Not unlike his overlord Donald Trump, Rick Perry can sort of read (maybe?), and he can definitely watch the news on the television set. You know what’s been on the news lately? Allegations of the epidemic-level sexual assaults and harassment perpetrated by powerful men. Rick Perry is the Secretary of Energy in our country and he’s been traveling around trying to figure out ways to promote fossil fuel energy over the cleaner and more forward thinking renewables that most developed nations are moving towards. Hey, he’s from Texas! Politico explains that while in South Africa, Sec. Perry had this bit of important information to share on fossil fuel safety:
Perry, who traveled to South Africa last week to tout the Energy Department’s partnerships there, said he spoke with a young girl who wanted electricity so she could read without relying on the light of a fire “and have those fumes literally killing people. But also from the standpoint of sexual assault.”
“When the lights are on, when you have light that shines — the righteousness, if you will — on those types of acts,” he told an Axios event.
In Rick Perry’s defense, he was trying to argue that there are undeveloped areas of the world where the needs for energy could help save lives.* Of course, like most conservatives, the width of his vision about how to solve problems is restricted by how poorly he diagnoses them. The idea that the majority of sexual assaults are perpetrated in dark alleyways is not simply narrow view of the issue, it’s wrong. The world that Rick Perry is trying to create here consists of South Africans giving up their autonomy so that fossil fuel companies can penetrate the earth, regardless of what the people living on that earth want, and then lord their power over those people while deepening their leverage to do as they please. And when an entire country and continent begins to argue that they are being violated, those fossil fuel companies just respond by saying things like “you wanted it,” “you needed it,” what did you expect?”
*See Puerto Rico.