BP has America by the balls.
After years of video games and twenty-four-hour-a-day infotainment memes shortening attention spans to the same length of the switchback cuts of an MTV video (remember those? Barely?), Americans' eyes never light for too long upon anything.
And that's good for BP. The potential of people's senses to detect when they are being supremely duped has been squelched by relentless corporate sleight of hand and the attendant laughable lip service which follows a major fuck-up, portraying the callous companies as caring for their crude-coated constituents.
And when our government makes impotent feints at reprimanding rogue companies operating free from regulation (or any hint of moral obligation), having as much authority as a straw man standing amid a sneering murder of crows, then this is the proof that big oil (along with big banking and big pharma) has it -- and us -- in a gelding grip.
Without a functioning, potent government, on whom do Americans rely? The corporations who assure us that they have our interest at heart? How is that possible when their actions belie the assertion that they actually possess hearts?
Do we rely on ourselves and our own mettle? How is that possible when the tools for self-sustenace have been moved steadily out of reach, having been outsourced and the sham which unregulated roller-coaster capitalism has made of our democracy is as clear as the waters lapping at the Gulf coast are oily.
And if Obama somehow does end up being a one term phenomenon -- See? We did it! We can elect a black guy! Now back to business -- then only dispassionate history will record the colossally wasted opportunity that unchecked corporate greed has wrought.
It used to be it was the right-wing douche-mops exemplified by the Cheney-Bush-Fox News cabal who wreaked havoc over our democracy and showed no restraint when it came to profiteering.
But now, even with "the good guys" in power, the ones having to clean up the rubble of previous misdeeds, it is more obvious than ever that the power is not wielded by the federal government, but by corporate behemoths, now fully embedded in the nation's nervous system, who control our energy, our food, our security, our health and our media, and who gorge themselves upon American credulity and shit nothing but debt, division and despair.
So, as the oil continues to drip, get ready for the big snip.