And here I thought it was the hippies who hate America and are destroying it with all this environmental mumbo jumbo and American Dream doomsaying. Now it turns out that the whole country has been living in "infantile optimism" which an epic environmental disaster brings this conservative writer "grim satisfaction" by crushing.As the writer says: “The very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more.”
In slightly different words: The best we can hope for is that the thing just goes on gushing through the bore hole indefinitely. (Or until we can drill enough relief wells to reduce the pressure. Don’t hold your breath.)
I’m as horrified as anyone by this — if the guy has got it right, and I’ve understood him correctly. At the same time, as a constitutional pessimist, I’ll own to a certain grim satisfaction. The infantile optimism of post-JFK America may have met its match down there in the Gulf. Nature is not mocked.