The Political and Economic Forces in AnteBellum America that supported slavery were very powerful. They encompassed all of Southern White Society from the Carolinas to Texas: the plantation owners, the merchants, the politicians, as well as businessmen in the North who benefitted from the cotton and slave trades. The nineteenth century American Abolitionists called these political and economic forces: “The Slave Power”
During the 1850’s “the Slave Power” gridlocked American government. It ensured that only judges who favoured slavery were nominated to the Supreme Court. The Court’s Dred Scott decision forced citizens from free states to assist in returning escaped slaves to their owners.
Now, let’s imagine that instead of the Civil War, the Slave Power had actually prevailed. Imagine that Stephen Douglas defeated Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and slavery spread to the Western States, where it continues to this day.
It is very difficult to believe that that could have happened; not the election, elections can be very close; it is difficult to believe that slavery could have survived intact today, because it is hard to imagine living in the kind of morally degenerate universe that that would entail.
It took a bloody Civil War to defeat “The Slave Power”. A momentous moral change, like that of abolishing slavery is not something that can be fixed in one election, or through one government policy. It takes a mass movement, like a war, a revolution, or a religious movement.
Societies are relatively stable. It is not an easy or simple thing to change the moral direction. First, people are used to custom and tradition as well as convenience. We don’t like to change our ways. Secondly, many people have a stake in keeping things the way they are. These wealthy owners stand to lose valuable capital if the system changes. Even if one can make a good case for a moral change, people who have a strong financial interest in the status quo, such as the slave owners, will fight back hard to keep their privileges.
Seven years ago there was another momentous American election. That election went off like an atomic bomb. We bid goodbye to Barack Obama, the first Black President, and shield our eyes from the brilliance of Donald Trump, the billionaire with the brightest orange hair imaginable.
Why did I keep thinking about 1860 and the difference that that election would have made if the outcome had been reversed? It is because of the power of fossil fuels, that I see this connection. The Slave Power had a stranglehold on the American government, and only Lincoln’s election made it possible for America to break free of the chains of slavery.
Trump famously stated that Global Warming was a hoax invented by the Chinese. You may recall that Trump's first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson was a former CEO of Exxon, one of a number of oil companies that have spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding fake grass-roots organizations attacking climate science. Fake scientists have even been borrowed from the tobacco industry. These fossil fuel front organizations have been largely funded by Exxon and the Koch brothers, billionaire owners of the largest privately owned oil company in the world.
Deceptive PR, creating a fake scientific controversy by financing climate skeptics and paying internet trolls to harass and intimidate legitimate climate scientists has been and continues to be a clandestine oil industry tactic.
When you think about it, Putin’s Russia and the Big Oil companies have all been using similar propaganda tactics to pollute the internet and create an atmosphere of chaos and confusion for decades now. What is it they have in common besides making their money from oil? They both want to be able to do their dirty-work out of the public eye.
Why not make a deal with Putin. America needs Oil, and Russia has got it. Oil is more important than freedom, it is more important than Science, it is more important than the Truth, it has the most money behind it and it can do the most good for our economies. It is worth it to sacrifice Scientific Knowledge, a liveable Climate, and our collective health for bigger and faster cars and more military weapons. We need to show the rest of the world that we are boss as long as we are able.
This is the sociopathic logic of The Oil Industry. Money tells us to drill and frack to get more oil, it doesn’t tell us to save the planet. The job of the Oil Industry is to plunder, rape, and pillage the earth, until everything is stained with its foul and toxic essence. This is the Power that has taken over half the earth and yearns for the rest. This is the Oil Power.
