The Yellow Brick Road
Update 6: see AOC make my point in the YouTube video at the bottom
Update 5: yet another case of industry lobby collusion here
Update 4: AOC agreed, I’ll take that, see tweet by @IndigoRave
Update 3: thanks Channel 4 News and XR Deep Water for giving some substance: Revealed: ExxonMobil’s lobbying war on climate change legislation
Update 2: some recent demographics to underpin this in Jacob Whiton’s Where sedition is rewarded — An analysis of Pro-Trump congressional districts, y’all!
Update 1: realising I had spent my geologic career unaware of the oil patch lobbying against climate awareness helped me leave “da awl bidness”, start a non-profit and engage in climate activism as per my blog.
This Medium channel covered thoughts on Brexit & Trump, elections & referendums, populism, history, opinions, analysis, body language and legacy. Another one on history opened with: French and Canadian, I lived as an adult for two decades in Canada, a decade in the US under Governor then President ‘Dubya’ Bush, and a decade now in the UK.
The decade in the US was four years in Texas under Governor Bush then five years in California under President Bush, with an intervening year in 2000 in England. That gave me particular views from the inside of a country and regime I was keen to get to know, after spending 20 years next door in Canada — and I mean the view one only gets by living there and interacting with people — indeed in Dallas & Houston I worked for Halliburton when Dick Cheney was at the helm, but I also participated in Drums not Guns or Houston Art Car Parade and other activities on the other side of the tracks. And in Southern California I worked for Esri whose biggest accounts are US government, but I drummed at a retreat in the San Bernardino Mountains pictured above.
When asked in 1996 how long he’d stay at Halliburton after being Secretary of Defense under Bush Senior, Cheney jokingly repeated his former boss’ quip: “read my lips {laughter} I’m not going anywhere”. The money was, however, on his return to Washington at the first opportunity… And he did indeed, in 2000, as Bush Junior’s Vice-President!
What struck me most was the legal procedure to propose laws to the US Congress, the legislative side of the government. I was told a House Committee would draft a proposal, they would submit it to the House of Representatives, and if ratified it would go to Senate for review. If approved it went to the President as head of the executive branch to sign it into law. That ensured an orderly procedure with checks-&-balances all the way.
Traveling to Washington DC for an International Petroleum Congress, I stayed through a dear cousin hotelier at a smart hotel used by lobbyists — I learned there that their role was to ensure the House Committees were properly supported in their endeavors and that they properly represented the interests of the public or of corporations. It turns out however, that such lobby groups are funded one-on-one by corporations, who have interests in tabling certain laws. Monsanto lobbied the Food & Drug Administration around GMO crops then, ExxonMobil lobbied the Department of the Interior to allow drilling in Federal Lands, etc., etc. On the other hand the Civil Rights and Environmental movements were waning, so that the only lobby groups I was aware of were funded by corporations and not by citizen groups.
In other words, once the public had voted for their president and governors, and filled the House of Representatives and the Senate, it all flipped out of their hands into lobbyists’… No wonder the biennial elections are such a big deal! Were those the only times citizens got to have a say, while lobbyists camp in, um, the lobbies of government buildings to support corporations?
The same cousin now in Dallas also exposed me to Evangelical Christians — did you know for example that there were 1300 denominations in Texas alone? — and I learned two interesting facts. They have an excellent network supporting women to get politically involved. In traditional families men earn the money and women stay at home, so that before or after raising children they are a ready group to engage politically in their free time. This is the grassroots movement that became the Tea Party later on, and one that the Democrats ignored at their peril when Bush Sr. & Jr. and Trump were elected, alternating with Clinton and Obama.
Another grassroots movement was the same contingent pushing home schooling, and/or getting elected in local school boards, in order to inculcate youth with faith principles unavailable in state schools. This resulted in a rightward swing in education with for example Bush Jr.’s legislation for Faith-based initiatives (funding said schools) and some States repeal of teaching Evolution in schools. Creationism was indeed so big in Texas, that I worked with oilmen who thought “geology was poppycock” (oilfields are so old and dense that it’s matter of a land and legal wrangling rather than geoscience exploration). And there are just outside Dinosaur Valley State Park near Glenrose TX, both a Dinosaur World showing fossils that created the famous dinosaur footprints visible in river beds, and a Creation Evidence Museum just down the road.
Sugarland is a newish outer suburb of Houston, and I noticed something curious. Shopping malls and SUVs were filled with white people doing their errands. African- and Mexican-Americans were all behind the counter or as sales clerks, and gas station or car wash operators… and they used public transport! I had a baby daughter I liked to walk in the park, but I saw not a white person. They turned out to be in their clubs all air-conditioned and free of mosquitoes. ‘Mall walkers’ were also senior citizens in their runners with pompom socks (reaching barely above the shoes in this hot climate, socks were kept from sliding inside & under by pompoms) who did brisks circuits in the cool, safe and insect-free environment of urban malls.
What I am trying to say, is that the events in the White House after both contested elections — Bush Jr. in 2000 and Trump in 2016 — were very similar in many ways. Bush branded the post-9/11 second Iraqi invasion as a “crusade against the axis of evil” and Trump is closing the borders against the same “Muslim terrorists”. Bush had Karl Rove to push the limits of political decency, while Trump has a whole team pushing beyond said limits. And one was son to a president and another to a millionaire. There are differences of course, as Bush had been governor, while Trump is a businessman. And Bush was elected by ‘classic’ Republicans, while Trump appealed to a cross-section of those disenfranchised by the previous Administration and by globalisation.
But none of this came from thin air… The Trump Administration simply took the Bush era that much further, and only made manifest pre-existing mores and behaviours I witnessed in Texas & California 10–20 years ago: a certain way to get things done (lobbies), a certain way to believe (mix of church and state), and a certain way to circulate about town (racial separation).
I am, quite simply, not surprised! On the other hand The Yellow Brick Road ahead will hold a few surprises for us all, won’t it?
