quick and business cooperated by putting our passion for indebtedness on steroids with worthless paper.

Life That is Empty

If TV is any indication our national life has made us incipiently homicidal and that is a swing in the direction of real evil. I would be inclined to date our troubles back to Vietnam and LBJ's promise of no wider war when he trounced Goldwater.

When Jimmy Carter got hammered for flagging our malaise it was obvious that hypocrisy was the only viable political posture. Anything decent and truly honorable went out the window and was replaced with hype that seems to have been devised in the WWF studio..

Drug-addicted

I heard a portion of Charlie Sheen's recent interview last night. I am with the fellow up to the point that he simply turns stupid. That is when he suggests that he is infallible. No one is. All of us in some circumstances are capable of what we regard as the worst of actions.

It is not Sheen running his life that is bad, it is the notion that he belongs to a sort of master race. Faux Nietzsche.

Sorry Charlie, I did write a nice piece about you. But you need to shape up.

Our society is so addicted to one thing and another that we have little call to judge and every incentive to go cold turkey. It is a maturity thing.

What does this have to do with oil and cars?

They are todays cigarettes. More lethal than cigarettes when everything is considered. A form of global death wish. A literal dead end.

If President Obama wants to change history, he can be the first post-oil president. Or he can leave that task to a future president when we are further in the hole we now occupy.

Our Economy

Our economy will prosper if and only if it becomes the first post-oil post automobile economy.

If it is the task of the remnants of religion to speak truth, they should speak this truth.

If it is the task of academia to help the culture become salient, it should join in.

We cannot evidently expect the political establishment even to take the first step. The hypocrisy curse seems still to be in force. We cannot face our own malaise.

President Signs A Death Warrant for Our Economy. IMO, Of Course.