Three peas in a pod: Osama bin Laden, Rush Limbaugh, and me

I never thought I’d see the day I agreed with one of this country’s most wanted terrorists. Or, for that matter, the big fat idiot who calls himself America’s Anchorman (along with America’s Truth Detector; the Doctor of Democracy; the Most Dangerous Man in America; the All-Knowing, All-Sensing, All-Everything Maha Rushie; defender of motherhood, protector of fatherhood and an all-around good guy).

And yet, here we are.
Osama bin Laden claimed oil should be priced at $144/barrel more than 10 years ago. Of course he was correct: Oil is such a dense energy source, it should be priced much higher than $100 per barrel. At the time, with oil hovering at $11 per barrel, the idea of $144 oil seemed absurd. But last May, when bin Laden’s target was approaching, Anne Korin (co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security) presented this chilling line to the House committee on foreign affairs: “$144 a barrel oil will be perceived as a victory for the Jihadist movement.”
By July, the price of oil hit an all-time high of $147.27 per barrel. As the headlines of every newspaper in the country are echoing 1929, it seems bin Laden was onto something. American Empire is clearly crumbling under the weight of expensive oil and the attendant consequences. And that’s a good thing, if not for civilized humans then at least for nearly every other being on the planet.
So much for the skinny guy. How ’bout the fat one?
For the first time in my memory, we have a major media figure pining for the failure of a president, and therefore the country. And, also for the first time in my memory, I agree with Rush. The economic collapse of this country promises a renaissance for non-human species and non-industrial cultures.
Of course, the king of ditto-heads has not thought this whole thing through. As a cheerleader of civilization, I doubt he really desires an economic collapse. As usual, Rush and his minions don’t have a clue what it really means for Obama to fail.
I was reminded how important it is for the world industrial economy to fail, even for our own species, when I participated in a conference on global climate change last week. A full day into the conference, without a single mention of the conference theme — adaptation — my poet friend asked what we can do, other than change our light bulbs. After much hemming and hawing, one of the panelists came up with an answer (to his credit, he was the only one): turn off the lights.
Yep, that’s right. We’ve traded in Al Gore’s inconvenient answer for another absurd response. As we rush headlong into the abyss of our own extinction, we need to turn out the lights.
Actually, I couldn’t agree more. But the panelist meant one at a time, not all at once.