One of the most important lessons from Uruguay’s energy transition is that it was not built on slogans. It was built on a long-term national strategy supported across the political spectrum.

In Uruguay, a change in administration did not mean a collapse in policy direction. That broad support came from making a serious case to the public: Renewables were not simply cleaner, they could also strengthen energy security, reduce dependence on imported fuels, and rebut the tired claim that wind and solar automatically mean instability and higher costs.

The School of Oriental and African Studies — or SOAS — of London is a specialist institution focusing on the study of Asia, Africa, and the Near and Middle East, covering humanities, social sciences, and languages. It offers an interdisciplinary approach to research and education, emphasizing global perspectives, postcolonial theory, and regional specialisms.

An SOAS study on Uruguay looked at a series of simple but powerful questions: What is the long-term transformation the country needs? What obstacles stand in the way? Are they political, technical, or economic? And how do you build a national consensus behind that transformation?

Those questions sound almost too obvious, but perhaps that is the point. A nation needs clear goals, consistent policy, and a narrative rooted in the common good. That should not be controversial. Yet such clarity becomes nearly impossible when greed, short-term profit, and political power are allowed to drive the response.

An administration of foxes guarding the hen house

Instead of building consensus around a rational energy future, the current administration and its allies in Congress have moved in the opposite direction.

Donald Trump’s administration put Chris Wright, an oil-and-gas executive, at the head of the Department of Energy, while Lee Zeldin now leads the Environmental Protection Agency. The White House has also issued major energy-related executive actions such as Declaring a National Energy Emergency and Unleashing American Energy, both aimed at expanding fossil fuel production and rolling back restraints on the traditional energy sector. [The Department of Energy’s Energy.gov]

That is not a recipe for honest planning. It is a recipe for regulatory capture.

Media with an agenda: Getting the lies out

This agenda is reinforced by a media ecosystem that too often is less like journalism and more like political marketing. Fox News, OANN, Newsmax, and Trump’s own Truth Social do not merely report events, they help construct a narrative in which fossil fuel expansion is patriotism, regulation is tyranny, and clean energy is weakness. Newsmax’s chief executive is Chris Ruddy, while former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta serves on its board and chairs its audit committee, not to mention his creating the escape hatch of Jeffery Epstein. Truth Social remains Trump Media’s flagship platform.

History gives us many warnings about what happens when propaganda is repeated loudly enough and long enough. People can be persuaded to accept absurdities, especially when fear, grievance, and nationalism are part of the sales pitch.

Americans are constantly told that the Republican Party stands for less government and free markets. But what we are witnessing looks less like free enterprise and more like centralized power in service of resource control. The rhetoric is anti-government; the reality is government wielded aggressively on behalf of chosen industries and geopolitical aims.

The pattern is familiar. Strategic interests are wrapped in moral language. Economic motives are dressed up as national security. Intervention is sold as defense. Pressure is sold as partnership.

• Greenland is about “national security.”

• Venezuela is framed as a source of “drug terrorism.”

• Iran is presented as an immediate existential danger.

And we hear extortion rebranded as benevolence:

• Canada would supposedly be “better off” under greater U.S. control.

• Poorer nations are told that aid or access depends on surrendering strategic resources.

The language changes, but the underlying impulse does not.

What is really at stake is not only energy policy. It is the conscience, perhaps even the soul, of the nation.

Americans like to think of their success as the product of virtue alone. But our history is not that innocent. This country took Indigenous land by force, decree, and deception. It uprooted millions of Africans and forced them into servitude. Time and again, power has cloaked greed in noble language.

So perhaps the real question is this: Are we now watching that same pattern play out on a global scale?

Are we seeing in modern form what has always been there beneath the surface: the seizure of land, labor, and resources justified by a story about destiny, security, or civilization? Is that what is being revealed again under our current president?

And if so, then the deepest question is unavoidable: Where is America’s soul?

Jim Bobreski of Penn Yan is a process control engineer in power production for 43 years. He also is the author of “Alternate Energy and Climate Change in the Age of Trump,” available at Longs’ Bookstore in Penn Yan.

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