Correcting the B.S. Machine

The tremendous amount of misinformation about “energy” being infused into the media outlets:  I often wonder how much  the transmitters really believe, how much is just fed to them, how much they do just to deliberately deceive and deflect, and how much they do solely because it’s their job. 

For instance, the current drivel, pushed by Levin and his ilk, about “the nation’s energy being controlled by the government,” and “nothing has been done by this administration, even when they controlled all the government.”

And to heap bizarre absurdity and outrageous falsehood upon bizarre absurdity and outrageous falsehood, the duplicitous then accuse others of being duplicitous.

Let’s just look at one small piece of ONE of the many assertions:  “Control of the government.”  Leaving aside what government really “controls” in a capitalistic economy dominated by wealthy and powerful corporations, “control’ of the (national) government means what exactly?  This current administration, of which I am no great fan, has found opposition in the judicial branch, especially at the top, so one of the main three branches has never been in its corner.  When its party “controlled” the Congress, the other of three branches, it didn’t really, because the vagaries of Senate rules allow a minority of 41 senators to block anything significant they want.  It is MUCH easier to obstruct and to subvert than it is to actually accomplish something.

The purveyors of disinformation are banking on people not knowing how their government “works.” 

And so the republic suffers in its ignorance.  And we get mindless clamoring for oil pipelines that will create few jobs, bring little oil to use here, do little to change prices, and, most importantly in our disconnected-from-results illusory culture, have no consideration of the perpetuation of how we poison ourselves and our biosphere.  And avoids TRANSFORMATION to a better world, to solve the problems of the present and future.  No, we would rather reach for the “easy” solutions offered by the visionless, the corrupt, the greedy.  Pay no attention to the climate effects of more oil. Particularly pay no attention to the incredibly polluting extraction methods of this “new” tar sand/shale oil supply.  Pay no attention to how heavily corrosive it is.  Pay no attention to how, when it spills--and it WILL spill, in both pipelines and tankers--it can’t really be cleaned up in any effective manner.  There is a 40 mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan which is still off limits to use because of a “small” spill of this “new” oil TWO YEARS AGO.

And don’t find out what pair of brothers have their hands in many aspects of the proposed pipeline.

And don’t figure out that the price of gas is in large part a reflection of hedge funds, speculators, futures contracts, and international demand.  Or that there are taxpayer subsidies for refining, not just drilling.  Or that refined oil is our biggest manufactured export.

And don’t realize that climate change, unchecked, will cost, from weather devastation alone, greater than WW1, WW2, the Great Depression, and the Cold War, COMBINED.

Americans have become exceedingly proficient in straining at gnats and swallowing elephants.  And, of course, accepting most of the illusions that come their way.