I am deeply concerned that there is not a national public outpouring of grief and anger over the Gulf Oil Spill. Where is the public wailing and gnashing of teeth, and where is the OUTRAGE? Where is the response of the poets, artists, and psychologists to help us admit and process our trauma? Or maybe the better question is why do they not appear on TV and in the national media right now.
For me, there is no difference between the spill and what happened on 9/11 in terms of the effect. There is a different culprit and a different sense of the victim that makes it complicated. I believe the US is partly to blame for what happened on 9/11 due to a long history of foreign intervention for short-term power and profit. Most people didn't see it that way and some would like to expunge me for that viewpoint. They held the "enemy" completely at fault for the evil act, while feeling no culpability for evil acts done toward other people by our government in our name.
In the Gulf we can't so easily separate the perpetrators from the victims. We use the oil that BP produces and profits from. The people who are suffering the most voted for the oil industry jobs and for deregulation of the industry to ease those jobs. We all get around in our oil-powered vehicles, heat our homes, and consume food and products produced using oil. We coated those sea turtles and birds in oil, partly, and we know it.
We know we need more oil. And so everyone is compromised. But I will argue that should not stop us from either grief or outrage. We are participants in this planet and its life. Just like the bird that eats the worm, we destroy to sustain ourselves. We can't change how we do that unless we fully feel the grief, despair, and sadness that comes from empathy with another animal, another part of life, that is dying a painful slow death from its liver shutting down. Or that's last breathe was smothered by oil. Or that experienced agonizing internal pain after eating a meal laced with petroleum.
How can we change if we don't feel? How can we change if we don't grieve? How can we change if we deny our pain?
