Notes from the Underground Railroad of My Mind

It’s time.

One week from right now, our wedding will be winding down, and our life together will be really getting started.  And I do have plenty of good thoughts about that - about how sad I am in dreams when I imagine I somehow ended up with some other girl besides Goldberry, in adapting to new circumstances and even the joy of unexpected guests that should be able to make it.  But, my fingers can’t tell you all about those things, and all the other wonders of the final days before the wedding, or the ever deepening and soothing and sometimes surreal love that I have for this one woman.  And, I have something else more typable and speakable and troubling my inner thoughts.

Well, it’s an “us” problem.  No, not me and my sweetheart, but the us that spans from sea to shining sea (including the sea shining with crude oil).  The problem is apparent every time I turn my car’s ignition, or pump $2.82 / gallon gas, or disheartedly shake my head driving past all of highway 169 completely locked with barely-moving cars all running off this refined addiction, the one that is covering the Gulf of Mexico, and the one that none of us can avoid the blame without living in the woods or in a cave.  What happened when that oil rig exploded and tumbled into the sea is just an accelerated look at our future - just a face-to-feces reminder of what we are doing without any forceful manner of repentance beyond the thoughtful Prius or the beleaguered bus-rider.  Despite the folks that think global warming is a hoax, we have some clear evidence that we can really ruin things.  Not only can we, but we are,  and nothing is keeping us from that right now except the slow slip of time.

And, thinking like I do, I would still like to do a quick comparison:  Pre and post industrial revolution.  The world is a better place for people now - no doubt.  People live longer, with diets (for the most part) that at least give them all necessary nutrients.  Education is becoming thoroughly commonplace (though actual rates of intelligence and genius have either remained the same or declined, in my unintelligent opinion) - even political and social freedom is proliferating across the globe in a way unimaginable three hundred years ago.  So the world is being made more human-friendly.  Not as many people die from wolves or malaria.  Yeah for humans.

But, in making the world more human-friendly, the world has become less world-friendly.  I know, redundancy is ridiculous and silly.  My point is made, though.  The earth is being changed by humans.  Is this the end of time or life or all good things?  I would say no.  We will reach a tipping point, though, when the change we initiate will no longer be good for us, and retreating from that will be difficult.

This is somewhat distant from what I really wanted to write about, which might appear more clear and concise than the preceding statements.

A new Republican candidate has made some headlines for several reasons, but most notably he criticized the sitting president for being hard on the corporation that owned the oil rig that is destroying life in the Gulf of Mexico.  This person said that the president was being too hard on the company, which he points out has said it (the oil company) will pay for the clean-up and claims presented to it.  The unnamed candidate talked about this being part of a “blame-game” and that “accidents happen”.  And this candidate is trying to make a statement about business  - namely, that a business needs to have less government intervention and it would work just fine.

Let’s actually start with the first assertion - that the oil company should not be at the forefront of public and public-servant anger, since it has vowed to pay for the cleanup (followed by the assertion that the government should neither criticize nor blame a business when a disaster like this happens).  This “pay-for it” posit shows a misunderstanding of the problem.  It doesn’t matter how much money the oil company pays to clean up the oil spill.  It doesn’t matter if they pay for the livelihoods of fisherman and hotel works and waitresses and all the way down the line of all the people who won’t have the same income they had before this happened.  Money isn’t the solution.  All the money in the world can’t stop that spewing oil well at the bottom of the ocean.  And it can’t undo the great evil already done.  So, my anger flares a bit when the response of a nationally-recognized candidate intimates that there is no blame when someone pays for the wrong.  I’m sure that’s how the people who lost loved ones in that rig explosion feel.  Nothing a couple-million dollars won’t fix.

And then, in that same thought, where does this “accidents happen” statement come from?  Wait.  Accidents happen.  Yes.  They do.  And people die because of them.  That’s not a good reason to go easy on an oil company that reaps gold out of the corpses left behind in its pursuit of profit.  Accidents happen.  But this accident was the result of a company not being regulated into safe practices, which is the part where the federal government is to blame.  And notice, it’s not because the government got its hands off the poor brow-beaten businessman.  No, before the government stepped in, children worked in coal mines - that was the unimpeded business that some conservative groups keep wishing its return.

The argument that the business is not a private company any longer when it is forced to abide by government regulations is bogus, obviously.  Like me saying I’m not a private individual because I can’t murder someone in the privacy of my own home.  The government is not what’s wrong with the world (though it does plenty of things wrong).  If people could make good decisions and play fair on their own, we could run the government right out of our cities and towns like an old mangy dog.  Instead, we need a lumbering, blind, noisy, hungry giant to play referee because we don’t get along otherwise.  The giant is noisy because he just is another example of how we don’t get along, but at least nobody gets executed for being on the wrong side of power in our system.  I’m a little off the original track, but my point is, I’m less scared of the giant we’ve got than the lilliputian minds wanting control.

Time for bed.  If only that solved our problems like money must.