The Oil Spill Symbolism

The Oil Spill Symbolism

What has been described as the greatest man-made disaster to ever hit this country showed no signs of abating after more than two months.  The ruptured oil well located one mile below sea level had been leaking as many as 50,000 barrels (or 2.1 million gallons) a day of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico threatening sea life and all those depending on it for a livelihood.  While all of its causes are still being investigated, the primary cause is clear - greed mixed with a good measure of arrogance.  The greed made oil company decision-makers rush the job to minimize costs and maximize future profits.  The arrogance made them believe that they did not need to take the time to do it right.  They were blind to any possible environmental damage their corner cutting could cause.

Where have we heard this before?

The banking, real estate and automobile industries in this country have had their own systemic ruptures recently.  In each case the decision makers were greedy as well as arrogant. The combination made them all blind to the problems they were creating.  As with the oil spill, the problems in each industry continued unabated for a long time.  First there was denial, then there was minimizing the problems, and then there was a problem too big to disguise or disregard.  In each case there was the externality, the spill over effect, of these business catastrophes and there are always the innocent victims. 

The banking disaster, caused in part by the real estate disaster, led to the loss of confidence in the financial system which led to reduced spending which led to reduced production which led to fewer jobs which exacerbated the loss of confidence and the vicious cycle continued like a snowball rolling down a steep incline. The bankers got greedy, they wanted ever bigger bonuses and took ever greater risks.  They were arrogant because they thought that they could get away with anything, that if they failed the government would have to bail them out.

The politicians who received generous donations from Wall Street were greedy.  They wanted more money to stay in power.  They were greedy for power.  So they acquiesced to Wall Street’s demands and eliminated restrictions set in place to prevent another Great Depression. They were arrogant enough to believe that by earning money to betray their constituents they were still worthy of their votes.

The realtors also got greedy.  They must have known that some of their clients could not possibly afford the homes they were bidding on with nothing to put down for the purchase. Their arrogance was in their thinking that their bubble could never burst.

The home buyers who bought the homes that even they knew they could not afford were greedy for the American dream with all its trimmings but had not put the down payment in effort. Their arrogance was in believing that somehow they could get and keep something for nothing or at least for well under actual cost.

The corporate leaders of our car companies were also greedy.  They wanted easy profits and so abandoned the small economical family car that the country needed and instead produced large truck-like SUVs which were inexpensive to build but could be sold for high prices because of their size.  Never mind that they were gas guzzlers and took up too much space.  The leaders of “the big three” were arrogant enough to think that the American consumer would buy whatever Detroit gave them.  Their blindness led to the bankruptcy of two of our three major automakers and a multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout.

I believe that the Reagan tax cuts for the rich reducing the top tax bracket from 90% to 39%, unleashing a gush of suddenly rich and the suddenly terribly rich was a similar disaster.  The rich built even bigger houses, bought even bigger cars, and developed bigger egos.  They were ever greedy for more money and fewer taxes.  They became increasingly arrogant and made risky investments that ended up almost destroying our economy.

The result of all this free-flowing greed mixed with arrogance polluted the nation’s economic waters from which our people are nourished.

The same thing happened in competitive sports - amateur and professional. Some athletes and their trainers got greedy for more success, better stats, higher salaries and bigger bonuses.  They were arrogant enough to think that they could get away with using steroids to improve their strength and perseverance.  As the violations seemed to piggy back on previous ones and more athletes took performance-enhancing drugs in more sports, more of the results became hard to believe.  Whether it was Olympic sprinters, weightlifters or swimmers, long distance cyclists, or professional baseball pitchers and hitters, the sports officials couldn’t stop the abuses. And meanwhile whatever integrity these sports had enjoyed became polluted by the cheating bred from greed and arrogance.

Today our favorite religions seem to be unable to control their own destructive eruptions.  The Catholic Church has been unable to stop the eruptions of charges of priestly abuses that are being reported all over the globe.  When the truth is finally told, the sexual abuse of children by the clergy will probably be found to have occurred on every continent.  After a while we will also learn that this rupture of hypocritical immorality dates back hundreds of years with many of these priests themselves having been innocent victims in their youth. It’s hard to imagine what kind of greed and arrogance motivated these outbursts except perhaps a greed or desperate hunger for physical affection mixed with the arrogance that they could get away with it because they were above Man’s laws.  And how could their “superiors” think that they could just cover it up?  Who knows how many of these “tolerant” bishops had themselves been molested as children?

Then there is the religion that is so much in the news for its violence in the Middle East.  The religious leaders either cannot or will not stop the violence that in the last 10 years has prematurely ended the lives of more than a million of its own people. Thousands of its adherents are blowing themselves up and killing innocent people in the mistaken impression that they will not only escape their lives of suffering but also that they will be somehow rewarded for their greatest of sins.  Perhaps the leaders of this religion are also greedy for more power and are arrogant enough to believe that inciting their flock to violence will somehow not get them eternal damnation.

And then there are columnists like this one who is greedy enough to want his country, his world free of all that pollutes it and he is arrogant enough to think that somehow by writing about these problems, he can make them disappear.

Let us hope that the damages of this tragic oil spill in the Gulf are easier to repair than the other effects greed and arrogance are having on our nation and its people.