Morford: Behold our dark, magnificent horror

[Ed Barrow]

There is, you have to admit, a sort of savage grace, a tragic and terrible beauty, to the BP oil spill. Like any good apocalyptic vision of self-wrought hell, the greatest environmental disaster in U.S. history has its inherent poetry. You see that creeping ooze of black, that ungodly wall of unstoppable darkness as it slowly, inexorably invades the relatively healthy, pristine waters adjacent, and you can't help but appreciate the brutal majesty, the fantastic, reeking horror of this new manifestation of black death we have brought upon ourselves, as it spreads like a fast cancer into the liquid womb of Mother Nature herself.

Really, it's not just the incredible photographs of the spill that are, in turns, heartbreaking, stunning, otherworldly and downright Satanic in their abject revulsion. It's not just the statistics that tell us how many millions of gallons might ultimately be spilled, or the stunned scientists who can only hypothesize how this unprecedented catastrophe might affect the fragile food chain and distress the ocean's ecosystems at the very root level. It's not even the endless, heartrending tales of livelihoods lost, industries destroyed, coastlines ravaged or wildlife killed. The fact is, any one of these aspects alone is enough to poison your soul for as long as you wish to wallow in that murky state of fatalism and doom. It is nothing but bleak.

I think the most disturbingly satisfying thrill of this entire event -- and it is, in a way, a perverse thrill -- comes from understanding, at a very core level, our shared responsibility, our co-creation of the foul demon currently unleashed.

What a thing we have created. What an extraordinary horror our rapacious need for cheap, endless energy hath unleashed; it's a monster of a scale and proportion we can barely even fathom. Because if you're honest, no matter where you stand, no matter your politics, religion, income or mode of transport, you see this beast of creeping death and you understand: That is us. The spill may be many things, but more than anything else it is a giant, horrifying mirror.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/06/04/notes060410.DTL

[cliffordu]

1. Great piece. All we need now is to nuke it to prove to the Universe that we are

completely psychotic.

Maybe we already have.......

[Stanchetalarooni]

2. We have met the Moloch....

.....and he is us!

[damntexdem]

3. Oh more "shared responsibility" b.s.!

It was a group of wrongheaded, criminal public policies and of stupid, criminal corporate decisions that produced this. There are always media flacks willing to share the blame with all of us rather than focus on the perpetrators.

[DJ13]

4. +1

[sarge43]

5. Thank you

When everyone is to blame, then no one is to blame.

[Stuckinthebush]

9. Damn good point

No, I didn't do this. You didn't do this. BP did this.

Now, some will say since you and I drive a car and don't always unplug our phone chargers that we are also responsible.

I say, "hogwash".

You and I support alternative energies. We support the development and exploration of new technologies. We also understand that the great evil of oil is necessary until we can get those things up and running.

I know that I have often been sickened by gulf drilling. I have seen those damn rigs from the coastlines. It was a matter of time before the lax regulations and push for profit gave us a spill for the ages.

You and I have cut back on driving and using energy. For years we have done our best to conserve. I don't claim this mess. I put it squarely on the shoulders of BP.

[badgerpup]

6. Anybody keep an eye on the Rapture Ready site?

Mildy curious as to how this resonates on their "Beam me up, Jesus" radar...

[Hawkowl]

7. The mirror of humanity

That is the oil cataclysm.

[Tutankhamun]

8. This reminds me of all of the "We were ALL wrong" proclamations

once the MSM had to admit Iraq was a huge mistake. "We were all so very sure, and we were all so very very wrong" they told us.

No. We. Fucking. Weren't.

You were wrong. We were right. It's just that you in the MSM pretended we, the left, didn't exist. The largest day of protests in the history of the world and "We were all wrong (because we wanted this war)."

This blame-everyone-who-uses-fossil-fuels meme will catch on, to an extent, if the MSM runs with it.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

10. very well stated.

I just wish seeing the picture clearly could CHANGE the picture.



dammit, now I'm crying again.
I wish crying could change it.....