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"      Let&amp;#039;s say we find out tomorrow that the wingnuts were right: Deepwater Horizon did not explode and sink because of nature&amp;#039;s vengeance on human error but rather because the North Koreans attacked it, and the horrific money-shot video provided by BP is the result not of an act of corporate negligence but rather an act of war. It would probably change the way we feel about the video, and the catastrophic spill it evokes. First of all, we would recognize the oil gushing from the pipe as a threat to our way of life. Secondly, we would not be leaving the task of stanching it to British Petroleum. Thirdly, we would feel less helpless about that task, since it would fall to our military, and our military is the one manifestation of government we&amp;#039;ve come to trust. And, finally, we&amp;#039;d be pissed \u2014 really, really pissed. Is there any form of retribution that would be off the table? Would anyone be surprised if Pyongyang disappeared? Of course, the wingnuts aren&amp;#039;t right, and tomorrow we will find ourselves exactly where we are today: with the fate of the Gulf of Mexico in the hands of British Petroleum. Are we pissed? Well, sort of \u2014 but not really, really pissed. It&amp;#039;s taken our Papa in Chief three weeks, and a few million gallons, to raise his voice about the whole thing, and the Times routinely seesaws between saying that BP is lying about the extent of the spill and saying that BP is finally gaining control of it. Yesterday, Transocean filed suit to limit its liability in the matter to $27 million \u2014 $27 million! \u2014 and yet there have been no Tea Party protests, no picturesque calls for its executives to be hauled off in chains. We have no idea where or when this disaster is going to end, and yet we still seem to be worried about &amp;quot;overreacting&amp;quot; to it. Indeed, a former oil-company executive I spoke to the other day said that it&amp;#039;s government &amp;quot;overreaction&amp;quot; we need to fear most: &amp;quot;There will be changes in the oil industry because of this, but if the changes are precipitous, or politically driven, the ones who suffer will not be the oil companies. The oil companies will just go somewhere else. The American people will suffer, and there will be a new administration in 2012. Americans will not tolerate five- or six- or seven-dollar gasoline. This administration understands that.&amp;quot; In other words: The oil companies have us by the balls. And they are not the only ones. Indeed, our signature, as a country \u2014 and this is no small feat, given our willingness to wage war \u2014 has become the veritable queue of corporate interests and intransigent nations who have us by the short hairs. Why, it was just yesterday that President Obama had to make nice to Hamid Karzai, despite his well-known distaste for the man. Sure, by giving Karzai a &amp;quot;time-in&amp;quot; instead of throwing a shoe at him, the president has given us fresh evidence that he takes the precepts of positive discipline very seriously indeed. But that&amp;#039;s not the real reason for the rose petals the administration scattered in Karzai&amp;#039;s path. The real reason is that we&amp;#039;ve already committed our military and our fortune to the preservation of his crooked government in Afghanistan, and it&amp;#039;s either him or the Taliban. He&amp;#039;s got us by the balls. And so on and so forth. Wall Street accounts for 60 percent of our GDP. Despite the show trials of Lloyd Blankfein et al, Wall Street has us by the balls. China owns trillions of the trillions we&amp;#039;ve issued in sovereign debt. We have to beg China to agree to sanctions on Iran because China has us by the balls, and Iran, in turn, supplies the bulk of China&amp;#039;s oil and natural gas \u2014 Iran has China by the balls. And we&amp;#039;ve come to accept this. Why do we love the Internet, despite the destruction it&amp;#039;s visited upon business model after business model, and despite the fact that we have no better idea where it&amp;#039;s taking our culture than we do of where the broken riser is taking the Gulf? Because \u2014 and we are told this repeatedly, endlessly, in books and articles and blogs \u2014 it has us by the balls. We cannot exert our will over the Internet because it is our will, and is therefore beyond our control. It is us. And so it is with the horrible petroleum porno that BP allowed us to see yesterday: If it was the result of outside forces, we&amp;#039;d know what to do about it. If it was seen as a threat to our way of our life, we&amp;#039;d know how to respond to it.  But it&amp;#039;s not a threat to our way of life.  It is our way of life, and our way of life is what has us ... well, you get the picture. No, more than that: you&amp;#039;ve already seen it. GULF OIL SPILL COVERAGE ON THE POLITICS BLOG: VIDEO: Obama (Finally) Takes to Bully Pulpit on the Spill EXCLUSIVE: The Secret, 700-Million-Gallon Oil Fix That Worked \u2014 and Might Save the Gulf MARK WARREN: Why Obama Must Stop Blogging &amp;amp;amp; Start Leading on the Gulf JUNOD: In New Orleans, Lawyers Ask How Much BP Will Pay JUNOD: Drill, Baby Jesus, Drill JOHN H. RICHARDSON: GOP Giving in to Tea Party Motives on the Spill? PLUS: Maybe They Can Get Lloyd Blankfein to Clean the Beaches "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a7517/bp-oil-leak-fallout-051410/>