Which Cheek?

Like everyone else, I’ve been following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. And like a lot of people, I’m mad.

I’m mad at the constant blame shifting of the corporations. I’m mad that the agency designed to regulate the oil rigs was also set up to receive the royalties from them. I’m mad that people have lost lives for our national dependency on crude. I’m mad that more people are going to lose livelihoods because of the disaster. I’m mad that already fragile wetlands and coastlands are being devastated by the oil. And I’m mad that some people view the loss of all this as just one of the risks of the oil business.

But right now, I’m maddest at those in our system of government who continue to act as if the companies who perpetrated this crime, and to me it is nothing less than a crime, should be apologized to!

I promised myself when I started these blogs that I wouldn’t play the politics game. There’s a darned good reason why politics and religion are the two subjects you don’t bring up in company you don’t know. But after hearing the congressmen today actually apologizing to BP, I have to speak out.

For years, we’ve been hearing from the right that our government shouldn’t be doing so much regulation of industry, that industry can take care of itself and when bad things happen, well, that’s what settlements and payouts are for, right? That private industry can monitor and police themselves.

Well, as we’re all seeing now, this particular industry apparently did NOT police itself very well and it seems that they cut corners in safety to increase revenue. Eleven people paid the ultimate cost with their lives and thousands, if not millions, of others will pay the cost with their livelihoods. This doesn’t even take into account the countless creatures of land, sea, and air who rely upon the waters of the Gulf for their survival.

Now, 50+ days after this oil spill began, we’re still seeing thousands of gallons of oil being spewed into the Gulf, furthering damage for years to come.

Now, I ask you. If you owned a hall that people rented out, and a company rented it but trashed it, you’d be mad. You’d want it fixed. But this is a company that uses your hall ALOT. So losing them would lose a lot of revenue. So wouldn’t you tell them that they had better fix what they broke? And wouldn’t you make them pay a bigger deposit next time?

To me, that’s exactly what President Obama did with BP. He had the audacity to actually hold BP responsible, to make them set aside funds to fix what they broke if they wanted to continue working in the US. Makes perfect business sense to me.

But a member of congress today actually apologized to BP for them having to be held responsible. I beg your pardon?

As a Pagan, I’m appalled.

I’m appalled at the attitude of domination that we humans still have over Nature. That Nature is there to be bent to our wills, instead of realizing that we are but a small part of Nature and should respect and revere it.

But I’m extremely appalled at the attitude that the company responsible for this disaster shouldn’t actually be held responsible.

Paganism teaches that we are ALL responsible for our own actions. We don’t have an evil overlord on whom to blame for our failures and mistakes. We know that a plea for forgiveness is great, but that doesn’t release us from our responsibility to make things right.

Some might say that these statements are an attempt to “turn the other cheek.” In my opinion, there’s a cheek being turned alright. But it’s not in the upper half of the anatomy and BP is the one whose cheek is being embraced.