Power in the hands of angry men

A brief extract from a Salon article by Andrew Leonard

...The fear is that if Obama federalizes the response and supplants BP, not only will it be more difficult to get the company to pay for the response efforts, but the federal government may not have the capacity to get the job done.

Think about that for a second. The government of the most powerful nation the world has ever known does not have the capacity to stop an oil leak. And our leaders are getting mad at BP for missing deadlines? ....


It looks to me like power not only corrupts as in the old adage but one of the ways it does that is by cutting out its own sustainability potential. It seems obliquely sane enough to kill itself by cutting away its own roots. Maybe I should rephrase that -- power is not sensible enough to want to be rooted even in its own little copy of Heaven. It prefers indirectly to be non-existent. This agrees with some theology I am highly sympathetic to although I do not fully comprehend it - evil does not exist as an entity / thing. It is a kind of hungry self devouring void. (There is also a creative void but that is another essay)

The only thing that can extend already existing roots is the power of relationship in self-emptying and self-giving love.