| Cursing the Darkness |
18 August 2003
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50 Million in the Dark -- The Blame Game
The lead story for this issue was changed when 50 million North Americans lost electrical power on Thursday. The mightiest nation in the history of mankind saw one in five citizens (and not a few of its good neighbors in Canada) forcibly returned to medieval conditions. There is no excuse for it, but the responsibility dodging has begun.
First of all, the buck does not stop at the Oval Office anymore. President George Bush the Lesser was made CEO of America, Inc., but an attack by Muslim nihilists and this blackout are not his worries. That's the official word from his spokepersons.
Nor is it the fault of the utility companies. Their equipment failed. Their inter-regional trading of power to generate profits has replaced the need to maintain infrastructure and spend rather than collect. Yet they aren't at fault.
It isn't the fault of the environmentalists who already have their house in the country. Electricity demand has soared in two generations, but new power plants? Not in their back-yards -- nor in any one else's. Their solution is conservation. Many who walked home in the dark conserved a great deal of electricity on Thursday. It was not a spiritually uplifting event.
And it certainly isn't the fault of the consumer. Appliances have proliferated, a pampered public demands shivering in the malls in August, yet there is no blaming the people who use the electricity that ran out.
No, the fault lies with just one person. He or she is nameless, known only to God. But that one individual is the straw that broke the camel's back. Somewhere, there is one human being who flipped a single switch that put the system over the edge. Now, that the blame has been firmly fixed where it belongs, everything can go back to normal.
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