Anti-America Oil Use

When people look for Patriotism it is often seen as a uniform, a public display such as singing the National Anthem or flying the Flag at their home or the rear window of their car???

In the public forum lapel pins are the clearest way to detect a patriotic person, at least judged by the TeeVee News folks, making the natural assumption that if a person is willing to spend $2 for a lapel pin there is clearly nothing they wouldn't do for the Mother Land USA.

But for those with more than $2, there is an even more Patriotic action one can take, buying the biggest, most fuel inefficient vehicle they can but. Nothing extends a middle finger to the world, especially the Middle East, than a 200 pound person using one gallon of gas to go 8 miles. If you drive with the abandon you deserve as an American you can get the milage down to 5! Take that you oil barons and sheiks. 

Now the fact that we get most of our oil from Canada and Mexico, with less than 20% coming from the Saudi fields, should make us turn from the east and look North and South for the evil doers that are trying to change our way of life. 

In the 70's we were the evil ones, we built smaller cars, even doubled our average milage. And what did we gain from this self inflicted humilation? We reduced our oil use so much that oil dropped from $40 to $15 a barrel and stayed there for 20 years, until the true Americans told us that we deserved to use more oil and drive not only large cars, but GIANT cars, Suburbans moved from the farm to the suburbs, Hummers were hatched from the Army, showing that they could design and build ridiculous items for the commercial sector also.

So here we are, losing our homes, jobs and pumping our paychecks into our huge cars that no one will buy anymore. The support the troop ribbon is a little tattered, deep down we figured if we went into Iraq, we could leave with the oil. The reality is we were sold a false dream, one of hubris and grandeur, we felt like kings in our big cars.

The right dream is one of humble striving and caring, not just about our wants, but the future generations needs. Humility is not weakness as some would have you believe, it is strength and belief in the large responsibility that we have for being born so lucky. We can do this people, we did it before many times when we were in dark times and we are in those days again, we can be the beacon of the emerging global family or we can put out the lights for good.