Oil wheels the Hypocricy of Politicians and the Public

On the subject of politicians being part of the 'entertainment economy', and being very shoddy players within it on the whole, it is interesting that on occasions a TV comedian can actually be more serious than those who are supposed not to be 'trivial' but dealing with weighty matters of state.

One article that caught my eye last year on Monday, 19 October 2009 in The Observer was one by David Michell called Oil wheels the Hypocracy of Politicians and the Public . On Iraq, Mitchell said,

....this kind of cynical foreign affairs wheeler-dealing gets a terrible press and causes public handwringing...."We only went into Iraq because of oil, you know." "We only appease Saudi Arabia because of oil, you know." To hear people talk sometimes, you'd think they never used oil.

Oil is vital and Britain hasn't got much of it. I hope it won't be vital forever but it certainly still is. There are worse reasons to fight or appease than the procurement of a necessity. If we went to war for food, I doubt anyone would blame us.

.I completely agree that this sort of cynicism is immoral. What I don't like is people claiming it's all the work of a few malevolent patricians – a self-serving ruling class getting off on their own acquisitive misanthropy – rather than a political community responding obediently to our loudly expressed democratic will.

Oil, trade, employment and money are important to us – and, by us, I mean we the people, not just they the politicians or business interests.

When there's a controversial war, some nice, middle-class people go on an organised weekend stroll. When petrol is too expensive, lorry drivers blockade the major roads and the country grinds to a halt. Our leaders would have to be fools to take the former more seriously than the latter.

But they're so craven, so much the creatures of our favour, that they'll let us hide from our own self-interest.

They indulge us in our belief that they're hypocrites, when in fact it's us. We live in comparative luxury, squeal like a stuck pig at the first sign of its diminution and blame the world's problems on politicians.

there are millions of us in .. being told we can have it both ways – reduced carbon emissions and cheap air travel, an enlightened policy towards the Middle East and affordable petrol, cuts in spending but not services – because we won't vote for anyone who doesn't

It's depressing that such a vital point has been made by a comedian, David Mitchell, whilst most serious journalists and activists, including John Pilger, never have the guts to confront the fact that protesting against wars and realpolitik for control of oil supplies is the only way to give 'The People' what they really think they want.

Democracy has been hollowed out in the West : without the consumer economy a significant number of Britons would demand Fascism if it meant the human right to drive a petrol guzzling SUV or fly to Prague to puke their guts up on Stag Night parties in Krakow, Prague, Riga, Bratislava and Tallinn.

This is partly because people are denied the information that would allow them to understand the world but not entirely. It's that when people are mollified by consumerism and entertainment divertions they need not thnk too deeply, not least if the reality is so frightening that it goes against the hedonistic pleasure ethos that drives the economy and society.

The 'Make Tea Not War' pseuds who protested against the Iraq War in February 2003 did so through their desire for collective narcissism, the hunger of bored consumers for something to stimulate their adrenals, to state 'I Was There' and not through any real belief that the political system must be changed.

Mitchell is an 'ironist' of the trendy 'alternative comedy scene but he's really touched a raw nerve here. Where are the George Orwell's who want to tell people that liberty is telling people what they do not want to hear ? That the quest for diminishing oil will lead to greater terrorist threat and the growth of a national security state.

Writers like Pilger and Chomsky blame the wars for oil on 'rapacious foreign policy' in such a way that is not challenging people to 'think differently' about the world's problems. It encourages the cosy view that only our governments are to blame and if 'we' change them the entire world will be better.

This is a stupefying myth,a parochial remnant of the Eurocentric revolutionary progressive tradition that fails to grasp with intractable problems like overpopulation, resource shortage, and global heating-for progressives these problems can be solved by human mastery and willpower, in overcoming global inequality rather than global numbers.

Mentioning that conflicts over oil are caused by every single person who demands an energy intensive lifestyle is usually written off by those who lack the courage to confront this threat to civilisation. Especially by the kind of doltish Jeremy Clarkson figure whose gung ho defence of the Great Car Economy is environmental imbecility. But he's just doing his job, I suppose.

For inequality to diminish economic growth must proceed apace. Poor people in Third World nations are not more inherently virtuous because poor. They are just poor and history shows that such people will be far more "materialistic" and demand to have a chance at becoming like the West.

More generally the moralistic outrage over conflicts over oil reflects guilt and bad faith, an inability to confront the true driving force behind the rising terror threat-that the West needs falling or stable prices for oil, the Middle East needs rising prices to feed its growing populace. This is going to be a source of war and instability in the 21st century.

Cocooned in wealth and consumerism with corrupt governments supported by the West ,its hardly surprising that Islamists will be intoxicated with hatred because Muslims have died in order that 'we' in the West might live better. If no amount of protest can change it, then only raising the blood price will.

Such are the emerging psychopathologies behind terrorism and the resentment which is the result of being overdependent upon oil in dangerously unstable regions in the Middle East and Central Asia. Revealing the hypocrisy of governments that prate human rights but practice realpolitik.

Oil like sex in Victorian times is the great unmentionable in polite political circles and shattering the taboo by doing the dirty on politics through suggesting 'they' are all corporate stooges rolling around in oil wealth is a projection on to them of the greed that the vast majority of Westerners demonstrate; hence the vitriol directed against Them.