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 In
many of the science fiction novels of our youth, the world was run by
mega-corporations which, in some cases wore vestigial
trappings of democratic government, and in others had done away with
secular government altogether. A hundred years ago, futurists from
Orwell to Marx saw capitalism overpowering the authentically revolutionary
potential
of
democracy and
seizing the reins of power, either directly or indirectly.
One can make
a strong case that that day has arrived, and we are living in the first
Petrocracy in history. It is government by industry, and the first
industry to achieve it was the dominant economic force behind industrial
development since coal became indispensable at the dawn of the industrial
revolution: the petrochemical/oil industry.
The industrial revolution started in England, and the
Europeans were the first to catch on to the key role the world’s oil
reserves were going to play in the next 500 years or so of the history
of the planet. In fact, by the turn of the century, it was obvious
to the brain trusts in London, Brussels and Paris that whoever controlled
the world’s oil would control the world.
Which is why, after defeating the Huns and the Ottoman
Turks in World War One, a bunch of power-mad dead white guys sat down
in a smoke-filled room in England and drew some lines on a map, creating
the modern oil states of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates,
as well as the modern states of Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Which they promptly awarded
to local warlords and fanatical families which had helped them in the war
against the Germans and Turks. We are now reaping the bitter harvest
of this idiocy.
Meanwhile, the United States didn’t need that Middle
Eastern oil. They had plenty of their own; in 1900 the US was the
world’s biggest producer of oil, by far, as well as the biggest consumer,
by a smaller margin. That the Bush administration represents the ultimate
ascension of this power nexus to the reins of the world’s economy and
power structure can hardly be questioned.
It is not an accident that the biggest companies, the
dominant economic behemoths in the world today, are almost all involved
in the production or consumption of petroleum. Here is the list of the
dozen biggest corporations in the entire world in 2005: 1 Wal-Mart
Stores
2 British Petroleum 3 Exxon Mobil 4 Royal Dutch/Shell Group 5
General Motors
6 DaimlerChrysler 7 Toyota Motor 8 Ford Motor 9 General Electric
10 Total
11 Chevron 12 ConocoPhillips. 10 out of 12 either oil or
car companies. (from Fortune)
It is no accident that the price of gasoline has
doubled under the current administration. American oil companies
have long looked with envy at their counterparts across the pond, and
lamented that European consumers had been conditioned to accept $3 a
gallon gasoline,
and like
it. All it took to pull off the trick in the US was some astute political
maneuvering, manipulation of the media and a couple of small wars.
It is no accident that Bush junta decided to invade
and occupy the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet
just at the time the world is starting to run out of oil. How dumb
do they think we are? (We know, pretty damn dumb)
It is no accident that the Bush and Cheney families
are intimate amigos with the Saudi Royal family, despite the fact that
their country bred almost all of the 9/11 terrorists and the majority
of their subjects hate our guts and would like to see us dead.
It is no accident that the bulk of the billions being
thrown at Iraqi “reconstruction” is going to the Haliburton Corporation in a desperate attempt to get the oil production back
on line .
It is no accident that this administration supports
drilling in the arctic reserve and opposes spending money to develop
alternatives to petroleum dependence.
These things are not accidents, nor are they coincidences. The
Dowbrigade does not believe in coincidences. These things are facts and
the pattern that they form is impossible to deny. We are living
in a Petrocracy.
In a way, this is an inevitable, organic development
in the life of our species and its predominance on this planet. Economics
and trade has produced the first world-wide network for movement of people,
products and data; it stands to reason that the biggest players in the
petroleum based economy we have should run the game. Somebody was going
to do it, why not them?
However, it troubles us deeply that the mechanism of
this group’s ascendancy has been to induce an addiction in our beloved
country so grave that the addict in question may not survive. And
make no mistake – the United States is just as addicted to oil as the
beatest
junkie on the lower east side hustling for dime bags.
We absolutely need our oil. Even a temporary reduction
of 5 or 10% would upset our lives like nothing we have experienced since
WWII – maybe more, as we are much more addicted now than we were then.
Going cold turkey would be unthinkable. Life as we know it in the
United States would cease to exist. Millions would starve.
We hate these men for getting us into this situation
– both those dead Europeans and their modern scions currently running
the world economy – and the United States. We despair that our dear,
decent Democracy has been hopelessly corrupted by its
addiction,
that
it is
now willing
to
lie,
bully and
steal to get
its fix, and that worst of all, like all true junkies, it is lying to
and
deceiving itself about the true state of affairs.
Anyone who has known real junkies knows how they end
up. They hit bottom and either die or go into some long and painful
process of putting their lives back together again. Few ever make
it all the way back.
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