Oblivion Becomes The Oblivious - America's Precious Bodily Fluid - The Age

AS THE price of oil skyrockets there is evidence that the US is blindly bumbling into superpower oblivion; that the American century is passing before our eyes. An empire built on oil is losing supremacy and, indeed, internal coherence. The US will remain, but the superpower period is passing, just as did the USSR. There is no wall to fall as there was with the Soviet Empire but the sole superpower can be no more.

No other great power in history became as dependent on one single substance for projection and protection as America on oil - America's precious bodily fluid.

Abundant, exceedingly affordable petroleum made possible the American automotive and trucking industries, the airline industry, the mechanisation of petrochemical and plastics industries, indeed the rebuilding of the nation around suburbs linked by freeways. The very term is a metaphor for America; a people chained to SUVs drinking petrol at $US4 a gallon. The "freeways" are forever clogged with commuters spending four hours a day and more getting to and from work.

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While Congress pretends to fret about the jewels of empire being plucked from the crown it does nothing to reverse forces that are now assuming a natural, organic direction away from and out of the nation's lawmakers' hands. For if the SIFs were not standing by, the other options would be to sell to the Chinese - reluctant buyers - to demand wholesale taxpayer bail-outs, or allow companies like Citicorp to go the way of Bear Stearns, a prospect that cannot be broached in an election year. Indeed, for taxpayers to be forced to clean up the mess may drive them into revolt. But the US's soft underbelly lies wide open while those charged with defending the nation plan attacks on countries far away, oblivious to the insidious evils at home and hooked on an oil dependency last seriously confronted by Jimmy Carter; and he was laughed off the stage.

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http://business.theage.com.au/business/oblivion-becomes-the-oblivious-20080806-3qpm.html

its just strange they didn't see these problems coming.