More than two months ago, an "explosion" on a BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico began the largest oil spill to ever foul American waters. The name of the rig was "Deepwater Horizon."
Eleven men were killed immediately and their bodies were never found. Since then, hundreds of thousands of fish and birds have died and some of their bodies have been seen and smelled on the oily beaches and waters of the gulf. The precise mechanics of what led to the explosion, how much oil is flowing into the already extraordinarily polluted Gulf of Mexico, what are the long- and short-term environmental, economic, social and political consequences of the catastrophe and where the responsibility for it should justifiably land are unclear, at least to the general public that relies on the media to keep them informed.
Accidents happen.
At this writing, despite an unrelenting frenzy of hand wringing, finger pointing, fist pounding and raised middle-finger rhetoric from world leaders, citizens on the beach, admirals, BP and Halliburton executives and flaks, U.S. government officials and flaks, British government officials and flaks, Dick Cheney disciples, scientists, environmentalists, fishermen, commentators and columnists, available information about the lead-up to and the fallout from this disaster is as murky, polluted, toxic, unpalatable and unbelievable as the deadly oiled waters, beaches, marshes and, alas, all life of the Gulf of Mexico. In my view, BP and the Deepwater Horizon have become a perfect metaphor for our culture and time.
Accidents happen.
So, more predictably, do inevitabilities.
That is, it will happen again—the inevitable "accident."
It has happened before, and, remember, this one isn't even among the top 20 of the world's oil spill disasters.
The consequences of BP's little accident in the gulf of Mexico are appalling to anyone who hasn't seen the beaches and water of the gulf but who thinks about it. It is beyond horrifying to those who are there. I have a friend who assiduously avoids news coverage of the event. "I can't go there," he says, viewing the accident and the larger perspective of its inevitability as "the beginning of the end." I don't agree that BP's Deepwater Horizon was the beginning, but it certainly was a milestone along the path to what anyone might possibly construe as the end.
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Though it was inevitable, the largest oil spill in American history continues to be instructive and illustrative by its very murkiness. For the past two months, both BP and the U.S. government have gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the media, upon which the general public relies for information about the world in which we live, from taking photographs and gathering accurate information about BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster. David Carr in The New York Times said it best: "Every disaster has chaotic elements and a need to maintain order and safety, but the economic interests of a large commercial enterprise are clearly impeding the free flow of information.
"Journalists in the gulf are now dealing with a hybrid informational apparatus that does not reflect government's legally mandated bias toward openness and transparency."
A hybrid informational apparatus: government and commerce. This crossbred apparatus encompasses far more than information, but the function of such an apparatus has never been better or more succinctly expressed than by the well-known egomaniacal World War II German minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Truth is the greatest enemy of the state, and, in the case of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the hybrid apparatus it has created with BP commerce. The truth of our culture and time is that the bottom line of commerce and the high standard of living some of us enjoy and most of the rest of the world would like to enjoy are not sustainable on a planet with nearly 7 billion humans (and growing exponentially at a current rate of nearly 35 million a year). The truth of our culture and time is that humanity is destroying the very environment of planet Earth on which it and all other forms of life depend.
BP told the 11 men who died on Deepwater Horizon that what happened to them could not happen. The hybrid informational apparatus assures the state's constituency that such things should not happen and that when they do they are anomalies. Those are lies big enough.
Deepwater Horizon was inevitable. And it will happen again. The hybrid apparatus that lies by hiding the truth knows this. And so do you. And so do I. We are all complicit.
If you want to know who is responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, look in the mirror. If you don't approve of what you see, change it.