"My friends, we have to drill offshore. We have to do it! Oil executives say within a couple years we could be seeing results from it. So why not do it? We need to do it." - John McCain
To many of us on the left it seems absurd that John McCain would take oil company executives at their word when they tell us that if we allow them to drill in more places we will see benefits within a couple of years. On a factual basis it is indeed an absurd claim, as many of us know even if those offshore drilling sites were handed over to the oil companies today it would be years before we saw even a drop of oil come out of them. To right-wing ideologues like John McCain however the facts don't matter, what matters is trust in the corporation.
In order to hold a right-wing ideology on any economic issues one must have trust in the corporation. The entire basis of right-wing economic thought revolves around trust in the market. Right-wingers believe that business should have few if any regulations imposed on them, they believe that corporations should essentially have free reign because according them the market can always work itself out on its own without government interference.
Once a person loses trust in the corporation it becomes impossible to hold a right-wing ideology, I know this because I used to hold some very right-wing views myself, and once I lost trust in the corporation I could no longer be a right-winger. I used to believe that many government services should be privatized, because I trusted business more than I trusted government. Of course I could not remain blind forever, and eventually I witnessed a few too many examples of corporate abuses. When you see corporations rob people blind, when you see business destroy communities for their own profits, when you see workers being abused, and our environment being destroyed, you start to realize that maybe the market is no so worthy of our trust after all.
Once a person loses trust in the corporation a key pillar holding up their right-wing ideology crumbles. For me that one pillar crumbling underneath my feet was all it took to move me to the left end of the spectrum. Capitalism is one of the key pillars holding up right-wing ideology, the other two pillars are religion and militarism. These two pillars are also held up by trust in certain institutions, the militarism pillar requires a person to have trust in the Pentagon if they are to maintain their right-wing ideology on military issues. The religion pillar is a little bit tricky because there are many people who profess to be from the same religion but hold completely different views, so it must be noted that it is not religion itself that is providing the foundation of the pillar it is merely a certain interpretation of that religion that provides the foundation. In order to knock down the religion pillar you do not need to get people to change their religion, you only need to get them to look at that religion in a different light.
For some people you will only need to knock down one of the three pillars to get them to abandon their right-wing ideology, for others you may need to knock down all three. But it is always important that we remember the three things that are providing support to these pillars, trust in the corporation, trust in the Pentagon, and trust in specific interpretation of religion.
McCain's quote on offshore drilling gives us a key opening to attack the pillar of capitalism by allowing us a chance to discuss the credibility of the oil company executives that he cites. If we can show more people that these oil company executives are not credible then we can not only score a blow against McCain, but we can also land a blow against one of those of those three pillars of right-wing ideology.
We need to remember that what McCain said was not a gaffe, it was a statement that may seem absurd to us but it was a statement that went straight to the heart of right-wing ideology. If people are unable to trust the oil company executives then they can not justify handing those executives even more power to control our energy policy. Recently with the spike in gas prices oil company executives are becoming very unpopular with the American people, and John McCain knows that if he is going to get his agenda through he needs to restore some credibility to these executives. This is important not just to McCain himself, but to the entire right-wing economic platform.
As the oil companies are losing support among the American people a giant crack is forming in the pillar of capitalism that is helping to hold up an entire ideology. John McCain and others are going to be trying desperately in the weeks ahead to try and repair that crack, and if we want to stop the right-wing agenda we can not allow them to repair that crack. That is why we need to jump on McCain for his statement, and that is why we need to go after the oil company executives and corporate America with full force.
We can do better than merely beating John McCain, we can destroy the entire right-wing agenda and we can take America back from the corporate cabal that runs it.
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