It is a testament to the terminal decline of the American collective IQ that we are once again forced to entertain the petulant fever dreams of a man whose primary relationship with science involves high-octane hairspray and industrial-grade bronzer. Donald Trump, a man who views the Earth’s crust as a giant, juice-filled Capri Sun for which only he holds the straw, is once again peddling the myth of an 'American Oil Empire.' It is an idea so profoundly stupid, so economically illiterate, and so breathtakingly regressive that it could only have been birthed in the gold-plated echo chamber of Mar-a-Lago. But let’s not pretend the opposition is any better; they are merely the other side of the same debased coin, clutching their artisanal crystals while their entire lifestyle is subsidized by the very prehistoric sludge they claim to abhor.

The premise is simple, designed for the kind of person who finds 'The Cat in the Hat' too narratively complex: 'Drill, baby, drill.' The Right believes that by simply poking more holes in the ground, we can somehow return to a mythical 1950s utopia where gas was a nickel and global warming was something that happened to other people. They view energy independence not as a strategic necessity, but as a personality trait. They ignore the minor, inconvenient reality that the American oil industry is a collection of private entities answerable to shareholders, not a personal toy chest for a would-be autocrat. Trump’s ambitions are expansive, yes—much like his waistline and his legal fees—but his plans are limited by the boring, stubborn physics of global markets. You cannot dictate the price of a global commodity through sheer force of ego, no matter how many caps you sell to people who think 'geopolitics' is a type of protein shake.

Then we have the Left, that cacophony of performative virtue and weeping willows. They respond to the prospect of an oil empire with a screeching hysteria that would be more convincing if they weren’t typing their manifestos on devices made of petroleum-derived plastics. They demand an immediate transition to a green utopia that exists only in the brochures of venture capitalists looking for government subsidies. Their hypocrisy is the lubricant that keeps the wheels of this sinking ship turning. They loathe the oil companies until it’s time to fly to a climate summit in Davos, at which point the carbon footprint of their private jet becomes a 'necessary sacrifice' for the greater good. They are the Victorian orphans of the modern age, shivering in the cold while clutching a designer blanket they don't realize was woven in a factory powered by coal.

The tragedy of the 'American Oil Empire' is that it is a 19th-century solution to a 21st-century funeral. Even if the U.S. were to hollow out every national park and pave over the Everglades to extract the last drop of crude, the empire would still be a hollow shell. The global market, led by the equally charming sociopaths in OPEC, laughs at the idea of American dominance. Infrastructure takes decades to build; pipelines are not conjured by executive decree; and the private sector, despite its sycophantic praise of deregulation, actually prefers the stability of a managed decline to the chaotic volatility of a Trumpian boom-and-bust cycle. The 'empire' is a mirage, a shimmering puddle of oil on a hot desert road that disappears the moment you try to touch it.

We are witnessing the final, spasmodic twitches of a civilization that has run out of ideas. On one side, we have the moronic greed of those who want to burn the house down to stay warm for five minutes. On the other, we have the hypocritical vanity of those who want to ban fire while sitting in a heated room. Both are equally useless. Both are grifters. Trump’s plans are limited because reality has a way of asserting itself, even against those who have spent their lives successfully avoiding it. The American oil empire is not a strategy; it is a eulogy. It is the desperate grasp for a past that never truly existed by a people too cowardly to face a future that looks increasingly like a landfill. As we slide further into this lubricated oblivion, at least we can take solace in the fact that the people leading us there are exactly as incompetent as we deserve. Pass me the scotch; I want to be sufficiently anesthetized when the empire finally runs out of gas.