That Thing Don't Run on French Fry Grease

Today is the first of May and in many countries, though not here, it's quite a shindig and a party. In the days of the Evil Empire, the first of May, or "May Day" was the cause for massive parades of military hardware as Fearless or Beloved Leaders stood on review platforms as endless waves of multiple missile launchers rolled past grey crowds cheering wildly for their machines of domination.

Life was easy and easier-we just didn't know it. We had a litmus test back then to be our friend: do you HATE communists with all your heart and soul? And when you answered 'yes' you were on your way to being the best friend our money could buy. Shah of Iran? Ferdinand Marcos? They hated communists. You can look it up. We hated 'em, too. Heck, until President Nixon visited there we called the most populated nation on earth "Red China" because they were-- but for thirty-five years they've been the People's Republic of China, and the largest trading partner of Wal-Mart who is the largest company in the world. And just because there's problems with Tibet doesn't mean we're not going to have a summer Olympics, now does it? NBC paid billions for the broadcast rights and a lot of sponsors will be very sad if something happens. C'mon, almost twenty years ago there was Tiananmen Square, and hardly anyone now remembers that (at least out loud; especially if you still live there and want to keep living. There.).

Thank goodness we won the Cold War. Turns out the Soviets and them communists weren't nearly all that and a bag of chips though, for seven plus decades it sure looked like it, didn't it? We went eyeball to eyeball with these guys and they blinked. Turns out they didn't know anything about making cars, TVs or livable housing. Their men's suits looked like they were made from concrete and their ladies' clothes probably contributed to the negative birthrates across the Iron Curtain. When was the last time any of us read or said 'Iron Curtain'? Wow, but for forty years after World War II that's all we said. Then those countries held a Going Out of Communism Sale and became capitalists, just like us. Well sort of.

Actually what seemed to have happened as part of the New World Order and the Happy Joyful Earth we thought would result from the end of the cold war was a lot of very warm wars. We no longer had armies of ignorance massed against one another but rather tiny, almost amoeba-like, organic fanatics who were content to fight for the most obscure of causes and causes-the more obscure the better. Some of them were pawns of geo-political games that had been rigged before they were born-and whose outcomes they could neither control nor appreciate. We accidentally (actually not so accidentally as unintentionally and uncaringly) created people who have nothing to live for, but as we soon learned, people who have nothing to live for always have something to die for. And then they want you to die for it, too.

We went from shades of grey across the globe to just black and white, though actually it's become a rich and poor dichotomy (some have suggested it was ALWAYS a rich vs. poor struggle, just better managed and camouflaged). What we learned since the "Arab Oil Embargo" of 1973 is greed will exceed need one hundred times out of one hundred chances. (actually, it's more than 100 out of 100, or it really wouldn't be greed, would it?). Three and half decades after nations in Western Europe had "Car Free Sundays" (my German wife tells me her countrymen needed permits to be allowed on the autobahn in the fall of '73. The last highway in the world with NO speed limits had NO cars) and in New Jersey, depending on what number your license plate ended with, you could buy gas on odd or even days-assuming there was gas (of course). It's yesterday once more, only more so.

Memorial Day will be here soon and that means the Big Race in Indianapolis and don't forget the barbecues! It's looking like four bucks a gallon for regular on the East coast will be here by Saturday and there's not a single communist or terrorist we can blame for any of this. What we've done is added more places at the table of nations, but didn't attempt to manage the appetites at all. So here in the Land of the Round Doorknobs and Sharpened Elbows we're conspicuously consuming while our poor and disenfranchised drown in red ink and debt sitting around the table with those who take us as role models. Instead of trying to devise a cogent and coherent energy policy, some of the people auditioning on American President think knocking the federal tax from gas is a good idea. Paula likes it-and Randy, dawg, is getting jiggy with it. That Tom Friedman is such a hard case.

I'm just waiting to vote for whomever will promise me the blue from the sky. I'd like to see a candidate promise a chicken in every pot-heck with that! A pheasant in every pot. Two cars in every garage. All of our kids on the honor roll and the solemn assurance I can eat anything I want and still lose ten pounds by next weekend's high school reunion. And while I'm at it, make me taller, too. First one to do all that has my vote, but only until tomorrow because then I'll want to know 'whatcha gonna do with all that money?/Whatcha gonna do when that money's all gone?'
-bill kenny