What a summer. Anybody else still reeling? Geez, it’s been a rough vacation, especially for those doing summer in the Gulf. America held its breath for months as the underwater oil well, Deepwater Horizon, poured hundreds of millions of crude oil into one of our most precious ecological regions.

Only days ago, Professor-in-Chief Barack Obama visited the Florida Gulf Coast to announce the safety, security, and ongoing success the area will surely have. The proverbial ribbon cutting ceremony on the Florida shores was lost on the voter, though. Simply put, we stopped paying attention.

Let’s be realistic, we all know that a disaster is far more interesting then the surrounding implications, investigations and inner workings related to it. Oil tumbling into the ocean? Interesting. Senate investigation into the regulatory practices of deep-water oil drillers? Snoozefest. It’s easy to call yourself an environmentalist when oil-coated pelicans are making Time Magazine’s cover.

The painfully short American attention span has been a serious burden for the last several years. Now, our perpetual inability to focus on anything has taken us away from the BP disaster. Even our politicians, the twitchy little punks, tried to make the whole incident about D’s against R’s. What should have been the citizen’s moment to unite and fight against corporate greed and incompetence became a discussion on executive authority.

Like a child that hasn’t had his Ritalin, we’ve begun running in circles instead of sitting down and paying attention. Democrat, Republican, Socialist or Extra- Terrestrial, one thing voters have always detested is the behavior of powerful corporations. So instead of paying attention to Tony Hayward’s complete lack of empathy, or further examining the Machiavellian practices his company employed, we started bickering with one another.

Personally, I’m a big fan of discourse. Discussions about the Fed’s authority, a state’s limitations and emergency provisions needs to be had. Please, though, can we have it after we punish the thugs that did this to us? Don’t we all feel that familiar burn in our belly when we think of men like Tony Hayward making truckloads of money while their actions directly damage or destroy thousands of lives?

So yes, let’s debate the validity of offshore drilling, cap and trade legislation and immigration (since we are getting distracted anyway) as soon as we just accomplish one thing. Bankrupt BP. Or maybe Hayward and the cronies that misled, bribed or extorted federal regulators in custody would be a nice touch.

We don’t have the attention span to do much anymore, but let’s do this. Let’s punish somebody for this. Let’s at least remember what it was like to be a competent, decisive, affective country. Just finish what you started, America. For once.