On Wednesday morning, President Trump signed an executive order that put both the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access pipelines back into play.
While the Keystone XL pipeline is an awful idea, it is still far off in the ether, given its level of present development.
The Dakota Access pipeline on the other hand, is a very real danger to human life, and illustrates the cruel, abusive story that has plagued the native people of what is now called The United States of America.
President Trump seems to care nothing for human life if he can’t turn a profit from it, and the outcry from across the social strata of America is proof of the growing discontent that will only get worse as his administration grinds on.
The heart of the issue is a source of water for the Standing Rock Sioux people, and the risk that is posed to it by the completion and operation of the Dakota Access pipeline.
When the white man came to America, he stole it from the native people. The white man lied, and when the natives wouldn’t tolerate the the lies any longer, the white man responded with genocidal violence, among other barbaric acts that litter the history of the United States.
The native people that were able to survive the holocaust that was public policy were given land that was in many cases uninhabitable. Some survived, most didn’t.
Now, in order to deliver oil to a port facility in Illinois, President Trump is willing to risk the only source of drinking water that the Native Americans have for their entire reservation.
This is the stuff of nightmares and madmen.
The last thing that the United States needs is more filthy oil to burn. This kind of development is toxic and destroys the land that sustains life.
Perhaps President Trump sees this action as “maximizing natural resources”, and I wonder what kind of resource a bunch of toxic water is?
To me, the drinking water for an entire community is a natural resource that is worth protecting.
One of the problems is that economic progress is seen as existing in a vacuum, that is to say that the oil or coal or whatever is seen as being distinct from the people who are going to be poisoned by it.
What is far less pleasant to see is the implicit, silent attack on the lives of the native people, who are once again being treated as less-than-human by a rich white man for reasons of “economic development”.
Poisoning innocent people so that the United States can burn more oil is not progress of any sort, it is madness, and it shows the sociopathic nature of President Trump and his public policy.
The use of executive orders to spur action for private interests is a gross abuse of his office, and according to the Dallas Morning News, President Trump may own a million dollar stake in the parent company of the Dakota Access pipeline developer.
The CEO of that company, Energy Transfer Partners, donated $165,000 to Trump during his campaign, by the way.
Though President Trump has also claimed that he has divested himself of all his stock investments last year, without offering any evidence to support that claim.
What this looks like is textbook corruption, and it is shocking to see it being committed so blatantly in the United States.
The Economist’s EIU downgraded The United States to a “Flawed Democracy” on the same day President Trump signed these executive orders. Although The EIU denies any direct relation between the downgrade and Trump’s election specifically, they do state that the reasons why Trump got into office are the same reasons why the USA was downgraded.
I will go a little further and say that not only is The United States a flawed democracy, but it is a deeply flawed culture and furthermore, is an unquestionably broken nation.
Any country that thinks that poisoning its own people and destroying the land’s ability to sustain human life is clearly deranged.
Not only does President Trump support the wholesale destruction of the environment, but he implicitly endorses the slow murder of an already marginalized native population.
This is madness and it has to stop.
