(Today from the U.S. Energy Information Administration)
“Since Trump took office, the U.S. has increased its oil production by nearly 3 million barrels per day, largely as the result of fewer regulations, more federal leasing, and the continuing brilliance of American frackers and horizontal drillers,” says Victor Davis Hanson in his national assessment “Actually, 2018 Was a Pretty Good Year.”
North Dakota is right behind Texas in leading the states in terms of oil production (the two now produce half of America’s oil). While a formidable southern border wall will protect the U.S. from land attack through Mexico, America’s supremacy in oil production will have military and national security and social dividends. According to Hanson, “Near-total energy self-sufficiency means that the U.S. is no longer strategically manipulated by the Middle East, forced to pay exorbitant political prices to guarantee access to imported oil, or threatened by gasoline prices of $4 to $5 a gallon.”
Of course, few of these accomplishments will trickle down to the average television-watching citizen, who are spoon-fed a distorted view of how America is actually being made great again: “The year 2018 will be deplored by pundits as a bad year of more unpredictable Donald Trump, headlined by wild stock-market gyrations, the melodramas of the Robert Mueller investigation, and the musical-chair tenures of officials in the Trump administration.”
Like the President himself, North Dakota and Texas are making significant contributions to restoring U.S. preeminence throughout the world. But for the media, good news is bad news for their leftist agenda. Hanson acknowledges that “the more media pundits claimed that America was on the brink of disaster in 2018, the more Americans became prosperous and secure.” Let’s hope that some of our Freedom of the Press is restored in 2019.
