A deep, preternatural sadness for the Gulf.

[LeftyFingerPop]

I am reminded of A Clockwork Orange.

It is a bunch of thugs killing people and animals in front of me, and I am rendered completely helpless.

It is knowing that the best lawyers in the world will allow those responsible continue their lifestyles until they die.

That poor little dolphin is worth more than the management of BP.

The eleven men killed on the rig are worth more than 20 billion dollars.

I am having nightmares that the earth is bleeding out...

This can't be happening, but yet it is too late to stop it, the damage is done.

I don't even live in the Gulf, but I'm feeling it. I had a bad feeling about this the day it happened, and there is no end in sight.

Keep your comments to yourself please if you feel I am over reacting...my gut is telling me I am not.

BP has too much control...I can't wrap my head around why they are still there.

[murray hill farm]

1. Unspeakable sadness.

What I am hearing now in the voices and the stories on each report is a sense of hope ending and a frightened panic beginning.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. You're not over-reacting.

The whole response to what is happening has been far too muted. I share your feelings.

[patrice]

3. My second husband fought cancer for 2 years before he passed on a little over a

year ago now.

What is going on in the GoM feels exactly like the 2nd year of Paul's illness.

[madfloridian]

4. People I see don't talk much about it....not coping yet.

It's like the whole thing is too immense to take in right now.

There's a storm coming into the Gulf from the Caribbean, and people are not talking much about it either.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65O04D20100625?type=domesticNews

[daninthemoon]

5. I keep feeling like we are at the beginning of one those end of the world

movies. The part of the story before anyone has realized that the end is here. Look what we have done to ourselves. Why couldn't we get off oil and gas in time?

[Hawkowl]

27. Exactly!

I can not explain the surreal horror I'm feeling almost constantly.

[hlthe2b]

6. Deep, dark, and devastating sadness I can't kick...

and why would I with the horrors just compounding day after day. I feel so badly for the people of the Gulf, but he animals--the birds, the dolphins, the turtles--all of them. I feel guilt for their plight and the most hopeless and helpless of responses.

No, you are not alone. I am very saddened for the family of the boat captain who took his life. But, I can certainly understand how he might get to that point living this hell day in and day out in his devastated Gulf.


One foot in front of the other and hang on to some hope, I guess. I can't remember a time in my life that I have felt worse. How could supposedly intelligent people have allowed this to happen? How?

[BrklynLiberal]

7. ..........................

:cry: :cry: :cry:

[highplainsdem]

8. You're not overreacting. This is like a nightmare we have to wake up from, but can't.

It's been many years since I lived on the Gulf coast, but the sense of grief and devastation I've felt has been overwhelming. My heart's breaking for all those more directly affected -- the people, the animals, the entire ecosystem, the unique cultures and treasured ways of life that BP's criminal negligence is killing.

I agree completely with what you said here:

That poor little dolphin is worth more than the management of BP.

The eleven men killed on the rig are worth more than 20 billion dollars.

[BeFree]

9. It's bad

I feel a deep spiritual rift rising from this situation. There is nothing good that come come from this.

And there are things, many things, that are being kept from us, and it makes one wonder just what is really going on.

As an environmentalist, I feel deeply for the animal and floral species that will be killed and injured. As a human, I feel even deeper for the human way of life that has been killed and injured.

Believe me, the people who live along the gulf coast are most thankful for the good thoughts from those of you across the world for our plight. Your thoughts and feelings are the sole bright spot as the situation unfolds. I think I can speak for millions in saying thank you all.

[William Z. Foster]

10. a sane response

Your response is the sane one.

BP having control over the Gulf is a symptom - we have passed some line and the rate at which corporations are seizing power over, controlling, and destroying everything is accelerating. Haliburton is busy permanently damaging the majority of rural land in 32 states and poisoning the water table. Everywhere we look similar things are happening. The pursuit of profits at all costs is reaching some sort of frantic crescendo as they grab ferociously for whatever there is left to grab. The press and the government no longer stand between us and the predators, as they are both now wholly owned subsidiaries of Wall Street. The air, the food, the water, the land - it all belongs to them now to do with as they will.

[Swamp Rat]

11. maybe I'll get some sleep tonight

probably not

[ClayZ]

14. :(

Take care of yourself, Swamp Rat!

I am speechless!

[Swamp Rat]

15. hey

:hug: :cry:

[Mimosa]

28. IKWYM

Lunesta is the only sleep aid I've tried which works, Swampy.

[caledesi]

12. I hear ya...live in Tampa...not talked about much. nt

[femmedem]

13. My parents on Marco Island don't talk about it much either. However

they're paying very close attention, and have planned where they would go if the air quality forces an evacuation. Maybe it hasn't sunk in--but I think it has, and they're just choosing not to spoil the present by focusing on what they know is coming.

[JackDragna]

16. You're not kidding.

I live in Louisiana. Even here in Baton Rouge, there is a palpable sense of dread. We may be a good ways from the coast, but the effects of this are being felt everywhere in the state. This could be our death knell.

[Skidmore]

17. The problem is BP has no control and neither does the government.

This is an unprecendented manmade disaster for which there are no easy answers. We have learned over the past few days that even the best technology we have is woefully unpredicable and I believe that this catastrophic event was inevitable. Just last week I heard a discussion about the BOP valve and learned that there are 261 ways that valve can fail, even when it has not been modified. BP modified the valve more than once and exponentially increased the risk.

