Lethal Trajectories - Michael Conley [192]
The Saudi oil crisis produced a set of circumstances that could not be solved without thinking outside the box. To his great credit, President McCarty did the impossible, using his Pearl Harbor as an imperative to establish a new world in partnership with China. He once and for all took on the multiple challenges he characterized as a perfect storm and addressed them in their entirety. He reminded us that our oil-based energy structure was unsustainable. He suggested that climate-change was like a chronic illness with few telltale warning signs before it was too late. He told us we had to live within our means and that meant learning to live with less. He rekindled in us a latent sense of resiliency and self-sufficiency, character traits that made America what it is.
Without the international crisis, exacerbated by the death of President Lyman Burkmeister, McCarty would never have gotten America to take the harsh medicine it needed to address its multiple addictions or stem the lethal trajectories that would lead to its ultimate downfall. America is still a long way from being out of the woods, but it now has a fighting chance. The Saudi Crisis was, indeed, a blessing in disguise.
The Middle East is still a tinderbox, and Israel and Iran are once again focal points for the conflict. Will they find a ‘blessing in disguise’ of their own that stops short of a nuclear holocaust, or are we all consigned to Armegeddon?
“Wow!” Jack said, “That was a powerful article.” Clayton, too, was deeply touched.
Just then, the plane’s steward knocked on the door and said, “We’ll be landing in a little more than one hour, Mr. President. Would you like a dinner or light meal of some sort?”
“What’s your pleasure?” Clayton asked, but neither Jack nor Maggie had a strong preference. He made a presidential decision and said, “A light meal for the three of us, and the kids will have a pizza. Thanks much, Duncan.”
Duncan Jamison smiled, pleased that the president had remembered his name.
With business out of the way, Clayton and Jack started to debate what the San Francisco 49ers had to do to improve their football team. As usual, they argued as passionately as twelve-year-old boys for their positions. After listening for a while, Maggie concluded that things were getting back to normal. She rolled her eyes and happily thought, Now I’ll have four kids to keep an eye on for the rest of this trip.
70
Mankato, Minnesota
25 July 2018
Pastor Veronica said good-bye to the kids and left early to run a few errands before the evening’s Life Challenges meeting. She had changed many of her daily routines to conserve energy during the Saudi Crisis and had maintained them after the embargo was lifted; there was no excuse for wasting energy. She even shucked off an addiction she had never understood: like millions of others, she no longer listened to the Wellington Crane show. He was the butt of late-night talk-show routines, and some clever pundit had introduced his name as synonymous with bad advice: “I really got a Wellington on that recommendation.”
With the car windows down and the evening sun warm on her arms, Veronica was a grateful and contented woman. Despite the unbearable hardships of the past winter, a number of good things had happened. Mandy had turned the corner at Mankato East High School, finishing the year with decent grades. She still had typical teenage problems, but they appeared to have escaped the red zone. Her son, Teddy, made the junior high soccer team and joined the youth group at church, although he was still almost unbearably shy.
Something else had come to her life that she thought would never