On the Gulf Oil Gusher

This is one of those classic fear-driven Doomsday Events, proto-Apocalyptic End-Times Revelations and so on that frequently just turn me off.

The media -- to the extent I've been aware of the coverage (recall, there is no cable "news" in my home, but I do look at the papers, read the Intertube reports and occasionally watch NewsHour and listen to NPR) -- seems to largely serve as a mask for what is really going on, has been that from the beginning when their Narrative was all about the Grand Romantic Heroes (of BP) that were Manfully Throwing Themselves into the breech.

Inaccurate reporting abounded, still does, and BP (and the Oil Industry) is always given the lead voice in any on-air discussion of the disaster. BP has been spinning like mad, simply not giving complete information, correct information, or useful information about the Gusher in the Gulf and what anyone is doing to staunch the flow of oil.

Because the fact of the matter is that nobody is doing a doG-damned thing to stop the oil flow, and they never have.

From all appearances, neither BP nor the Government have any interest in stopping it. The only efforts to date have focused on capturing the oil for later sale and distribution.

Over the next few months, another well may (or may not) be drilled to enable the shut-down of this one, but that's far in the future if it happens at all. They want the oil, pure and simple, and they are working tirelessly to figure out a way to capture it -- for sale and distribution.

So far as we can tell from the paucity of information available, the Predicted Environmental Catastrophe due to the Gusher in the Gulf hasn't materialized, and possibly it won't. At least not the way the breast beaters and garment renders have speculated it would. On the other hand, it may ultimately be worse than anyone imagined. We don't know. This appears to be due to the nature of the oil itself: it is not the heavy crude that fouled the Santa Barbara beaches in 1969 and that leaked out of the Exxon Valdez in 1989. Instead, it is much lighter and apparently contains lots of volatiles that evaporate quickly at the surface. So far as we know, little of the oil has reached shore, and what has was relatively easily and efficiently cleaned up. There has been little -- known -- impact on larger animals and birds, though fisheries are shut down.

It seems, from reports, that the Catastrophe is Not So Bad, and that the Powers That Be are doing the necessary work to contain, if not actually control, the Gusher and any damage it might cause.

But we don't know.

Which, quite naturally, I think, leads to some comparisons with Chernobyl. The Soviets seemed to be relatively forthcoming -- certainly compared to past performances in Calamities -- about the Chernobyl disaster and what was being done about it. But in fact we now know that the Chernobyl reactor disaster was far worse than reports or even speculation would have it at the time, and that as "forthcoming" as the Soviets appeared to be, they weren't, certainly not with regard to the consequences for the Ukraine or Russia or Europe. Radiation exposure levels were far higher than was acknowledged, many more lives were lost in trying to deal with the Catastrophe or as a consequence of environmental degradation, many, many more people were displaced than was indicated at first and so on. We saw at the time that the Authorities didn't know what to do, and what they came up with, The Sarcophagus to enclose the ruined reactor, was almost impossible to accomplish, and didn't work initially. It had to be built over, and what I understand is that it has deteriorated so much, it's going to have to be rebuilt again.

In other words, as bad as the Chernobyl Disaster was reported to be, it was actually far worse. And more than 20 years later the area has not recovered. Nor is it in some ways ever expected to recover.

The Chernobyl Disaster happened at the penultimate moment for the Soviet Union and to my mind it sealed the fate of the Soviet Authority and Empire. It was the Death Knell, something that some people understood at the time. It would take a few more years, but shortly, the Soviet Union would dispose of its Imperial possessions and internally collapse -- from weariness, among other things. Weariness that so much promise had been abused and frittered away. That so many grand plans had never been realized, and that so much that had been built by the Workers' State was so shoddy and ultimately dangerous to life and limb and the Future.

The Soviet Union was on life support by the time the Chernobyl reactor went critical. And the Soviet Union finally expired. With nary a peep and hardly any bloodshed. The End of the Soviet Union was, like its beginning, one of the most remarkable political and social transformations in world history, but the beginning of it has had far more attention paid by historians than its end. It's almost as if the collapse of the Soviet Union hasn't really settled in to conscious understanding yet. Not only does what happened remain veiled (even though much, much information is in the Public Record) the actual reasons for it and lessons learned remain a Mystery.

As if no one really wants to deal with it.

It was, after all, an earth-shaking event the consequences of which have been global and not necessarily positive -- if you're not in the Upper One Percent.

Certainly the consequences for Russia and its former Imperial possession have been economically and socially catastrophic for the millions -- but wonderfully rewarding for the few. It's not all that different in much of the rest of the world, including the United States, which is trending more in the direction of Soviet-style Imperialism and Authoritarianism (but not Totalitarianism) every day, while exploiting the masses with glee and abandon.

I don't know whether the Gulf Oil Gusher is the penultimate event of Our Own Imperial Selves. It's too soon to tell, but it certainly has the potential to be a worse physical, economic and social disaster than Chernobyl was for the Soviet Union.

Oh my yes.