No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

We are a nation (and culture) addicted to fossil fuels. I suppose we had to be addicted to something, and it had to be cheap and it had to be abundant. We became so addicted to it, and shared that addiction around the world so that now everyone has the habit and fossil fuels are no longer the former nor the latter, and yet still addictive.

It wasn't until the seventies when the Arab nations exporting oil realized our dependence was so great we might succumb to the temptation to whore out our own mothers for a tankful of the good stuff for the Winnebago. 

I learned to drive when high test gasoline was less than forty cents a gasoline and the right to always buy it for that price was, we assumed, somewhere in the Constitution. Half a century later, welcome to five bucks plus a pop, and the search for the guilty goes on.

You'd think if we're spending more now on imported oil than we were at the height of the Arab Oil Embargo, that we'd be looking to alternatives to the high costs and dicey supply availabilities we are facing and will face every day of the future as a nation. You might even be tempted to believe the people we elect to represent us in our nation's capital might have more than a passing interest in our future since they share it. But you would be wrong.

First and foremost, they're interested in their own futures, and as we all know, the next election is (always) just around the corner. And when you're running for office, you're only statesmanlike between fundraising dinners on the way to the next baby-kissing contest and county fair. After a while, the audience knows the candidate's stump speech as well, if not better, than s/he knows it themselves. And believes even less of it than they do.

And it must be politics that would have one of the two major parties (the more stupid of the two, in my opinion, and, yes, name-calling never settles anything but I like the feeling), determined to turn the clock back no matter what the rest of the world is up to. 

Meanwhile, the wizards of Washington, so quick to search for the guilty everywhere but in their own mirrors, remain ever vigilant in their dedication to their definition of 'the American Way,' even if neither they nor we have any idea what the hell they are talking about. Just "Drill, Baby, Drill." (and let me know how that works out)

And don't worry about what it all means, because it adds up to nothing written in sand and blown by the wind. We've always been at war with (insert name of your least favorite nation here), and we have the history books to prove it.

If you remember it differently, you remember it wrong, and you've picked the wrong country at a dangerous time to start remembering things wrong. These are times when politicians, finding themselves with cannibals among their constituents, promise them all missionaries for dinner. That way, there's no worry about who would say grace.  
-bill kenny