BP - and the Silver-Lining Call of Humility

If there is a silver lining in BP oil rig disaster—and we think there is, and it is growing—it is that the quality of humility is a great mind-clearer about a lot of things, as well as a sort of invitation to reconsider our faith and the place of God in the nation’s discourse. As more and more accept the invitation, much good can come out of it.

First, it’s just astounding to watch the utter shallowness and vacuity of a PR-managed White House engaging in all manner of ‘positioning’ gymnastics so as to stay on whatever side the latest focus group tells them they need to be on. Boot on the neck of BP, ass-kicking, criminal investigations, escrow accounts—all of this is now so openly exposed as empty theatrics.

At the most elementary level of common sense, it should be clear that no one wants the gusher to keep gushing. And no one wants the gusher stopped more than BP. They are experiencing a financial and public relations disaster they probably wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy, much less on themselves. They have hundreds and probably thousands of employees working around the clock on every solution they can think of to stop the leak and mitigate the damage from what has already been lost into the Gulf of Mexico. To jump on them as if they are callous criminals or laggards in need of an ass-kicking smacks of an arrogant out-of-touchness that is disgusting.

But then ought to come the humility that comes from recognizing that despite these round-the-clock efforts, despite expert panels, despite Obama’s weirdly repetitive reminders that he has a ‘Nobel-prize winning physicist’ as the head of the Department of Energy, despite ‘all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men’ brought to bear on the problem—men and women are nearly two months into this and still can’t get it stopped.

Maybe this scenario is prompting a widespread, renewed consideration of the basic question: just who or what is in charge of this earth?

No, we’re not going to embark on some Ted Turner-type theory that God is telling us not to drill offshore for oil. We don’t think the point regarding faith has anything to do with any suggestion that God caused the gusher or will cause it to stop. The point, instead, is that we as humans are not nearly so wise and powerful and in control as we think we are, but that we will find things coming under control much sooner and on much better terms when we are realigned with the Biblical principle that “it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.”

The founders of America knew who the Creator was and is, and on more than one occasion in the nation’s growth, its leaders have bowed before that Creator to seek guidance and wisdom in human affairs. And America’s history has shown that this kind of humility tends to bring solutions into view, whether in matters of war or in coping with natural disasters.

We don’t see any such humility in Obama or anywhere in his radical leftist regime; we see nothing but relentless political power calculations and PR tactics designed to achieve them. It’s not surprising that we also see the result: total futility and ineptitude.

Among the many adjustments preparing the American psyche to finally eject Obama from the Presidency, the BP oil rig disaster may do more than a million blog entries and any grandiose Republican political strategy. It’s serving, day after day after day, as a naked exposure of an arrogant and utterly godless administration—which is completely out of step with and opposite to the character of the American people. It’s making the conclusion clearer and clearer: Obama must go.

Again, all that’s needed is a reasonably prominent leader or pundit to STOP the ritual incantation that Obama is inevitably the president for a full four year term. He can be out much sooner if the American people demand it. And they want to demand it; they’ve just been frozen so far by the perpetually reinforced concept that the orderly democratic process requires that he stay in office. The freeze can yield to the heat—the heat that is rising every day from the realization that this guy was and is a complete fraud, the most egregious, unqualified shyster ever to pose his way into political office. Resignation is the remedy.

Paul Gable

June 17, 2010