Furthermore, the people of the Gulf area will persist in pursuing the oil industry. They've put their eggs in two baskets (oil and fishing) and one of them has been smashed. What I find disheartening is that there is no discussion of bringing alternative energy industries to the region to replace the oil drilling. Not enough money I guess or graft for the politicians down there.

[truedelphi]

18. Our household way out here in the Calif woods is deeply troubled.

My spouse believes that Cheney is behind all this.

And then I start to think, why not? Who is that inept jerk Thad Allen,where did he come from, and why does he hold up so many decent efforts to stop the flow of the oil into the coastline.

The Interior Dept's nonsensical blocking of the dredging so that more Louisiana coastline will be destroyed by oil makes little sense to me. It was devastating to watch the activists telling Anderson Cooper how little sense this ruling makes to them - their grief and incomprehension of how the government only seems able to work against us people and not for us.

The government could not be bothered to require even an environmental report from BP, nor was BP required to install a 500K device that would have prevented the initial explosion, so now the government is caring about the sand being dredged? Even though that dredging could stop mroe oil from hurting more marshlands?

[kgnu_fan]

19. I do feel the same

Since I was a child, I felt something was not right about "economic development by destroying earth" and I lived through this far without losing that insight. Deep sadness....

[Swamp Rat]

20. capitalism has killed us

but we'll deny it until we breathe our last breath

[liberalla]

21. I'm there. I'm with you.

I've been in a funk since day one. The instant I heard the news, I felt something in my solar plexus region (my intuition), and I knew it was very serious and grave. Much more than was being reported.

I used to be pretty optimistic and would work many ideas and angles trying to solve problems and improve circumstances in my life, my work, my friendships/relationships. Never give up, you know? I always felt that I could handle whatever came my way. Since Bush/Cheney and the death-grip of corporatocracy, my general outlook has changed. And now, the Gulf disaster... I am so glad I don't have children to raise and worry about.

What I'm thinking about now is, how are we going to oxygenize (or RE-oxygenize) the gulf/ocean? We have to find/invent a way to counteract all the oil/gas/dispersant/poisons gushing into the gulf waters.

We have to find a way to revive the "dead zones."
How do we re-oxygenate a dead zone?

Those questions are on a ticker tape running over and over in my head.

[progressoid]

22. A deep, preternatural sadness for the Planet.

[Subdivisions]

23. I feel it too, LeftyFingerPop. You're not alone. I had nightmares just last night...

of a post-apocalyptic situation where everyone was fighting each other for survival, the animals were dead, and I had a golf ball sized lesion coming out of my stomach.

I think you described it well as a "preternatural" sadness. The profound wound I personally feel for what has happened to life in the Gulf of Mexico goes right to my very soul. It's a combination of desperation, helplessness, and deep sadness.

It's only a matter of time before this feeling, for all of us, wells to the surface.

[anarch]

24. I know exactly what you mean

and it's odd, as others in this thread point out, that nobody wants to talk about it, generally speaking. Denial, I guess. Except for the ones who live right on the Gulf, who have moved on to anger mostly, I think. I myself keep sort of rotating through various stages of grief, and I don't know if I can get to acceptance on this one. It is too big.

I don't think we're overreacting. Even if this is fully stopped in the autumn (about which I'm skeptical), that's like...fuck...something like 30 to 50 Exxon Valdez spills in the Gulf unless it's slowed down drastically in the meantime, and frankly the way things have gone so far, I'm not feeling real optimistic about that, either.

My gf grew up on the Gulf...all her childhood memories of going to the beach, were pretty much at the beaches that are in the process of being destroyed. I try to tell her how upset I am by it all, and she can't even bear to talk about it. There won't be any "making this right". There is no price tag you can put on this. I too feel like the earth is bleeding out, and I feel like I've been stabbed in the very soul myself by this. And I feel like there's only worse to come, for quite some time...

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be such a downer.

:(

[taught_me_patience]

25. I don't feel the same

Not when people of the gulf elect leaders who still chant drill baby drill. In some ways, you reap what you sow...

[distantearlywarning]

26. I was crying about the story of the dolphin this morning.

I just feel so much impotent fury and sadness about it all. :cry:

[Mimosa]

29. Our government isn't talking to us about this

My guess is they are trying to stand 'apart' hoping none of the oil will 'get on them.'

[Tsiyu]

30. There are many of us far from the coast as well as close

who are shedding tears over this holocaust.

my kids and I have all been to the Gulf; I spent my teenage summers on those beautiful white beaches.

i have an affinity - for the marsh life and ocean life and birds - that runs deep.

deeper still is my affinity for the coastal people, especially the fisherfolk - who were barely hanging on before this tragedy. At least before, they had abundant fish and oysters and such to feed their families.

To me, it's like they have just been left stranded - in poison - to starve while Tony Hayturd and co. keep raking in the dough...

:cry:

You are joined by many sorrow-filled people :hug:

[I Have A Dream]

31. :o(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elp-KSDtnts

:cry:

[earth mom]

32. I feel a sense of doom, like this is the beginning of the end...

yet everything around me is still "normal" = absolutely surreal.

At this point, I have to force myself to read some of the threads about the gusher because many of them pain me so; but I need to, have to, must know what those bastards have done to our planet, our oceans and our beautiful vulnerable wildlife. :cry: