The comments, the strongest to date, came after another coal-fired power plant was forced to close after it was rendered obsolete due to the continued, staggering performance of renewable energy, a lasting legacy of He Who Shall Not Be Named's Administration (2). Vice President Michelle Bachmann also released a statement, "We are faced today with a choice: tyranny or liberty. If we choose liberty, then we shall be free to take what we want from our scorched earth -- all the clean coal from our mountains, all the methane from our arctic permafrost (thanks global warming!), and all the oil from the Black Coast [formerly named the Gulf Coast]. If we choose tyranny (3), then we let the sun and wind tell us when it's time to get some energy. And that doesn't sound like the kind of country I want to live in. No, it sounds like Russia. Which was a communist country. Or, wait, a fascist country. No, wait, a republic. Shoot, I can't remember. But it was something bad, something unnamed yet unmistakable -- it was different. And therefore we shall fear it (4)."
Statements like these are only possible in this new America. After the 2020 election, walls were constructed around the Blue States and Tea Party guards were stationed at every mile, armed only with fervor, disillusionment, and a shit-ton of guns and ammo. Said one Tea Party soldier while choking back "freedom tears", "I ain't never been this proud to be a Palimerican living in PaliNation(5). I got into this whole "destroy the government to take back government only to destroy it from the inside, like a festering infection" thing a decade ago as a volunteer for Senator (now Viceroy) of Middle America, Rand Paul. He gave me the confidence to speak without thinking. He told me that my misinformed ideals and politically un-workable positions were really the best solution for this new country. I owe my life to Rand Paul and the Tea Party."
One thing is for sure, the year 2010 will echo throughout history. It was the year Americans finally realized the consequences of the energy choices they made. It was the year they realized that more drilling for a finite resource located in environmentally sensitive regions was a recipe for abuse and disaster. It was the year they realized that large corporations (banks, financial services, automobile manufacturers, oil companies, coal mining companies) must be regulated by a forceful governmental presence to prevent disaster. Because when that disaster came, we saw that it did not affect the companies. It affected ordinary Americans. And they reacted. They reacted with anger and distrust of the government, not unjustified. But instead of advocating for the stronger presence of government oversight, they argued instead for no government (6).
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(1) "Administration" is a term with only mere symbolic meaning now, as we all know, since President Palin disbanded much of the federal government after her election win last November. She defeated Democratic nominee Rahm Emanuel and Republican John McCain, who ran on a campaign of lies and air quotes. After taking a modified oath of office (leaving only "So help me God," which was never actually in the Constitution or a law but a vestige of a tradition recited by all presidents since FDR (including He Who Shall Not Be Named [Pres. Obama] who, despite the Official Recorded History of the United States of (Palin) America which says he did not, did in fact say this line when he was sworn into office both times, in 2008 and 2012.)), the Palin-Bachmann Administration "cleaned house" by getting rid of all executive agency personnel in the largest mass firing in history. Leaving an inexperienced skeleton crew to run the now empty agencies (Rand "Accidents Happen" Paul at EPA, Rush Limbaugh as Sec'y of Health (who by virtue of his prescriptions alone accounts for 45% of the "so-called" socialized medicine intake in the country), and as an olive branch from Palin's Tea Party to McCain and his Republican(?) party, a spot as the top (well, only) civilian border security officer).
(2) After public outcry reached critical mass in the summer of 2010, President Obama and other Democratic lawmakers ushered through comprehensive energy and climate legislation. Despite harsh criticism from the traditional energy industry and conservative lawmakers, the bill ushered in a new age of energy, once again propelling the United States to an unquestioned world leadership position. Although Obama expended most political capital getting the legislation through Congress in that summer of 2010, he did go on to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bring peace to Darfur, Palestine, and the former Soviet Bloc. This was progress was lost, as we all remember, in the first few months of the Palin-Bachmann Administration when the Iranian War began and the United States severed all ties with the "Pinkie" world community. And yet, because of the strong foundation laid out in the 2010 climate legislation, renewable energy continued to thrive, buoyed by private investment and commercial success, most notably by Al Gore, who now owns much of the world's energy companies, much to the chagrin of the Administration.
(3) A less-successful initiative of the Palin Administration has been the attempt to mandate a nation-wide "Find and Replace" of "tyranny" with "Obama-y"; the initiative sputtered when First Dude Todd Palin was caught replacing "tyranny" with "boobies" on the nation's only remaining computer [yeah, we only have 1 "official" computer now in the U.S., since the internet was deemed to be the work of the devil and getting information through words has been censored and remains now only on Fox News tickers and underground blogs like this one].
(4) "And Therefore We Shall Fear It" became the Palin campaign's best-known slogan. Remember 2008 and "Yes We Can!" and "Change We Can Believe In"? Well this was like that, only 20 times bigger. Literally. Our national car, the Hummer's H2, was outfitted with bold 10 ft banners adorned with the phrase that waved from wind blocks installed on the roof to make them even less efficient. Because, in the words of another popular Palin slogan, "Hey, it's only energy!" mileage requirements became blase in the minds of many during the 2020 campaign.
(5) With apparent obliviousness as to the actual pronunciation of "Palimerican" and the predominance of white citizens of the newly created PaliNation, this unfortunate combination of words gained traction in the Irony-Free zone of the new United States.
(6) To be honest, I couldn't figure out where to take this post. On the one hand, it's a reaction to the useless, self-serving political chatter out there (ahem, Rand "Accidents Happen" Paul). On the other, it's a sense of exasperation that we're missing our chance. Our Cuyahoga River fire. Our Montgomery bus boycott. That galvanizing moment in every movement that begets change. Because this is certainly that moment. Exxon-Valdez is considered to be a significant oil spill and it was, no doubt. But there was an idea of the extent of the oil that needed to be cleaned up. It was a finite amount from one ship. The litigation is still ongoing and the Alaskan coastline is still feeling the effects, but it was somehow manageable. The Gulf spill is different. This is like an Exxon Valdez that doesn't stop. If life were a movie, Bruce Willis would be making an appearance right about now, with some insane plan to save the known world that ends up working in the end. Not top kill or top hat but Die Hard. The pictures of oil gushing out of the riser and then circulating suspended in the upper water column are like the sea birds covered in oil 20 years ago. Or the Cuyahoga River on fire (below). But I'm not seeing how the political landscape has shifted. Conventional wisdom might lead to the conclusion that a moment like this would lead for a push for renewable energy, where an energy "leak" would only mean it's a windy day. But instead, the conservatives who demanded that offshore drilling be included in energy/climate legislation will almost surely drop off as public and political sentiment shifts away from that mentality but their funding continues from the big energy lobby and Tea Partiers opposed to any increase in government. And that's the real tragedy of this oil spill. A thing that should be apparent -- that our current energy use is unsustainable and necessarily dangerous to both humans and wildlife -- is lost in translation from our television or computer screens to our brain. I can only hope that the simmering anger over this disaster is directed at useful goals, namely the tightening of government oversight in the fossil fuel industry, comprehensive climate/energy legislation to invest in new forms of energy, and a rediscovering of how precious our country's natural resources are to our livelihood and psyche. If not, we might as well live in Palimerica.
2 comments:
I hope that you rise to a position of great and far-reaching influence someday Joe.
Only you (and maybe Tina Fey) can capture the ridiculousness of Sarah Palin with such accuracy. A lovely cautionary tale with just the right amount of humor thrown in...and some hope for avoiding the Palocalypse.
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