Saturday, June 5, 2010

Spill, Baby, Spill

However agreeable it is to watch the CEO of British Petroleum squirming to regain respectability in the face of a shabby, irresponsible, preposterous, fraudulent, hopelessly botched and totally self-induced technological mega-fuckup, the suspicion remains that corporate America sees nothing more than gallons of money escaping uncontrollably into the Gulf of Mexico.

While the rest of us watch dying pelicans strangulating in the reeds and listen to sanctimonious tv reporters bleating their endless concern, no doubt Big Oil is preparing whatever Plan B's will need to be put into place to stem the flow of fugitive wealth and find some new holes to insert its relentless boring devices into, like disturbed hornets working secretly in the shadows.

Thus although Nature temporarily has the upper hand, it is clearly just a question of time till all is well and we are once again firmly on the path to "getting the economy going again," since, as Chevron soothingly assures us, "Every Day, We Invest In The Energy To Move Us All Ahead."

Those of us who prefer not to be moved ahead by Chevron might recall how capitalism, for all its vulgar materialism, in actuality despises matter, and therefore Nature as well, rejecting both in favor of satisfying its insane quest for wealth, a purely mental entity.

Terry Eagleton puts it perfectly: "It is a culture shot through with fantasy, idealist to its core, powered by a disembodied will which dreams of pounding Nature to pieces. It makes an idol out of matter, but cannot stomach the resistance it offers to its grandiose schemes" (After Theory,  p 45).

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